The Creative Side of Love

In art the hand can never execute anything higher than the heart can inspire. --Ralph Waldo Emerson

The dynamic intensity that we feel around love has been the source of inspiration for artists throughout the centuries and indeed the millennia. Some of the most famous early narratives were love stories from greek mythology. The Greeks went full out in expressing the dramas of love: its passions, desires and heartbreaks. In Plato's "Symposium," the author pays homage to the God of Love, Eros, by introducing the "Origin of Love" as man's ete
al search for its other half after the gods split him in half out of jealousy. This desire for oneness -- for becoming one person again -- is called love and is not satisfied just by sexual union because it is our souls -- not only our bodies -- that desire to be reunited. Could it be that every love experience is the result of that desire? Love's mystery and our inability to "figure it out" has allowed it to survive as the bearer of the biggest power on earth. Its force remains intact, indestructible and the most fertile ground for human creativity.

The highest expression of love is creativity.
--Deepak Chopra

Each work of art is the artist's passionate expression of love in its many forms and colors through his or her craft. The writer, the poet, the painter, the sculptor, the architect and the songwriter all have in common the ability to step out of their ego centers and step into the creative realm from which they fearlessly express themselves. Their artwork inspires us and elevates our spirits because it touches our inner perception and open our hearts. Works of art make us feel what the artists express, whether it's through music, painting, dancing or poetry. We imbibe the artists' emotions through our senses as they convey their feelings through their art forms.

Creativity and love are intimately connected, as we can see in stunning art compositions inspired by love. Love stimulates and enhances the flow of creativity and gave birth to the most beautiful things we can see today and the most poignant poems and books ever written.
For Julia Cameron, artist and author of "The Artist's Way," "The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity."

Anyone who has ever read the great poet and Sufi mystic Rumi has felt an immediate connection with his intense longing and burning desire for union with the beloved. Using the simplest words, Rumi's heart is afire with love and passion.

Psychologists Jens Förster, Kai Epstude and Amina Özelsel from the University of Amsterdam concluded that love literally makes us think differently. Our creative faculties are triggered, not just our analytical thinking. The opposite happens when we simply think about sex: Our analytical capacities are increased as our creativity diminishes.

Love is the seat of creativity and shares with it similar desires and qualities of expression and expansion. It has inspired some of the most famous and awe-inspiring art pieces in the world, from the architectural splendor of Emperor Shah Jahan's Taj Mahal, to the passionate sculptural embrace of Canova's "Psyche Revived By Cupid's Kiss," to Gustave Klimpt's iconic painting, "The Kiss."

Opening The Inner Door To Creativity

Let's usher loving awareness in our lives -- a perfect blend of love and consciousness in the present moment. This is the easiest and quickest way to open up to love and its creative qualities. It's a choice that each one of us can make anytime, anywhere -- regardless of how heavy our past emotional baggage is, regardless of our present circumstances and of our individual makeup.

Realizing that love is always present is the first step.The second step is to bring love into our awareness. All we have to do is put our attention on our heart. We will feel the warmth of love immediately. Welcoming loving awareness in our daily minute-to-minute unfolding is the pivotal ingredient necessary to deepen our relationship with love and to release the floodgates of our imagination. We enter into a higher vibrational frequency, which opens the portal to our own artistic and imaginative gifts.

Creativity is not the gift of a few lucky ones. We all possess this gift; some of us have it buried deeper within, that's all. Here are a few other effective ways to re-ignite our creative fires:

Open your senses by stimulating them. Surround yourself with the works of your favorite artists and let them inspire you. Visit a gallery, read poetry or attend a performance.
Let go of the belief that you are not creative. That's all it is: a belief. We are all creative beings -- so inventive in fact, that we have erected barriers between our source of creativity and our minds.
Set time aside to meditate every day. Even if you can only spend 10 minutes a day using your favorite meditation technique, let the silence speak to you and direct you inward.
Reduce the time you spend watching TV. It's amazing, the amount of useless chatter and information-overload we suffer from. We become emotionally numb and intellectually dull.
Work on letting go of the past. Many effective techniques are available to release limiting beliefs and stored emotions from past events, such as the Sedona Method and E.F.T. techniques.
Let go of being perfect. Very often we block creativity's flow because we think our ideas are not good enough.
Take the time to find new music. Turn up the volume and -- by all means -- dance, dance, dance!
Creativity is love's expression in the world, to be shared and enjoyed by all. Through the course of history, man has always felt the bursting desire to express the love felt inside. In a state of love, our senses are heightened, and so is our awareness. We simply cannot contain the creative process inwardly. It overflows like a geyser and explodes with extraordinary force and beautiful grace into a colorful firework of art.

When we are living from our hearts, we are continuously tapping into the source of imagination. From there, all our creativity channels are activated and manifest as fresh ideas, problem solving and deep understanding that we can share. Reality is more vivid, and the expression of this higher state of consciousness infuses our daily life with new color, joy and excitement. Our creative juices are now flowing unrestricted.

How do you connect to your creativity? What are your favorite artistic expressions for your love?

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