Makes you wonder how nice it would be if you could be artistic and tuned into the universe, operating as a channel for limitless creativity, absolute freedom and power?

Congratulations! You inner artist is about to be released

We are born creative and it takes very little to reassess that natural state. To make art, all you need to do is to grab a brush and go—really.

The quiet whisper that the artist or poet hears, comes from the inside—it is a feeling, an idea and a complex calculation. But it doesn’t need to be a calculation to be valid, it is okay to have no idea of what is going on, it is okay to be clueless and lost, it is okay to dip a brush in purple or red and just splash the brush on a canvas, just for fun. Is that art? It is the beginning of art and it can go beyond your imagination, but you need to start somewhere, without worrying about the outcome. Loosen up and have fun; let your inner artist take over. Just remember to leave self-importance behind.

Artistic freedom is as important as the freedom of speech. It is the freedom to just be, to revel in the endless possibilities of the moment. Spirituality and creativity is the same thing. The creative flow is your spirit and when you create, your spirit works through you. The creative process enhances, strengthens and celebrates your true essence.

This does not mean that everyone should have a creative profession. It means that you need to make time and space for periodic creative endeavours to bring our your inner artist. Doing so will not only make you feel really good about yourself but also help you remember who you are.

How to bring out your inner artist

Let us understand what you need to do to release your inner artist:

1. Take action

“They always say time changes things, but you actually have to change them yourself.”
— Andy Warhol

Fear of failure stops many people from expressing themselves creatively. The good news is that nobody can fail. It is not a competition. That being said, it is okay to be afraid, uncertain and nervous, but rest assured that there is no goal to reach—all that matters is the action. As we all know, courage is to not the absence of fear, but to prioritise something higher than fear. The action is what is going to nurture your spirit and strengthen your connection to the magnificent you. The feedback from the outer world; praise, sales and a tap on the shoulder, feeds the ego—that is different. Your spirit does not need to prove its talents to the world; it is needless and rejoices in spontaneous expression.

2. Don’t worry about any rules

“Paint the flying spirit of the bird rather than its feathers.”
— Robert Henri

Many artists create extraordinary and unique works, because they are comfortable with their creativity and they trust their hunches. It is difficult to be confident as a beginner, which is why I recommend you to start with loose, abstract, improvised painting. Let yourself go. Be needless of positive feedback from others and allow your spirit to be the source of your strength. Enjoy the feeling of playing with colour, shape and line and be brave enough to enjoy the result as well, as it is one step towards your freedom as an independent and powerful creator.

Preparing to paint

The number one step is to get the supplies and to find a place in your home for your painting activities. You will find the supplies at an art shop. As regards a place for painting, no matter how small a place you live in, you can always make make space. Move around the furniture if you have to.

It is easy to get overwhelmed, insecure and stressed when you walk down the aisles of the art shop as a beginner, but know that the staff is used to helping beginners. Please don’t be afraid to ask for help. Be a proud beginner and feel the excitement instead.

Canvas

Start off with a medium size of the cheapest kind of canvas, there is nothing wrong with them, they are just basic. Do not buy a canvas smaller than 30” x 24” [75 cm x 60 cm]. Please buy two or three canvases, as the need to do another trip to the art shop might delay your second or third painting session.

Palette

Get a standard wooden palette big enough to hold a small chunk of each colour with space in the middle for blending.

Acrylic paints

Start off with student quality acrylics. There are sets of student acrylics that are convenient to start off with. Make sure that you have at least 14 different colours. If you find a set of six or eight basic colours [red, yellow, green, blue] pick additional colours from the shelf. Remember to pick your favourite colour! Maybe you would like to use gold and silver to spice it up.

Ink

In addition to the 14 tubes of acrylic paint, you should get three bottles of drawing ink in the colour of your choice. This will be for pouring and splashing onto the canvas.

Brushes

Get two sets of the art shop’s brand of brushes for acrylics; one set of the biggest brushes and one medium set. You want to have a minimum of 10 brushes, and make sure that at least half of them are big, because the idea is to paint boldly and avoid getting stuck with details.

Clothes, apron and towel

Wear something old and comfortable, and an apron on top. The apron is great because it allows you to feel free to make a bit of a mess. Find an old kitchen towel that you can wipe your brushes and hands on. Now you are all set.

Action time

As you embark on this great adventure, make sure that you have at least two uninterrupted hours to yourself. Play your favourite album, dance a little, and remember three things:

• It cannot go wrong
• Don’t stop, just paint
• Your spirit is behind the wheel.

Take feedback with a handful of salt

“I am no bird; and no net ensnares me; I am a free human being with an independent will.”
­— Charlotte Brontë

Some of us are blessed with open-minded and supportive friends and family, but others are unfortunately surrounded by people who are discouraging. Guard your integrity and refuse to listen to naysayers and skeptics. Only accept positive responses and remember that people’s feedback say more about themselves than anything else.

Welcome to the world of creativity.

