THE NEW CEATIVITY AND THE FEMININE ARCHETYPE

Since 'creativity' and the Feminine Archetype are such integral elements of the 'cultural creatives' trend, and in business in general, Jamie Walters, founder of Ivy Sea, sat down in dialogue with Julie Daley, founder of Creative Wellspring, to discuss just what we're talking about when we say 'creativity' and 'Feminine', and why it's so important right now — both within and beyond the realms of business.

JW: What does 'creativity' mean to you?

JD: It means Self-expression, where "self" has a capital S. It means your highest expression, your highest Self, which I believe is the ultimate goal of being alive is to create and extend your own authenticity in the world. Very much as we were created by the force of the Universe.

JW: For many Westerners, creativity is something that we've been conditioned to see as "a luxury" reserved for only a few — it's kind of like many of the "self-care" or even wellness related practices that have been set aside in favor of the rational, linear, productive, business or material pursuits. Why is it important, and what's the flaw of this Western thinking?

JD: Well, for me, because of how I see creativity, it's absolutely necessary for not only successful life but for a happy life. Our reason for being here is to express from our soul what really matters, so we can't be fully happy and fulfilled at the end of our life unless we've done that. It's just as important as breathing and eating.

I agree there's that flaw in Western thinking. It's also tied in here in the West with the belief that creativity is something that 'some people have' — it has to be an artistic expression. And there's also the belief that people who are 'creative' are kind of 'out there'. So wherever that work ethic came from …

JW: In your observations and experiences, what are some of the general costs of the traditional ways of thinking?

JD: The most important thing is a lot of depression, disconnectedness — both personal and professional — and I would go so far as to say illness, if you look at creativity as an energy, if it's not moving it gets stuck in the body. There's no joy.

Creativity has a lighter side, but a darker side. A full range of expression includes both. We limit what we believe is 'acceptable expression' so a lot of what needs to get expressed it comes out destructively.

JW: I've seen these as well — individually or organizationally — where suppressing one's creativity, intuition, vision, and other traits associated with the Feminine archetype has high costs, including burn-out, less-than-optimal decision-making, putting "blood, sweat and tears" into something that ultimately has no meaning for you, and other things. What about some of the costs to business?

JD: If you look at business, you'll see slower production signs, less true leadership, fewer people stepping up into their own personal leadership. Collaborative work suffers. There's a whole level of judgment placed on people and their expression — what the appropriate expression is, so there's fear of expression.

In business, it's creativity in context — there are boundaries set — but when it's so judged, then it gets bottled up. So this might mean that we believe that we need to keep the whole idea of creativity and the free distribution of ideas cloaked, and that leads to that whole idea of scarcity.

If you believe in the flow of creative ideas, it's more of a generative expression. So if you let it out in one way or place, it's generative and supports creativity in other areas.

With technological advances, we see that information is shared left and right, where as before it was much more difficult. Creativity is the same way — when it's allowed to flow, it can only stimulate more ideas, more creativity, more business, more abundance, than is the case when you "keep it close to you."

JW: If we're talking about new levels of creativity, and new ways of seeing creativity, don't we need to transform existing organizational norms and cultures? After all, most current traditional organizational cultures aren't tolerant of true creativity. In fact, they seem to excise it as soon as it really shows itself as 'creative.' What have you seen in this regard?

JD: The bottom line is that companies say they want a creative environment, but creative environments require collaboration, a movement between actions, idea generation, time spent to say "I don't know, let's look at that." Unfortunately in business these days the mindset is that "any time we spend not producing is not serving the company," but nothing could be further from the truth.

As we've talked about before, there has to be a dance between the Feminine and Masculine archetypes and the traits inherent in those. So much of the Masculine is about pushing out into action, about competing; and sometimes what you have to do requires coming in, collaborating, allowing more time to really open up to the possibilities.

But the predominant business mindset is that we have to produce right away and we don't open up truly to what's possible.

Everything is a wave, but in most organizations and the economy in general, it's seen as a straight line, and it's always supposed to go up — profits are supposed to go up, production is supposed to go up, earnings are supposed to go up. But that's not the way that Nature or creativity works; there's that ebb and flow, up and down, in and out, in order for it to truly be a creative culture.

