Creativity and the Inner Child
Everyone remembers how much better a Friday afternoon art class felt compared to the horrors of maths first thing on a grey wet Monday. You got two hours of real fun and for rest of the week you are programmed by an education system to oil the wheels of commerce and industry. You leave school, adjust to the shock of having to get a mundane job in the real world and for a while this satisfies the self image and the ego. Does this sound like someone you know?
As time goes by you play the game of survival according to social expectations and then one day you may crash and burn in despair. This feeling need not come from some huge catastrophic life changing event but it does for some. For others it comes from staying too long in the rat race where your energy slowly becomes drained and as the years go on you start to feel that life is like wading through treacle. Life does not need to feel like that.
People can take time out sometimes to work with art and colour. Is is good therapy and helps to re-organise your mind and body. Even an hour or so a week spent sketching or playing with paint can help you feel disconnected from 'reality' as you have been taught to know it. There is an inner child in you that needs to sometimes come out and communicate feelings to you that have long since been swept into the coal-shed where they have been lurking unresolved.
Art helps you tap into your subconscious mind and listen to the child inside. You are not really who you think you are and if you ever undertake inner child work seriously then it can transform how you feel about yourself and the world outside your window. The journey may take several years but there is gold waiting for you at the end of the rainbow if you choose right now to look to the light while listening quietly to the darkness of the soul.
If you accept that you have an inner child then you may also realise that it can hold the keys that can unlock the door to your potential. I mainly refer to the artistic creative potential we all have but Inner Child awareness is also useful because it has solved a lot of the everyday emotional and personal problems that hold people back during adulthood.
Unresolved inner child issues can be seen at play in any group situation where people are trying just to be liked and accepted. Sometimes their behaviour is embarrassing and they cant change because they don't know how to. Dress down Friday is not enough and employers know this. That is why they have even courted the idea of bringing alternative therapists into workplaces where stress is a problem.
The urge to be creative is common in most people because we are seeking a way to express the unique ways in which we think we experience life in the universe. We want to know if everything we think, see and feel are are what others experience too.
When you write or create something visually artistic you start connecting with yourself and if you are brutally honest and spread the light of what you have learned then other people will connect with you at the subconscious level. Then you will start to realise that you are not alone in the world and that others can hear you through the dust and the noise.
Even if it is a grey wet Monday you can chose whether to live in the sunshine or stand out in the rain.
January 2009
