Create!: Accessing Depth Creativity, Divine Guidance and Universal Wisdom at Will

By Joanne Lee

CREATE! is a "how to" guide for a simple 7-step process that enables you to access depth creativity, divine guidance and universal wisdom at will. This easy and enjoyable practice provides answers to life's most pressing questions. These answers arise from a potent integrated brain wave state that results when all four brain wave patterns are activated simultaneously.

CREATE! can be used to produce end products, such as books, articles, poems, songs and visual art. Writer's or artist's block becomes a thing of the past when following these simple 7 steps. CREATE! is equally valuable as a process for accessing that still small voice within - the unerring guidance that comes to and through us when we make the time and space to listen. CREATE! is an exciting app to bring to the workplace enabling individuals and teams to get out of their habitual problem solving ruts and draw from a deeper well.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Apr 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9780990363101

Book preview

Ebook Edition

Copyright 2013 Joanne Lee

CREATE! Institute Press

ISBN 978-0-9903631-0-1

Cover Design by Debi Bodett at http://www.debibodett.com/

Ebook Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author and affirming through your actions ~ abundance for all.

Table of Contents

Preface

Introduction: An Overview of CREATE!

Chapter 1: Commit - Step One

Chapter 1 Practice

Chapter 2: Remove Barriers - Step Two

Chapter 2 Practice

Chapter 3: Explore Intentions - Step Three

Chapter 3 Practice

Chapter 4: Activate Integrated Brain Waves - Step Four

Chapter 4 Practice

Chapter 5: Think Bilaterally - Step Five

Chapter 5 Practice

Chapter 6: Engage - Step Six

Chapter 6 Practice

Chapter 7: !ntegrate - Step Seven

Chapter 7 Practice

Appendix A: Barriers to Creativity

Appendix B: Intentions

Appendix C: Progressive Relaxation

Appendix D: Breathwork

Appendix E: Visualization

Appendix F: Opening Lines

Appendix G: CREATE! Writings

Appendix H: CREATE! Art

Appendix I: Connect with Me/Resources

Preface

Delving into the mysteries of consciousness and spirituality has been a life-long practice of mine. You could call me a seeker and you would be right. I admit my bookshelves are full of self-help books, many of which I have benefited from, and some that have languished on the shelf after a quick read. When I find a tool that works, I embrace it and make it my own. Such was my experience when I was introduced to a writing process that seemed fundamentally different than anything I had encountered and which eventually evolved into the CREATE! process, which you are embarking upon with this book. I embraced it and have been surprised and delighted with where it has taken me over the years.

In the early 1990’s I attended a series of informal writing workshops in a friend’s home – or yard when the weather permitted – where a small group of us would gather, write, read and discuss our writing. The woman who convened us had a very specific method that we followed when we worked together. By the time I had written my second piece I realized I had luckily stumbled onto something unusual and powerful. In the beginning I really had only the tiniest inkling of what I had tapped into. While I had written all my life, I had never identified myself as a writer. I had countless notebooks full of dreams which I began recording while in my early twenties as a result of a dream analysis class I took in college. I had given myself Ira Progoff’s At A Journal Workshop as a 30th birthday present. In my 40’s I discovered Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way and had eventually joined a group and made a practice for some years of writing morning pages. Morning Pages are Cameron’s suggested practice for starting one’s day, i.e. a stream of consciousness writing of 2 or 3 pages each morning to clear one’s head. I explored Proprioceptive Writing, a technique developed by Linda Trichter Metcalf and Tobin Simon. I had countless notebooks full of words. Yet the majority of my writing had been directed toward practical applications in the worlds of academics and business. I had never used writing for life guidance or to answer life’s persistent questions – until now.

When I was introduced to this writing method, I was working a part-time job running a women’s center for a community college. Although I felt good about the work I had done in originating the center, I was beginning to chafe at some aspects of the work. As the dissatisfaction rose, feelings of anxiety began to greet me many mornings on awakening. These feelings and frustrations began to inform my writing. As we discussed what was up for us at the beginning of each group writing session - a step in the process - I began to tap into a well of hopefulness and possibility. With my then current level of insight, I was able to read just a portion of my writing on the wall that emerged from my being out through my pen. As I go back now and re-read what I wrote, I am awestruck with its prescience. So much of what I have experienced in the ensuing decade was foretold in my writing, though in those early days I was not yet able to fully understand how to decipher the clues.

Within the first year of working with this group, I began writing a book. The content was foreign yet intriguing. Enough time would transpire between my writing of the chapters that I did not have a sense of whether the pieces hung together as a cohesive whole. As I go back and read the chapters I realize that the fictionalized and metaphorical form in which I wrote, foretold what would unfold in my personal path over the next decade with uncanny accuracy.

