6 Spiritual Shifts To Uplift Your Creative Soul
How I Started Creating Content Again and
6 Spiritual Lessons from one of my favourite books for creatives.
When I first came back to Toronto in the summer of 2017, I wasn't sure if I would ever create content. I had seen the shadow part of myself, and I was so ashamed. All I could see was my darkness.
I felt like I must be such an evil person inside, and I didn't want to put any of that out into the world, since the whole point of me ever getting into content creation was to put positivity out into the world.
Finding A Long Lost Book
During the several months that followed, I spent a lot of time reading and there was one particular book that kept calling me. It was given to me by the music director at the church that I used to play piano for when I was a teenager. This was the church did I grew up in from age 12 until I left for university. I could remember the colours of the book cover, and the title of the book but I had no idea where it was. I could try asking my parents to see if they'd seen it but I was sure that they had no idea what book I was talking about. Also, I didn't want to tell them that I was looking for this book because it had significant meaning. It was called The Heart Of The Artist. I had a feeling that it was going to speak right into my soul and ignite something in me. Something that even my parents didn't understand.
Finally, after several weeks of secretly looking for this book, I found it sitting on one of my dad's bookshelves in the basement. As I read it, it felt like hundreds of synapses in my brain were joining and firing up. It felt like there was Creative Energy deep, deep in my soul that was being conjured up and sent coursing through my bloodstream into my brain and my body. In those moments diving into the book, I knew that I was being given permission by God, the Spirit that governs the universe, to create. (Crazy thing is, I never read this book when it was given to me in 2007. I was reading it exactly 10 years later in 2017!)
In fact, I was being commanded to create. This book was like a healthy smack to my stagnant creative butt, pushing me forward. It was telling me, Anita, it's time to create! Do what you came to do. Be who you came to be.
I want to share with you a particular passage that means a lot to me. While the whole book spoke to me, I have revisited this particular passage a least a dozen times just to hear and feel the words in my soul. It's actually an excerpt from another book called Addicted To Mediocrity by Frank Schaeffer. I haven't actually read Addicted To Mediocrity, but I'm sure I will one day. Here is the passage, excerpted inside The Heart Of The Artist by Rory Noland:
Now a word to my fellow artists and those employed are hoping to be employed in some professional capacity in the arts, fields of expression and communication, and also those who, while living in different professions, have artistic and creative urges and interests personally (therefore I trust, everyone).
“The world had many kings,” said his contemporary Arentino, “ but only one Michelangelo.”
Do not be discouraged history is on your side. God has given you talent. You are important to him and live in the court of God, not the court of men. You cannot wait for the Sanhedrin’s approval.
By expressing yourself as an artist and by exercising those talents God has given you, you are praising him. Whether what you express is “religious” or “secular”, as a Christian you are praising him. Everything is his. The church's attitude toward the arts, the narrow-mindedness of it, the demand for slogans and justification, the utilitarianism, the programs, the guilt-ridden view of all life is unchristian, unbiblical, ungodly and wrong. Don't let this suppress you, as a member of this generation of creative people, the way it has suppressed so many in the past. You must press on.
Remember that as a creative person, the most important thing is to create. Who sees what you make and where it goes and what it does is a secondary consideration; the first is to exercise the talent God has given you.
You cannot expect too much too soon. It is a lifelong body of work that counts. It is that body of work whose expression means something and changes cultures in which we live in terms of bearing fruit. One individual work cannot say everything.
Your work will vary, one day to express something rather important to you personally and perhaps less important to the world around you, perhaps another time to wrestle with a weighty issue. There is no right or wrong method. There is no Christian or unchristian subject matter (except in the area of artwork or expression that would deliberately have as its primary purpose to lead people away from the truth).
You are tremendously free, you are the most free for you have form on which to build your freedom, you know who you are, you know where your talent come from comes from, you know that you and your talent will live forever. You know that God has placed worth on you; you know creativity, unlike so many things in this fallen world, did not come from the Fall but was something there with God before he created, with him when he created, and that he has given to man as this creature. It will be there in the new heavens and the new earth. Your creative talent, exercised and worked on in this life is something you will take with you. Unlike money, or spiritual slogans, it is eternal.