And I really believe that people know it inside; every body knows inside what feels right, and yet there's so much fear about choosing to be the one who is different.

JW: And now we get to a prevailing issue beneath it all. Fear. Isn't fear a clamp on creativity? So if the culture is a culture of fear, and the leadership style is a style of 'fear-based leadership', doesn't this actually stop the flow of creativity, or the possibilities for creativity to even exist in such a culture?

JD: Yes. For individuals, everyone's creativity is unique, so you are going to be different — that's your nature. We've been trained in school to conform, not to be different. The same is the case in a lot of business environments, yet that's where the creativity happens, when things are uncertain.

And that word — uncertainty — when used in a business environment, generates a lot of fear and horror! With that uncertainty, who knows? Who knows what's going to get generated? You don't, really.

JW: And that goes right into the face of the myth about just how much we control, how much we can will into place by brute force. It goes right in the face of our more rigid or unexplored expectations, doesn't it?

JD: Expectation kills all creativity, it kills all uncertainty. You pull that possibility wave right down to the line. And if that unexpected pops up, then you recoil, pull away.

JW: But even as we pretend that we've planned every bit of uncertainty away, uncertainty is exactly what exists. Change, uncertainty, are the only constants, regardless of the "security lies" we tell ourselves or the games of 'make pretend' we play. And yet creativity thrives in the fields of uncertainty!

JD: Exactly. It's all second to second, moment to moment, and all we can really respond to is what's happening right now, and trust that what happens in the next moment will be the effect of what we've just chosen.

So going back to the statement about our culture, we need to reframe how we see creativity — what does it mean — and how we see uncertainty and change, which gets right to the cultural mythology of just how much we control the world.

We're seeing this with the recent hurricanes in the United States: It makes clear that we don't control the world; we're part of that force, part of that Nature. Sometimes it comes through sweetly, and sometimes that force doesn't come through sweetly.

JW: Charles Johnston, in an article in the May 2005 edition of the IONs journal, Shift, wrote, "The particular challenges ahead require of us a new kind of creativity. The future demands that we bring a new fullness to our lives — new depths in ourselves and new sophistication in our understanding of what it means to be creative. In the end, it will require a maturity in our natures as creative beings that has never before been needed — or possible." What does this bring up for you?

JD: I think it's absolutely what we're being called to do and be. I feel the calling myself. There's such a draw to the word 'creativity' to me. That's the way we have to move if we're to survive.

It's not a creativity that's contained within self, but through presence or in creative community, seeing ourselves as part of the collective, the Spiritual sense of being in community and being creative. We need to allow that creative force to come through us and mix — that's why collaboration is so important.

Everything happens in relationship, and we don't learn that in this culture. We learn that we're individuals, and autonomous, and you have to pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And there is truth to that, but we don't learn that we're connected. We're part of the greater whole.

We need to cultivate collaboration, cultivate ways of being together, cultivate new ways of being together. We've created that capacity for connection with our technology. But our mindsets haven't caught up with the (possibilities of) our technology.

JW: These things — creativity, collaboration, conscious action, co-creating — these all entail a higher level of responsibility than might be comfortable or familiar to us, yes?

JD: Yes, and that's where the responsibility comes into creativity. The response is different, depending on how you're seeing it. If we see ourselves as an individual the response is different; if we see ourselves as part of a collective, that's a different choice. And that collective comes back to us and shows us the possibility!

There is a responsibility to choose love, to choose compassion, to think of the other.

Perhaps if we can increase that ability to respond to everything else in a way that has compassion, understanding and love, there doesn't have to be this sense that I have to control everyone's creativity.

In an organization, how can I set up an environment based on trust of people's ability to create? And how can I allow people to create, and see that they do need to create with responsibility?

So much of that goes to how quickly the Ego wants to judge. But when people are given an opening and see that they're not going to be judged, that natural tendency to create and be part of the collective, to be responsible.

Our nature is to create and to be responsible to the collective! When you shut down that energy, you also shut down the part of the collective connection, and then you see negativity.

JW: And this brings us, then, to 'higher values' of faith and trust, which uncertainty and creativity really require.

