A Calming Gateway Your Art Practice

Welcome, before we begin, a poem -

Often I am permitted to return to a Meadow 

By Robert Duncan

“as if it were a scene made-up by the mind, 

that is not mine, but is a made place, 

that is mine, it is so near to the heart, 

an eternal pasture folded in all thought 

so that there is a hall therein 

that is a made place, created by light 

wherefrom the shadows that are forms fall. 

Wherefrom fall all architectures I am 

I say are likenesses of the First Beloved 

whose flowers are flames lit to the Lady. 

She it is Queen Under The Hill 

whose hosts are a disturbance of words within words 

that is a field folded. 

It is only a dream of the grass blowing 

east against the source of the sun 

in an hour before the sun’s going down 

whose secret we see in a children’s game 

of ring a round of roses told. 

Often I am permitted to return to a meadow 

as if it were a given property of the mind 

that certain bounds hold against chaos, 

that is a place of first permission, 

everlasting omen of what is.”

Greetings, beloved community,

Every creator needs a tidy workspace and well-honed tools; combine that with a sprinkle of practice, and voilà—"art"! But let’s not forget that a clean physical space needs a corresponding internal space that’s just as orderly. After all, you want to honor those precious ideas you coax into existence and material reality, right? This mini-workshop is dedicated to helping you create, maintain, and stock your internal workshop with the healthiest, most magnificent tools, so you can lead a more balanced life as a creator and get to creating—because, let’s face it, the world needs your brilliance!

As many of you know, I’ve been an artist my whole life and have proudly championed all who take on this sacred task—a dimension of life the world is positively craving.

If you’ve done therapy with me or just shared a chat about art, you’ll know how fiercely I defend artists and their crafts. I’m your ever-loyal supporter in your creative endeavors. Like you, I’ve learned to view the world through the quirky lens of the weird, the creative, and the abstract.

This space is your reading refuge—a cozy nook where you can find comfort in yourself, relax into your creativity, breathe deeply, and enjoy restful nights. It’s also a place to discover a supportive community, ignite inspiration, and keep your spark alive in this chaotic world, all while nurturing your sense of wonder and awe. The art life offers us glimpses and passageways to transcendence, and I hope this space becomes a sanctuary for your body, mind, and soul.

I’ve been contemplating new ways to enhance my clinical work and serve you better. I’ve distilled some topics I’ve explored elsewhere into this space, offering whatever humble support I can as a supplement to your own journey—whether in therapy, as a healer, or simply as an artist.

I’m eager to create content that stands out against the addictive bite-sized TikToks and the hyperbole of Instagram, encouraging you to slow down—because let’s be honest, creators really need to hit the pause button sometimes.

Today, we’ll dive into the concept of finding peace as an artist.

In solidarity and care,

                           g

A Peace of Art

We often think that creating art will help us find peace. We are sent messages that if you create art, it will be a salve for your worry, or assist you in finding calm. 

What if we considered a different point of view: that it is imperative to move towards peace before we attempt our art. If we are full of the feelings of warmth, stability, comfort, and abundant energy, will we not be able to explore our art more fully? Will we not have a larger sphere from which to draw? If we move towards our creativity from a place of peace, do we then have the strength to explore the vicissitudes that would elude us when we rely on the art to bring us peace?

“If you can regulate emotion and desire, you will succeed in your endeavors. If you have inner peace, you will be able to deal with the unexpected. If you are at peace with yourself, the five viscera (heart, liver, spleen, lungs and kidneys) will be healthy, your thoughts will be clear, your tendons will be strong, and your senses will be keen. When the body is strong and the spirit is clear, you will not be frustrated by obstacles. Your actions will be neither obsessive or inadequate, and you will not feel constricted in a small room or disoriented in a wide-open space.” 

Eva Wong - Being Taoist. 

One of the profound themes of Taoism is the concept of “free and easy wandering.” The mythos of Taoism is rich with images of aloof sages gazing at babbling brooks for days, old men who transform into butterflies, butchers whose knives remain sharp for decades, and rogues who respond to distress with uncontrollable laughter.

I begin this written workshop with these reflections to prompt you to ask yourself: Do you introduce complications into your artistic life?

What creative processes could be simple, free, and effortless if you allowed them to be?

Why does peace seem so elusive and fleeting?

Sometimes, finding peace requires us to release our grip and allow calm to settle in.

I often observe a fear of this process in many individuals. We think, “If I truly let go, I will lose control.” Consequently, we resist simplifying our lives, not out of a fear of peace itself, but because we lack trust in the journey that leads us there. Imagine a meadow filled with majestic oak trees, but to reach it, you must traverse a rickety, decaying bridge that sways over a deep chasm. This bridge embodies the essence of anxiety; it convinces you that if you slow down or relax, you will be attacked from behind or fall through the slats. As a result, we tighten our grip, clinging to our habits. We complicate our lives in a desperate attempt to outrun doubt, fear, and panic, and we never truly make it across that bridge to the serene meadow.

