Faith In The Process

Test of Time

Trust the process, seems to be my watchword for doing life and releasing creativity.  I just came from reading David DuChemin's latest blog post Rehabilitating Art.  He is recovering from a bone crushing fall, I'll not try to sum up his post for he is an amazing writer as well as photographer, but do check it out.

Although nothing quite so dramatic as what David has endured, I do understand the battle to push through the pain and how living in that kind of chronic state changes how you see things, realigns what has value as you learn to move with the flow of the process.  Which brings me to the book I have just begun to read and am enthralled with the insights, my head bobbing in agreement with so much that the author has to say:

Test of Time

"Even the best teachers of creativity encounter a common resistance to self-expression in their classes...We all know intuitively that our spontaneous creative expressions elude the habitual monitoring of our inner censors, revealing things to others that are outside our conscious control." Trust The Process by Shaun McNiff

He goes on to talk about our hidden beliefs that our art might not be worth exploring because 'it's' reserved for only the talented few in our thinking.  He then talks about how we can get stuck on training the literal mind with step by step technique and avoid the deeper process of creating.

"Most of the educational system is established on the assumption that learning follows a logical and predictable pattern of acquiring knowledge...There is very little emphasis within our educational systems on the education of the imagination, which requires sustained encounters with uncertainty." Trust The Process 

I can't tell you what it did for me to read that last statement, it summed up my learning struggles throughout my life and at the same time tapped into the wonderful world of 'uncertainty' that art has brought forth in me.  This in turn ties into David's post on 'Rehabilitating Art,' because I get that life with chronic pain and frequent flare up's of fibro trigger points and migraines has brought my life sharping in tune with the inner flow of living with uncertainty.  I never know what I'm going to be able to do from one day, sometimes one hour to the next.

What does this have to do with art, simply this, creating takes an act of faith in the process, it has little to do with the fine execution of technique, it is an intuitive giving in to a deeper force from with in.

"I have learned that I must let "the process" follow its course...frustration builds...the process arouses emotion and draws everything into itself.  If we are able to stay with a situation it will carry us to a new place.  The 'process' knows where it needs to go... " Trust The Process 

Oddly enough chronic pain became my teacher of uncertainty that has allowed me to press into the process when it comes to creating. It doesn't mean I have extraordinary talent, but it does me that I come naked and unashamed to "the process."

"The most threatening element is the lack of confidence that people have when the process becomes difficult and tense.  They don't realize that the conflict and uneasiness that they are experiencing are necessary and "part of the process." Transformation occurs when we lose our way and find a new way to return." Trust The Process


I'm hoping the rest of the book is as insightful as the fist few chapters.  So enjoy the process, you can trust it to bring you through to the other side.


A new blogging friend Leovi from Spain left a comment on my piece I've been tentatively calling Rise Up and a title really resonated with my spirit from their comment, "Test of Time"