JD: Yes, it ultimately comes down to what we trust. The bottom line in business or anywhere is that you have to have trust in your own creativity and that everyone else is creative and that your sense of happiness, success, etc. all get fulfilled.

And ultimately when you have faith in that it allows you to be in that place of uncertainty because you know that you have the tools to respond, to act. And you know that the other person does too.

JW: You included some powerful quotations in your most recent email newsletter: "Tomorrow belongs to women." - Helen Fisher, The First Sex; "Learn not to be careful." - Photographer Diane Arbus to her students; "You can't stand out ... unless ... your heart is in it." - Tom Peters.

Let's talk a little bit about why these have meaning for you in terms of creativity and our experience of "the fullness of life".

JD: For me, what Charles Johnston talks about (in the IONs article that Jamie mentioned earlier) -- that new way of being -- is the Feminine. Collaborative, community, relationship. And I believe it's coming predominantly through women.

As Rainer Maria Rilke says in Letters to a Young Poet, "This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday (and even now, especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speaking and shining), someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being."

A new femaleness that's no longer in the image of man. That gets to the heart of what Wildly Creative Women is about — re-imagining what it's like to be a woman, to be female.

JW: As compared to what we've learned about what being male or female is supposedly about, which seems a distorted fraction of the true essence, the true potentials and gifts inherent in both genders, and the Masculine and Feminine archetypes which are resident in both genders.

JD: There's nothing outside of us, where we've been trained to look, to show us what that really is. It takes going inside. That Feminine is what's going to keep our world together.

JW: That's exactly what Dannion Brinkley emphasized when I heard him speak a few months ago, and he surely is an example of what happens when circumstances open a man to a greater balance of Masculine and Feminine. As such, he can appreciate and value the Feminine.

He also points to some of the recent aberrations in business or world politics as the result of what happens when the Masculine archetype is too far out of balance and the Feminine is too suppressed.

JD: Right now, much of what we see is what Ego would create — out of fear and scarcity. So it becomes a creative way to control.

But it also goes back to my idea of sexuality, in the fullest sense. You have to trust in your body and its intelligence. You have to trust in your nature as a woman or a man. There are so many false messages and images — they're all fake — so we don't even know what it means to "be our gender".

And we have to go inside to do that, and then go to each other, and reflect that.

JW: That's the "inner work" that allows us to transcend previous limited beliefs, concepts, and ways of seeing and working; and it also allows us to find our creativity, authenticity, vision, and even the courage so that we can "learn not to be careful," as photographer Diane Arbus told her students.

JD: David Kelly, one of my design professors at Stanford, always said: Fail early, fail often. He was talking about rapid prototyping. Getting it out there. But we sit back and we're so careful, because we're "in our heads" not in our bodies or out in action.

Companies want us to be in action, but we're in our heads, thinking of the perfect answer, because failure isn't tolerated. But creativity and being in action invites failure!

Do we not trust our bodies and instincts enough that we'll not know when we will really need to be careful? Careful means to 'have care' not to "stay safe". So it's looking at what we mean by the word 'careful'.

JW: And on the flip side, if the emphasis on safety and conformity nip creativity in the bud, what helps to cultivate creativity and the 'body wisdom' — the instinct and intuition — necessary to go with that flow?

JD: For me, a couple of the most important qualities are wonder and discovery! I love going out and just walking — looking at buildings, people, smelling smells. That idea that around the next corner, what will we find?

You see kids have that and we've lost it. If you're not careful in that "stay safe", it could mean that next great photograph.

What's really going to happen when you take a risk? You might fail. And then we go to what that word means in our society. And it goes back to that whole concept of having to have everything go up, not down, because "going down" or "going back" is failure. But creativity requires failure!

JW: I love Immanuel Wallerstein's comments about the importance of embracing uncertainty in order to allow for creativity and possibility. Wallerstein says, "If everything is uncertain, then the future is open to creativity, not merely human creativity but the creativity of all nature. It is open to possibility, and therefore to a better world. But we can only get there as we are ready to invest our moral energies in its achievement."

Similarly, Deepak Chopra in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success writes, "In detachment lies the wisdom of uncertainty … in the wisdom of uncertainty lies the freedom from our past, from the known, which is the prison of past conditioning. And in our willingness to step into the unknown, the field of all possibilities, we surrender ourselves to the creative mind that orchestrates the dance of the Universe."

