“… Not knowing – the answer, the goal, or even the next step – is generally associated with deficit or failure in our culture. How then, do artists, writers, and other creative people cope with such indeterminacy, learning to live with the anxiety it produces and even coming to understand it as part of the creative process? …”
These were the opening words I shared at the Thriving Beyond Cancer: Thriving in Uncertainty workshop I facilitated last year at Harmony Hill Retreat Center. The insightful author of those words was the UCLA Fowler Museum staff from long-ago exhibit materials.
How relevant to the artist, this idea of not-knowing. How relevent to us all, as we create our lives one day at a time. One moment at a time. The perpetual blank page. The on-going creative process.
Have you ever noticed the tendency to avoid "not knowing" by placing something ontop, as a way to try and make not-knowing into the known? How does that work for you? I welcome your thoughts.
I will be offering this program again soon ... Monday, April 28. You are welcomed to attend this program at no-cost if you are a cancer survivor or a cancer caregiver; and you are physically able to move between buildings and short distances. For more information or to register, click here. Hope to see you there.
This is such a good topic, Karen.
Can we just suspend judgment to embrace 'not knowing'; can I be willing to give up attachment to mental processing, having to figure it out, to get to what I think is a higher, more complete form of acceptance of the all of me, and the all of the All! That is a trip, isn't it?
I think it may be the start of the spiritual journey.
Posted by: andrew delany | Friday, May 09, 2008 at 08:36 AM