Everyone is Creative

This means you are creative!

Discovery consists of seeing what everybody has seen and thinking what no one else has thought.
Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, Nobel Prize winner

I love this quote, don't you? Read it again and you'll discover it is the key to the SoulCollage® process.

Seeing what EVERYONE else has seen, looked at, walked past....and yet, THINKING what no one else has thought.

This means that every SoulCollage card you make is a creative discovery, in and of itself. Because other people certainly glanced through the same magazines you did. They flipped right over that one image that caught your eye last week. They didn't give it a second thought. But YOU looked at it and saw something.

You were still for a moment and you listened. You let the image speak to you. You heard something that no one else heard. You allowed yourself to think of the picture in a different way. And so you ripped it out of the magazine and allowed it to become part of one of your SoulCollage cards.

What Is The Creative Process?

Springtime is a time for gathering seeds and planting them, watching them begin to sprout. In the creative process, this is the part of the cycle where we generate ideas, gather them to us gently, and watch as they begin to germinate. This is the time for AHA MOMENTS, also known as LIGHTBULBS GOING OFF IN THE BRAIN moments.

In the springtime of a SoulCollage card, the creative process begins with flipping through hundreds of magazines, and pulling out the images that appeal to you. As you do this, and your image pile begins to grow, you will often find ideas sprouting here and there. "Oh look, I have all these pictures of doors and windows. I wonder what that means." Or, "Wow, if I put this conch shell and this spiral on top of that galaxy shot, it looks amazing."

Summer is the season of action steps, the daily tending of the plants, feeding them and watering them and balancing their intake of light and shade so they stay healthy and in full growing mode. It is often repetitious and can sometimes be downright tedious, but it is a necessary part of the creative cycle of life and growth.

In the summer of a SoulCollage deck, the creative process continues as you do the actual physical work of making each card. This includes trimming your images, laying them out under the frame, moving them around and around until you are satisfied with what you see, marking the edges if necessary for a good fit, gluing them down, rubbing off the excess glue, smoothing down the edges. This part of the cycle also includes buying and cutting the mat board pieces and placing the appropriate backing on each card.

Autumn is the season of the harvest, where the fruits of your labors are taken up, harvested, and given forth to the world.

In the autumn of a SoulCollage card, you move through the creative process by completing it and putting it out in the world in some way. You do something with the card. For example, you put it on your nightstand so you see it first thing every morning and last thing every night. Or you share it with a friend, write about it in your journal, talk about it with your SoulCollage group, maybe you even email it to the editor of KaleidoSoul Inspirations for inclusion in the free monthly newsletter. In other words, you reap the fruits of what you have made.

Winter is the season of darkness and quiet. The seeds lie dormant under ground that is now frozen. This is the season of no new growth. All is waiting. But this is a necessary part of the process of growth and harvest. When there's three feet of snow on the ground (I live in New England, can you tell?), you have to have faith in the cycle of the seasons. You have to activate your belief that Spring will come again, that the creative process will continue in spite of the darkness, in spite of the seemingly barren landscape.

In the winter of the SoulCollage process, you seem to have no new ideas for cards, no energy or desire to create any. This may come as quite a surprise if you're new to it and have just spent every waking moment for weeks making cards for your deck! It may seem like you will never make another one and that may distress you a great deal. It's important to remember when this is happening that it's all part of the creative process.

One more word about "winter." It's important to know when NOT to create, just as it's important to heed the call of spring and begin the creative process all over again. It's important to know when to be still, when to put the card making on hold. The power of the creation of your SoulCollage deck comes from listening to the voices inside of you, the voices in your dreams, the voices of those around you whose energy stimulates and enlivens you. The creative process of SoulCollage is not just about ripping and tearing, cutting and gluing, arranging and rearranging pieces. It's also about listening, about going within where it's quiet and dark and not much seems to be going on.

Cultivate Creative Attitude

Openness

Practicing openness means that you are willing to wait and listen to the answers within you first, that you are willing to sit back and allow the card to speak to you first. To be open in the creative process is to be willing to let go of what you think and simply go with what you feel.

Some of us are more closed off than others, more ready to jump to conclusions, more prone to chatter than to silence. If we can notice this and work with it, then we'll be better able to cultivate a sweet openness that will be our ally on the SoulCollage creative journey. Artella is a glorious website that is jam-packed with all manners of fun books, e-courses, workshops, free stuff, and magazines that will get your creative juices opened up and flowing in no time!

Flexibility

Yes, there are four suits to most SoulCollage decks but you can have less and you can have more. A certain card from your deck may belong to two different suits. You might feel like putting an animal on a card that doesn't belong in your Companions Suit.

It takes a certain flexibility to allow yourself to change the "rules" and stretch the guidelines like this. Some of us are more rigid than others, and to notice this about ourselves is a wonderful discovery, the only way that we can begin to bend and flow with the creative process that is our life. Creativity Portal is an amazing website that will do exactly as its name says.... open doorways to your creative inner spirit!

Creative Blocks

There are a certain number of "voices" in our lives that have taught us to believe (or shamed us into believing) that we can't be creative. Roger Von Oech calls these voices creative blocks. His book, A Whack on the Side of the Head, addresses these blocks and gives you ideas and exercises for loosening the blocks and becoming more creative. I highly recommend his books and this article on overcoming the voices that stop us from being creative. Read it and tell me what you think.

Recommended Reading on Creativity

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