JD: I believe that it's in the uncertainty that we actually feel most alive. It's the place where our deepest most authentic Being wants to be. And I think we all know that at some level.

Sometimes you feel that excitement about the unknown, the other voice, the fear, is also speaking loudly. Sometimes they go hand in hand. The creative voice that wants the uncertainty, and the fear from the part of us that wants to control and avoid uncertainty is just terrified of uncertainty!

The Ego voice gets louder — keep me safe, keep me safe!

JW: And then that inclination to control comes into play, and shuts things right down, often when you really need creativity, insight, intuition, vision, and possibility opened up.

JD: When we want to control, it's that place of seeing "It's me against the world, me against you," and that so stifles the creative juice that wants to come out.

In the general culture, we see this. I really feel that what we're moving towards this creative, more collaborative place culturally. And you can just see the Ego Voice; the old ways are fighting harder to hang on.

But we really have to listen to that voice that wants to emerge — what wants to emerge — I and we need to allow that and express it.

JW: Those who are creative — who open to their uniqueness and begin to express it or give it voice — go against the grain by stepping up and standing out. That's what many people fear about it, and that's what many bureaucracies or entrenched but out-dated systems find threatening.

JD: Yes. This old cultural paradigm has been around for so long, that feeling about "going against the grain" and that old cultural voice can seem so overwhelming, so that's where that shut-down occurs. Wanting to be part of the tribe — conforming — so I shut down.

That happens in organizations, too, where you see people saying to themselves, "I won't speak up" or "That's a dumb question, so I won't ask it." Things like that. That question is tagging on your shoulder, tugging on your pants to ask it, and you can hear the other voice telling you not to ask, not to speak, not to stand.

JW: And in some of the more entrenched, traditional cultures that really don't deal well with change, uncertainty or creativity — no matter what's said publicly — you see and hear a lot about wanting creativity or entrepreneurial spirit, but what's tolerated really isn't creative at all. It's a form of make-pretend, because real creativity or real entrepreneurial spirit would blow the boundaries of "how things have been done" right out the door!

JD: Sometimes you don't even know you're not being creative; we're so well-conditioned that it feels like you're being creative, but it becomes like a fib.

People want leadership, they want innovative, they want cultural or organizational change. And they know they need it. But all of those things depend on that inner voice — you can't really be a leader unless you hear that inner voice, and you open to what others offer, and then trust enough in your own voice and conviction to act from it.

Companies so often want innovation but they don't want creativity. Because somehow creativity has that bad rap — it's that loose cannon. It's hard to control!

JW: And as we've mentioned, so many people are afraid to see their own passion, their own desire, they're afraid to wake up to that. And yet there's such a great yearning for it. It keeps calling to us, and will, until we finally give it the time of day!

JD: Yes, because what happens when you do that — when you open to that voice of your passion calling to you? You feel! And desire and passion for a lot of people are lined up with the body — sensuality, sexuality — and all of those, culturally, are no-no's.

Passion is a feeling! But without desire and passion, there isn't enough energy to allow for newness, for bigness, for greatness. Desire, hope, excitement — that fuel that carries you to that base of creation. That's the energy!

You don't see a lot of people walking around with that kind of energy. It's more that anxious, stressful kind of energy.

In contrast, that Feminine feeling of being in the body, and feeling passionate about your work. You feel that it's so exciting, and you have so much passion around it, that you're willing to work 12 hours on a project if that's what you want.

People are probably most creative and happy and successful when they are themselves. This is the biggest thing that I've discovered, and it's so simple. If we could be fully ourselves — being fully in our bodies, being intelligent like we all are, being fully me — I will be the happiest most successful member of society, organization, relationship.

JW: And then our organizations, communities, and governments also reflect the very best that each of us has to offer, and are thus more enjoyable, creative, and prosperous. The result is the highest potential of humanity, for the greatest wellness and prosperity of all being — humanity, other beings, the Earth.

THE NEW CEATIVITY AND THE FEMININE ARCHETYPE
http://www.ivysea.com/pages/ldrex_1005_05.html