And like the philosophical rope the masquerades as a snake in low light, sometimes the bridge can actually be trustworthy. If its not trustworthy, we first have to work to make it so. If we do rebuild the bridge, a nail at a time, we will not only study its structure, know its construction, and bit by bit, begin to trust its wayfaring properties to deliver us to a state from which our nervous systems understand as safe. 

I hear all the time the warnings of “playing it safe” in the art life. Art often engages with the peripheries of life at the edges of weirdness. If an organism is unbalanced, raw, or delicate, how can we engage with these thematics in our work without focus and clarity? So I propose you work on your bridge to the calm and centered meadow within yourself, so that you can move into the wild territories that you envision creating. 

“I sleep in the clouds where the sun doesn’t reach 

beside a high cliff and mountain stream

I dream on my bed until the moon fills the window

the porridge is done when the smoke clears

a million reasons vanish without being driven off

our single perfect nature shines by itself 

as clear as a cloudless sky it never changes

the sea meanwhile is now a mulberry grove”

-Stonehouse, The Mountain Poems of Stonehouse

For most of my life, I was conditioned to spring out of bed at the crack of dawn, as if an Acme bomb had just gone off in my sheets. The mantra was clear: the virtuous are early risers, more productive, and thus, better people. This worked well enough in my teens, but by my twenties, while slogging through jobs I despised, it morphed into a cortisol-laden curse. Anxiety and depression became my unwelcome companions as I toiled long hours—because, after all, that’s what you do in your twenties: you build something. I woke up early, even on weekends, and if I had no plans, I’d conjure up tasks just to uphold this taken-for-granted virtue.

Now, don’t get me wrong—there’s nothing inherently wrong with waking up early; I still do it. However, I’ve adjusted my approach to those morning hours. As I mentioned, cortisol, the stress hormone, peaks right after waking. For far too long, I fought against that cortisol surge and the hormonal shifts that accompany the break of dawn.

When you resist these natural forces instead of harmonizing with them, you’re setting yourself up for a breakdown. I’ve experienced my fair share of these breakdowns, all because I wasn’t riding the waves of what mornings entail. Many of us fall victim to this unfortunate wager, starting our days on someone else’s terms rather than allowing mornings to be a time for introspection. Cortisol, after all, is just a signal for awareness, meant to be surfed rather than wrestled. Stonehouse’s poem speaks of a “single nature (that) shines by itself.” What conditions do you need to see if he’s onto something?

Instead of amplifying stress and tension, why not let your mornings be a little more free and easy? I’ve adopted a simple practice to experiment with this idea. Upon waking, I acknowledge the programmed jolt that greets me, recognizing how it affects my heart rate, anxiety levels, and perception of reality. Instead of succumbing to it, I allow myself to drift back into hypnopompia. For some, this is no big deal, but for me, it was a revelation; it enables me to enter the waking world with greater ease and, ideally, a sense of peace, allowing my creative spirit to flourish.

I appreciate this shift because it’s uncomplicated and probes the boundaries of my beliefs about stress and creativity over time. Remarkable transformations often stem from minor shifts in perception, which is essentially what art embodies. I adore epiphanies, but the path to them is paved with tiny, nearly imperceptible changes that accumulate through heightened awareness and curiosity about our own inner ecosystem. So, why not grant yourself an extra twenty minutes to ponder?

I pose this question to you: what do you need to cultivate calm or peace before diving into your creative endeavors? What might help you connect with a balanced yet relaxed state? And if you can initiate a shift toward tranquility, how will that influence your psyche, mood, and engagement with your creative processes?

 One Hundred Useful Dillemas, The Obliques Strategies of Brian Eno and Peter Schmidt

Oblique Strategies began as an experimental card game that encourages tangential thinking in order to rouse the intuitive spirit and support self-surprise. In the mythos, Eno and Schmidt (a painter and mentor to Eno) came up with the cards and used them for any and all artistic applications when things become stagnant. It's like moving a rock in a pond, in hopes of creating a cascading effect. 

Ever heard, ‘wherever you go, there you are’? Some mental vestiges follow us even when our intent is to be as abstract as possible… in fact, there may be a correlation to the mind rebounding towards the well-known and lazy when we venture off to the creative outer boundaries, locking us in a mental contradiction that stymies creativity. When this happens to me, I look around at my surroundings and find anything to distract, “hey, I need to vacuum” or “I really need to (fill in the blank).” The practice of releasing the mundane and creating a sacred space for creativity and nothing else is crucial. 

