WHOLE-CREATIVITY
What if you can't not be creative?
We tend to think of creativity as something we do — a painting, a project, a piece of writing. Something that begins with an idea and ends with a result. And sometimes it is that.
But whole-creativity starts with a different recognition: creativity is what you are. Essence is creativity expressing. The whole moment — this one, right now — is a constantly changing artwork, and you are both the witness and the expression. The expression explodes with colour, sounds, tastes, aromas, sensations and the witness - the field of attention expresses with qualities too. In our Wholeness we are constantly creating, constantly outpouring and receiving.
When this lands, something relaxes. You stop trying to "be creative" and start recognising that you already are — that you can't not be. Your whole experience is a living artwork. The question shifts from how do I create? to what is already being created through me — and what do I want to create more of? And the answer, almost always, is more essence — which brings about new forms.
Life as art
There came a point in my own journey where I had no interest in creating art in the conventional sense. I was finding myself content with appreciating life as the artwork — with all its diversity and expression. The awe of a morning sky was enough. The way light moved through the valley was enough. Life itself was the creation, and I was in it, and it was in me.
And yet — I also knew I could create in a not-forgotten state. Where the act of creating as wholeness and holiness was itself the artwork. Where making something with my hands — a meal, a garden, a room, a drawing — was not separate from the living artwork but another expression of it. Creativity creating through me.
Ultimately, creativity is a state of being. We in essence are creativity. And the invitation is to see and allow that dance.
"I think that creating art is beautiful but I actually think that some of the most beautiful moments I have ever lived are the moments where I am inspired to create no art because I am actually living it. Where there is nothing that I can put on paper that is better than what's in front of me. And I think that the only reason I create art is to remind myself in the moments I forget, and that maybe it could remind someone else too, you know? That there are beautiful moments out there and I know that because I have lived them."
— Sarah Snow
Creativity creates us
There is another dimension to creativity that took me by surprise on my journey.
Well before I knew my wholeness during a time of real angst — not knowing what I was doing with my life, wanting to be somewhere else entirely — I had a vision of a calm landscape far away. I got out my paints and my hands just knew what to do. What emerged was a little painting that was like a window to another place: warm, open, spacious, still.
That painting sat in my house for six months. Over that time, through slowing down and walking in nature, I began to discover my own essential nature. And I started to recognise that the little painting also radiated these same essence qualities — spaciousness, warmth, stillness, openness.
When the painting eventually made its way to a gallery, visitors overwhelmingly voted it the people's choice — saying the works emanated a sense of spaciousness, warmth, and tranquility. These essence qualities had flowed through me and expressed through paint — not just for me, but for others too.
And then something else dawned on me. The little painting had been creating me as much as I had created it. The qualities it carried had been quietly working on me — shaping the conditions for my own recognition. Several months later I would realise I had painted the landscape I was actually standing in. It had been a way essence brought me back home both physically and essentially.
Our creativity is not just an expression of who we are. It further creates us. It is prophetic, intelligent, and alive with a knowing that goes beyond what we consciously intend. Just as Sarah snow said, I can appreciate how the art or circumstances that I previously created were drawing me (and others) home to wholeness, and still can when I forget or am being invited deeper.
At the beginning of each year a word for the year comes to me which proceeds to be the undercurrent for what is further shaping me. This year the words “clear expression” came to me and I accepted. I get to hold onto my seat as life responds in ways that bring more clarity to my expression, whether it is being more clear through words, actions, and even my voice as I am being invited to sing - something I have previously avoided! This is how whole-creativity works … It is creating with mind, body and spirit.
Where flow begins
Whole-creativity is where flow begins — though not quite the flow state that creative people often speak of. This is something deeper. A flow that comes from a state of awareness that can recognise and meet the opposing forces that arise in life — the longing and the resistance, the vision and the fear, the felt movement forward and the felt contraction.
This, in the Gurdjieffian tradition, is known as the law of three: that genuine creation — something truly new — requires a third force. Without it, the existing pattern simply loops back on itself. Just as Einstein said “you can’t solve a problem with the same level of consciousness that created it.”
Whole-creativity is what happens when that third force — essence, consciousness, presence — enters the creative process. The opposing forces don't disappear. But instead of resorting to our normal ways of resolving tension and compensating, we meet them with spaciousness and aliveness. We sit in the tension with equanimity. And in these conditions, something can metabolise. Something can flow. Something that couldn't have been manufactured is born — not from strategy, not from force, but from the meeting of what is present with what wants to emerge. As we stabilise in our essence, this flow of life becomes more consistent. The velcro doesn't have anything to stick to anymore. Within this above mentioned flow state and the not-so-flow states can be held in a vaster Flow.
Explore this essence way of creating more — how this unfolds in practice:
Beauty as creative intelligence
One of the most powerful expressions of whole-creativity is the reclaiming of your aesthetic loves — the particular textures, colours, spaces, forms, and qualities of beauty that make you feel more present, more alive, more here.
These are not random preferences. They are essence's own signature, expressing itself through the way only you can see, shape, and tend. When you take your aesthetic loves seriously — without apology, without watering them down — something begins to create through you with a quality that is unmistakably yours.
This is essence aesthetic — both the recognition of beauty and the beauty that wants to be born through you, and it is powerful.
This may particularly resonate if you work with beauty already — as an artist, designer, architect, or maker — and sense there's a deeper dimension to what you do.
Explore Essential Beauty — beauty as perception and practice:
The invitation
If this speaks to something you've been sensing — a readiness to create from a deeper place, to recognise the living artwork that your life already is, to let essence lead the creative process — I'd love to explore what might serve.