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A real education will not teach you to compete; it will teach you to cooperate. It will not teach you to fight and come first. It will teach you to be creative, to be loving, to be blissful, without comparing yourself to others. It will not teach you that you can be happy only when you are the first—that is sheer nonsense. You can’t be happy just by being first, and in trying to be first you go through such misery that by the time you become the first you are habituated to misery.

By the time you become the president or the prime minister of a country you have gone through such misery that now misery is your second nature. You don’t know now any other way to exist; you remain miserable. Tension has become ingrained; anxiety has become your way of life. You don’t know any other way; this is your very lifestyle. So even though you have become the first, you remain cautious, anxious, afraid. It does not change your inner quality at all.

A real education will not teach you to be the first. It will tell you to enjoy whatever you are doing, not for the result, but for the act itself. Just like a painter or a dancer or a musician…

There’s no virtue in competition

You can paint in two ways. You can paint to compete with other painters; you want to be the greatest painter in the world, you want to be a Picasso or a Van Gogh. Then your painting will be second-rate, because your mind is not interested in painting itself; it is interested in being the first, the greatest painter in the world. You are not going deep into the art of painting. You are not enjoying it, you are only using it as a stepping-stone.

You are on an ego trip, and the problem is that to really be a painter, you have to drop the ego completely. To really be a painter, the ego has to be put aside. Only then can existence flow through you. Only then can your hands and your fingers and your brush be used as vehicles. Only then can something of superb beauty be born.

Real beauty is never created by you but only through you. Existence flows; you become only a passage. You allow it to happen, that’s all; you don’t hinder it.

But if you are too interested in the result, the ultimate result—that you have to become famous, that you have to be the best painter in the world, that you have to defeat all other painters hitherto—then your interest is not in painting; painting is secondary. And of course, with a secondary interest in painting you can’t paint something original; it will be ordinary.

Ego cannot bring anything extraordinary into the world; the extraordinary comes only through egolessness. And so is the case with the musician and the dancer. So is the case with everybody.

Let go and be in the flow

In the Bhagavad Gita, Krishna says: Don’t think of the result at all. It is a message of tremendous beauty and significance and truth. Don’t think of the result at all. Just do what you are doing with your totality. Get lost in it, lose the doer in the doing. Don’t “be”– let your creative energies flow unhindered. That’s why he said to Arjuna: “Don’t escape from the war… because I can see this escape is just an ego trip. The way you are talking simply shows that you are calculating, you are thinking that by escaping from the war you will become a great saint. Rather than surrendering to the whole, you are taking yourself too seriously– as if there will be no war if you are not there.”

Krishna says to Arjuna, “Just be in a state of let-go. Say to existence, ‘Use me in whatever way you want to use me. I am available, unconditionally available.’ Then whatsoever happens through you will have a great authenticity about it. It will have intensity, it will have depth. It will have the impact of the eternal on it.”

Jesus says: Remember, those who are first in this world will be the last in the kingdom of God, and those who are the last will be the first. He has given you the fundamental law– he has given you the inexhaustible, eternal law: Stop trying to be the first. But remember one thing, which is very much possible, because the mind is so cunning it can distort every truth. You can start trying to be the last– but then you miss the whole point. Then another competition starts: “I have to be the last”– and if somebody else says, “I am the last,” then the struggle, the conflict, begins again.

I have heard a Sufi parable:

A great emperor, Nadirshah, was praying. It was early morning; the sun had not yet risen, it was still dark. Nadirshah was about to start the conquest of a new country, and of course he was praying to God for his blessings, to be victorious. He was saying to God, “I am nobody. I am just a servant– a servant of your servants. Bless me. I am going on your behalf, this is your victory. But I am a nobody, remember. I am just a servant of your servants.”

A priest was also by his side, helping him in prayer, functioning as a mediator between him and God. And then suddenly they heard another voice in the darkness. A beggar of the town was also praying, and he was saying to God, “I am nobody, a servant of your servants.”

The king said, “Look at this beggar! He is a beggar and saying to God that he is nobody! Stop this nonsense! Who are you to say your are nobody? I am nobody, and nobody else can claim this. I am the servant of God’s servants– who are you to say that you are the servant of his servants?”

Now you see? The competition is still there, the same competition, the same stupidity. Nothing has changed. The same calculation: “I have to be the last. Nobody else can be allowed to be the last.” The mind can go on playing such games on you if you are not very understanding, if you are not very intelligent.

To be competitive is ugly, violent

Never try to be happy at the expense of another man’s happiness. That is ugly, inhuman. That is violence in the true sense. If you think you become a saint by condemning others as sinners, your saintliness is nothing but a new ego trip. If you think you are holy because you are trying to prove others unholy… That’s what your holy people are doing. They go on bragging about their holiness, saintliness. Go to your so-called saints and look into their eyes. They have such condemnation for you! They are saying that you are all bound for hell; they go on condemning everybody. Listen to their sermons; all their sermons are condemnatory.