This resource is old hat for most trained artists, but I ain’t trained and I only discovered them in my 30s. I know many of you aren’t either, so here’s what I hope to be an inspiring way to get the creativity flowing again. But beware, Devo hated the process when they worked with Brian…

"Devo being the smartass intellectuals that we were, we thought [the cards] were pretty wanky, they were too Zen for us. We thought that precious, pseudo-mystical, elliptical stuff was too groovy. We were into brute, nasty realism and industrial-strength sounds and beats. We didn't want pretty. Brian was trying to add beauty to our music."

Try the cards here when you hit a block, and come up with some of your own. In fact, I think everyone should apply their creativity to the process, seeking out novel forms of momentum and movement when you want to work but just can’t!

Wu-Wei a very short introduction

A Zen student went to a temple and asked how long it would take him to gain enlightenment if he joined the temple.

10 years, said the Zen master. 

What if I work really hard, double my effort? 

20 years, said the Zen master.

When cool spring water meets the sweltering heat of summer, unexpected transformations occur. Just as yang requires yin to manifest the myriad wonders of life, this natural metaphor resides within you.

Among the many concepts I teach, the Taoist principle of Wu Wei stands out as foundational and profoundly useful. This idea has the power to shake up our minds and hearts when we find ourselves under duress, providing a framework to understand how we might have arrived at this point.

Wu Wei offers not only a fresh perspective but also a new set of values through which we can engage with our experiences—a more fluid and effortless way to navigate life.

Here, I aim to introduce the concept of Wu Wei, as its initial appeal often masks the depth of contemplation required to truly integrate it into one’s life.

Despite our relentless attempts to technologize our existence, we cannot escape the rhythms of nature. In fact, when we distance ourselves from these natural processes, we inadvertently create a multitude of problems. Embracing a mindset of ‘force at all costs’ only highlights our limitations, causing our threads to fray at their ends.

The American zeitgeist promotes a stark and uncompromising value system that contributes to a growing disconnection from natural processes. This worldview fosters an insatiable desire to distance ourselves from our true nature.

“When you arrive at Wu Wei, nothing is unfinished.”

Lao Tzu asserts that the world requires no intervention; it will care for itself. Wu Wei reveals a profound truth: much of life flows seamlessly when we allow it to unfold naturally. Often, when we don’t feel things happening, they are functioning as they should. We don’t notice our hair growing or our nails lengthening—if we do, something is likely amiss. The same principle applies to making art or nurturing crops; to grow seedlings, you must select viable seeds, provide the right soil and water, and then primarily, do nothing—just wait. This gentle approach exemplifies the principles of non-force, patience, and the withdrawal from frustration over the pace of growth.

Wu Wei lacks a direct translation; it’s variously described as effortless action, action without action, or doing through not doing. The absence of consensus on its meaning reflects its multifaceted nature and the ways it can enrich our lives. It encourages us to contrast Wu Wei with the effort we are conditioned to exert in our pursuit of productivity.

Action and effort are not inherently negative; however, effort, much like thought, is a valuable collaborator but a poor master. Force and will are finite resources that require regular replenishment; they cannot be drawn upon endlessly. Ask yourself: why do I feel tired all the time?

Once, I had a math teacher who advised me against studying before a test. With the air of an eccentric professor, he suggested I practice on Friday and Saturday, but on Sunday, I should take a long walk and trust that everything would come together in my mind. I followed his advice and passed the final exam. This experience encapsulates the essence of Wu Wei.

A deeper dimension of Wu Wei is the concept of “free and easy wandering.” While legacy and lineage can provide direction, focusing solely on these goals can lead us to over-determine our actions, trapping us in rigid, unyielding prisons. This future-oriented mindset can cultivate a sense of lack, convincing us that joy and fulfillment are always just out of reach.

Consequently, we instinctively gravitate toward activities devoid of direction or end, seeking balance against the relentless energy of our lives. Consider rock climbing: the point is simply to climb, with each ascent offering a unique experience. The joy lies in the process, in being present; if your mind wanders to legacy or prestige, you risk losing your grip. This principle applies equally to surfing, snowboarding, hiking, dancing, music, and art—all pursuits that celebrate their own existence. What if we extended this mindset to our entire lives?

While disconnection from natural processes can lead to aimlessness, being guided by nature and our authentic observations allows us to align with the Tao, fostering a spontaneous and present way of being. This approach grants us access to authenticity, humor, and relaxation, enabling us to care for ourselves and our communities while still achieving our goals.

It’s important to acknowledge that ideology, cultural context, community knowledge, and our environment are challenging to escape. To some extent, attempting to do so, especially in urban settings, is impractical. The ego certainly plays a role in our survival, but merely performing the role of the ego does not preclude us from exploring alternative ways of being or cultivating Wu Wei in our lives. The key is recognizing that the ego is a performance, not the entirety of our existence. While a complete whole may be elusive, we can choose which currents to follow, seeking greater ease, simplicity, and calm. Trust that the Tao will guide us, offering wisdom and gifts along the way.