This early incarnation of what was to become the CREATE! process led and supported me through a major transition in my professional life with the creation of my own successful business. It served to put me solidly on my path of dharma – the Sanskrit word for right living or what for me translates as what I came here to do. My dharma nudge began with an article about business and personal coaching that I read at work at the women’s center. In my inimical style, I took the article that excited me in mysterious ways, and gave it to my partner who was casting about looking for a new career. He respectfully accepted the article, put it in a pile and promptly forgot about it. After several weeks, I asked him about it again. He politely murmured something to me and ignored the article. This cycle was repeated several times over a six-month period before the light dawned – ah, it was me who was interested in coaching! I quickly got online, did some research and discovered a wide open door leading into a very exciting new professional field. I leapt with only minimal looking. I began my studies and my business as a coach in January of 1998.

I continued to write and glean what wisdom I could from the rich and mysterious pieces that rolled off the end of my pen. Sometimes insights came from my own pieces; sometimes insights came from listening to someone else read. We would often joke, Oh, you got my intention, or Oh, you wrote my piece! Our group bonded and our lives began to change.

We continued to meet most often at the home of our original host. Our group size varied but was generally in the 4 - 6 range. Some members were consistent regulars while others dropped in when their lives allowed. New people were incorporated into the group with ease. For several years we wrote together and supported each other in creating more of what we wanted in our lives.

One member had been struggling mightily with her Ph.D., unable to complete her dissertation. With the support of this process and our group, she was able to finish it and go on to find an ideal job teaching in her field. Another member who had been single for many years used this process to write a piece every summer morning for several months with I love myself unconditionally as her grounding intention. As she worked through all the ways the intention was true and the ways it might not yet have been true, she ripened. And during that summer, she found her soul mate. As a group, we wrote about work, love, health, creativity, joy, divinity. There was no topic to big or too small for our attentions and intentions.

One day after several months of regularly writing, I found myself laid low with a migraine headache. I had been a migraineur for several decades and typically would surrender to the pain, lying in a darkened room, sleeping if possible until it passed. This time I decided to do something different – to write. Though I felt barely functional, I began. I wrote furiously for four pages, probably about an hour. When I saw what I had written I was stunned. I had written rhyming verse, which had never happened to me before. When I read what I had written, I was appalled. Family of origin issues, childhood wounds, darkness filled the page. Up until this time, all of my writing had been relatively light and positive. This was dark. This was bilious. I brought the piece to the next gathering of my group but refused to read it in front of everyone. I did allow my teacher to read it. From this disturbing piece, she helped me craft an intention to guide my next writing. The next writing pushed my healing process along. I was cleaning out the basement of my life - an area too long neglected. The muck, the mess, the dirt – oh my!

Since that first time, I still occasionally write in verse, sometimes rhyming, sometimes not. I no longer fear what comes off the end of the pen or out of my subconscious. I experienced the healing power of cleaning old wounds. I experienced the healing power of asking for what I truly wanted. I experienced the healing power of finding my voice and using it.

As my coaching business developed, I turned my writing attention to other aspects of life. Much like the dreams I had recorded on and off throughout my adult life, these CREATE! pieces provided both answers and more questions. I would take some of these questions that surfaced in my pieces, craft an intention relevant to that new inquiry and seek answers in another writing. This process would be repeated until I got clarity. Some questions seemed to lose relevance while others would surface persistently until answered. There seemed no end to the material available, the guidance to be gained, the mysteries to be explored. It was a heady – and hearty – time.

Over the next few years, our group met less and less often, until there were only three of us original students still sporadically working with the process. One member, Karen La Grave Small, who was primarily a visual artist, began to experiment with using the same process with her painting. The three of us met and combined writing with painting and collage. We even created a collaborative collage during one of our sessions. We were pushing the creative process however we could and we found its resilience exceeded our expectations. The three of us hung a show at one of our twice-yearly community ArtsWalks with painting, collage, spirit cards, and writing represented. The show was very well received.

Eventually, with life’s changes and time passing, only two of us – Linda Strever and I, both professional trainers, decided that since we so loved this work and so benefited from engaging in it, we would offer workshops in the local area. The original teacher was no longer offering workshops and eventually moved across country. We knew that teaching the

Reviews for Create!

[Dione2014 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Oh so nice meeting intellingent creative process ,and so modern to ! It's first book who I read and tell about Brain weaves linking to arts ...well I need read all soon ! Brilliant ideas in the air ! Thank you dear for share ! Success !