And of course you listen silently to their condemnations because you know that you have made many mistakes in your life, errors in your life. And they have condemned everything– so it is impossible to feel that you can be good. You love food, you are a sinner. You don’t get up early in the morning, you are a sinner; you don’t go to bed early in the evening, you are a sinner. They have arranged everything in such a way that it is very difficult not to be a sinner.

Yes, they are not sinners. They go early to bed and they get up early in the morning… in fact, they have nothing else to do! They never commit any mistakes because they never do anything. They are just sitting there almost dead. But if you do something, of course, how can you be holy? Hence for centuries the holy man has been renouncing the world and escaping from the world, because to be in the world and be holy seems to be impossible.

My whole approach is that unless you are in the world, your holiness is of no value at all. Be in the world and be holy! We have to define holiness in a totally different way. Don’t live at the expense of others’ pleasures– that is holiness. Don’t destroy others’ happiness, help others to be happy– that is holiness. Create the climate in which everybody can have a little joy.

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Organizational psychologist Adam Grant shares three characteristics that will help you not only recognise “originals” as he calls them, but also become like them.

Among the surprising habits of originals is procrastination which, according to Grant, is “a vice when comes to productivity but can be a virtue for creativity”. The talk, which is at once funny and profound, shows you why you are not too different from the originals—all you need is to cultivate the three characteristics that make them what they are.

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Published by: Simon & Schuster

ISBN: 978-1476785462

Pages: 224

Price: INR 353

When we hear the word “creativity”, visions of paintings, poetry and music float through our minds, our conventional wisdom suggesting that it is a special gift. However, creativity expert Barnet Bain holds the view that everything we do is a process of creativity.

In The Book of Doing and Being, he walks us through a series of over 40 practical exercises while providing eye-opening insights into recognising and reactivating that spark we all possess, that we call creativity, no matter what our job involves.

This is a book best read in small doses. And reading alone is not enough. As the author suggests, the book can be a helpmate in our journey of rediscovering our creative self. Have a journal handy and jot down your thoughts as you work through the exercises in this book.

Starting with a call to become aware of our hurdles to creative expression, the author provides what he calls a Self-Inquiry Practice to help us identify if the barriers to our inspiration are hand-me-downs or self-imposed, i.e. more of a habit than a conscious choice. When we often trust popular culture to give us an understanding of our world, we diminish our originality and eventually suppress our inherent artistry.

Whether it is the way we care for the people we love, or how we brainstorm in a boardroom, we have an innate desire to improve the world in some way, based on our values. The author urges us to jot down a Life Wheel to serve as our values map—a tool for identifying our goals, desires and  priorities, not only in career and finances but also in family life, love life, health, relaxation and spirituality—represented as seven slices in this life wheel. As we tailor this wheel, reflecting on how much attention we would like to give to each slice, we are better able to recognise our deficit areas that need attention.

Life being what it is today, many of us get overwhelmed and stressed. We cope by conjuring up a mixture of thoughts and feelings that numb these powerful emotions, acting like anaesthetics. We learn this numbing mechanism at a young age and rely on it to handle feelings that overpower us. The four emotional anaesthetics—self-pity, blame, guilt and control—work to undermine our creative self. However, if we are cognizant of this fact, we can certainly learn to thrive under distress.

Neuroplasticity, the ability of our brain to form new neural connections at any stage in life, allows us to compensate for injury and disease and reclaim our functions. Similarly, the author proposes Creative Plasticity, an imaginative malleability that welcomes and enhances creative flow. The four exercises in this chapter essentially serve to rewire the brain through relaxation. Be it mindful breathing to promote alpha brain waves, or a nap, or a nature walk, or a sojourn at a favourite body of water, we can all find what relaxes us and helps us refocus. Another practical and easily doable exercise for rewiring is to change our routine—write with the non-dominant hand, drink beverage from a different utensil than the preferred one, sleep on a different side of the bed, sit at a different spot at the family dining table, take a new route to work. By approaching common things a bit differently, we can rekindle the flames of creativity.

In the chapter, “Engaging the Muses”, we encounter the nine Olympian muses—not the relics of made-up ancient world, but the creative forces that are outside our structured, logical framework. The muses await invitation. Despite the obstructions that hold us back, if we are willing to move forward and are raring to go, the muses will accept our invitation to co-create, working with our subconscious intelligence. Even if we don’t believe in Thalia, the keeper of joyous humour, or her counterpart Melpomene, the protector of tragedy, we can certainly extend the idea of the muses to mean that we are inclined to give laughter a chance, and that we are prepared to face adversity with courage.

Barnet Bain notes that, “when the dynamism of doing comes together with the receptivity of being, creative innovation cannot be stopped.”

The Book of Doing and Being ends with urging us to be brave and to “let go”—of a job, an identity or a way of being or relating, especially when it is difficult and full of complaints. The fear of what we could lose by letting go of the familiar is not easily offset by the promise of where we think creativity can take us. As a reassurance, the author acknowledges that creativity is a gift—a gift that is given to everybody, if we are open to receiving it.

This was first published in the January 2016 issue of Complete Wellbeing

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