Cultivating Creative Resilience

Exploring the Intersection of Spirituality and Creativity to Overcome the Challenges of Unnoticed Work

"Pain is inevitable, but suffering is optional."

This phrase, often attributed to Haruki Murakami and rooted in Buddhist teachings, serves as a reminder for me, a mantra of sorts, especially when it comes to creativity.

I rely on this wisdom as part of my toolkit whenever my artistic endeavors—a song, a play, a blog post, (gulp) a life—go unnoticed or ignored.

Which is a lot.

Especially when you create a lot.  

I often find myself in a constant battle between my lower self and my higher self, engaged in an ongoing dialogue. This inner conflict is relentless and won't simply disappear. Instead, it must be managed. Acknowledging this struggle is crucial. It allows me to navigate the tension between self-doubt and creative ambition.

By consciously choosing to rise above suffering, I can better harness my creative energy and stay true to my journey.

Creative work often goes unnoticed. Like, most of the time.

This is one of the most difficult challenges for me. Allowing my work to find its way through the world at its own pace, without succumbing to suffering, is, to me, the point of a creative spiritual practice. 

If part of the spiritual experience is learning how to let go, then part of the creative spiritual experience is doing the same.

Of course, it's important to recognize when your work doesn't meet the standards of professionalism needed to sell. This often relates more to taste than talent. Check out this amazing excerpt from Ira Glass on cultivating taste and the taste “gap” that can occur when growing as an artist.

If you're at this stage of your creative spiritual journey, part of the path involves acknowledging the need for further mastery.

But this stage of spiritual growth in the creative arena is very difficult, and suffering is inevitable. I try to think of it as a practice, something to meditate on daily, if not hourly, to remind myself of the reason for the creative work: to move closer to wholeness.

It’s a practice. 

Whether or not it moves others closer to wholeness depends on the strength and path of the work, and sometimes we don't have control over that. Most of the time, we don’t have control over any of it.

So, we must go back to the source, the intention of why we are creating the work in the first place.

And I must say that this is easier said than done.

That's why it's important for me to continually create from a spiritual place. Creative spirituality is a muscle that thrives when it is strengthened daily, much like a meditation practice.

It’s never easy.

But strengthening this as a daily muscle will give you a creative backbone on which to sustain yourself in hard times.