Produce, produce, produce. Create, create, create. Work, work, work. This is what we must do as Christians in the Arts, with or without the support of the church, we are to exercise our god-given talent, praise him through it, enjoy it, bear fruit in the age in which we live.
It is a worthwhile fight and more than a fight it is an enjoyment of a good and gracious gift from our heavenly father, really given, to be enjoyed, practice, and treasured.
When you get discouraged as a Christian in the Arts considerate the heritage in which you stand. Bath in the knowledge that for centuries Christians have practiced and nurtured the arts with faithfulness and that you now carry this torch forward. Take courage from this take courage from the creativity and beauty of God's world around us. Take courage from the creativity of other people.
If any single group of people are in tune with God himself certainly it is those Christians who enjoy, practice or simply appreciate creativity.”
There are so many chunks of this passage that are highlighted and seared into my soul. (Highlights are my own.) It's as if there is no one else in my life telling me some of these truth, so I come back to this book to hear the words straight from God.
An Aside: You may or may not identify as a Christian. That's a topic for another day. For now, if you are here and still reading this, I trust you believe in a higher power that is at work in our lives and in the world. That Higher Power is also the reason you have a creative impulse. Just exchanged the word Christian for human and reread the passage again if it helps.
How I’ve Changed: 6 Spiritual Shifts
1.Letting Go of Worldly Standards.
This particular part, “You cannot expect too much too soon. It is a lifelong body of work that counts,” has really challenged me and encouraged me. I used to look at these big Youtubers, with 30 to 50 videos on their YouTube account and hundreds of thousands of subscribers and I couldn't understand why no matter how much better my filmmaking skills were getting, no how much more artistic my videos would get, why they weren't getting more views.
This encouragement, this truth - that you cannot expect too much too soon and that it's a lifelong body of work that counts - has challenged me to keep creating. Perhaps it is some people's fate to attain or accumulate or create a large online community at a young age. Most of these YouTubers are in their 20s or early 30s. Perhaps it is not my destiny to reach that level of “fame and acclaim” at the same age as those YouTubers.
2. Commit To The Work, Not The Numbers
I've come to accept that I cannot control exactly how many people see my work. Sure, I could pay for ads and do certain marketing things so that more people would see my work. But I know deep down in my soul that's not the way I want to get my work out into the world. I've learned that figuring out things like advertising and online marketing takes a lot of time. And I would personally rather spend all that time just making more art.
3. Multiply My The Body Of Work
I was recently challenged to create a thousand videos. What would it look like for me to make a thousand videos? Now that is a body of work. A thousand videos means that I'm definitely reaching more people that I think, because no one can watch a thousand videos. There is also something crazy about daring to create that many videos. It’s the kind of goal that can only be completed with real commitment and joy in the process!
4. Measure Success by The Amount of Joy I Feel.
This passage also helped me make the commitment to produce, to work, to create. And to keep producing. If I find joy and I experience God in the act of creation, then I have already succeeded.
5. stay For the Long Haul.
My rather slow growth online has challenged me and changed me so that I no longer seek to reach some arbitrary standard of online success and worldly success -- in the form of a big audience, big numbers and big income. My rather my slow growth online has challenged my intentions and made me more committed to staying here for the long haul and to keep creating.
6. Trust In the (Long, slow and steady) Process.
If I cannot control who sees my work, what I can control is how much I create. And what I do know is that the more I create, eventually, more of the work will reach the people in need. So these days I have totally surrendered the need and desire to get my work seen as many people as possible. I just create.
A Closing Prayer for Creatives:
God, I just give this work to you. Thank you for the inspiration and creative ideas you've given me. Give me the strength, the power, the clarity and commitment to keep creating even when I feel discouraged or disappointed. I know that discouragement and disappointment is not of you, for you are my creative impulse. I commit to being a vessel and a channel for whatever you want to bring into this world. I want more of you in my life. Purify my soul. Teach me how to do your will. Amen.
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Thank you so much for reading! 💛 Your presence here means a lot to me. Thank you for sharing in this journey with me.
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