Compassion, Creativity, and Your Authentic Voice

How can we experience compassion and creativity as we cultivate connection with our most authentic or deepest selves?

Connecting with our most authentic selves is a process of compassionately integrating all the various aspects of who we are. 

This is often called shadow work, bringing to the surface, into the light of our conscious awareness, our motivations, ways of seeking security, affection, and control, all the aspects of ourselves that we were taught to limit, and all the different parts of ourselves.

Creativity is one of the most important things that usually ends up somewhere in our shadow.

When we are growing up we learn to limit how we express ourselves, to not embarrass ourselves, not be too weird, goofy, silly, or out of the box. And in the process we learn to hide ourselves, and often a lot of our Creativity.

Worse yet, we might have received the message that our art or and creative expression wasn’t good enough and we shouldn’t do that. It can be as simple as not being encouraged to do it more, and we fill in the blanks with negative self-talk.  

We end up with inner artist children that have been set to the side and neglected, possibly even hurt and traumatized. Meeting those parts of ourselves with compassion is integral to restoring our creative expression. 

And as we do our inner work, we grow in compassion for ourselves, for all the aspects of who we are. We tenderly hold the parts of us that have been hurt from life’s trials, painful relationships, and ultimately how we learned life.

And then there is often a deeper invitation to let go of the unhelpful aspects of how we learned to navigate life. It is taking off a mask. Doing what feels vulnerable, but in the process we are becoming more authentically ourselves. 

The result is more faithfully living in accordance with our essential being in the world. 

And we can compassionately express the whole mosaic of our inner world with greater insight into our own personal and unique experiences… and yet simultaneously this inner work also gives us greater insight into universal experiences of being human. 

Knowing ourselves in this way means we can see some of the filter on our awareness that colors how we interact with the creative stream flowing through us and around us. 

And if we can see the filter, then we also begin to see that our deepest or truest selves are not just our thoughts, emotions, feelings, or just the physical or mental events that cross our conscious awareness.

There is more to us underneath all of that.

There is a deeper flow.

 Creativity emerges and flows through the places in us that feel most connected and porous, not closed off.

Our deepest self is not an isolated cave, where the further in you go, the more alone you are as an individual person.

It’s actually the opposite. It is the most connected place in us.

And Creativity flows through our intuitive, interconnected depths, and then is expressed through the filters of our authentic and compassionately integrated selves, with all our normal human experiences, emotions, desires, and parts of ourselves.

And how do we access or cultivate greater connection with our innermost depths? Again, it is through compassion.   

To put it in various ways: compassion meets us in the place where our small s self enters into the sea of the big S self, and cultivation of compassion is integral to realizing Buddha nature. Or in Abrahamic mystic traditions, there is an inward invitation toward loving union with the Divine, where there is neither one or two. The gateway is love. 

Cultivating compassion in the innermost depths of ourselves deepens our experience of interconnection with Reality (capital R). 

And if we are able to integrate our internal worlds to live authentically as our unique selves, and also compassionately connect in the depths of ourselves and open up to the intuitive creative flow of Source, then there might be wellsprings of Creativity, yes with our own imprints on it, but also with more than we can fully explain. 

Guided Practice

I invite you to imagine a warm, radiating sense of compassion in the center of your chest.

You might choose to integrate your view of Reality here. This compassion is your own heart, but is also flowing in the natural compassion of primordial consciousness, or the Divine, Source, Spirit or the Universe. 

Sit with that. Cultivate this heart of compassion for your whole being. 

Then slowly bring to mind different aspects of who you are, whether they are things you like about yourself, or insecurities. With each one, slowly draw it into compassion, breathing in and out.

Where there is any resistance in you, keep breathing and allow your body to relax into it. 

Next invite Creativity to flow in and through this compassionate space you are holding.

And this might feel weird to do, but ask Creativity to bring to mind a picture or sense of your inner artist child, and hold this part of yourself in compassion too. Wait, listen, and notice what this inner artist in you is like, and how they respond to being loved and received compassionately. 

Finally, ask Creativity or this creative flow to bring to mind inspiration for how you might choose to capture or express artistically this feeling of compassionately holding these aspects of yourself in the depths of who you are.

Let us know in the comments how you experienced this reflection and practice, or join our free online community to share the creative work you make as a result!