Do you find yourself waiting?
Waiting to act, waiting for the right time, waiting for the perfect conditions, waiting for a reason, waiting for more money, waiting for someone else to finish, before you begin?
The difference between creativity and productivity is the energy behind our actions. Our society has conditioned us to be driven by measures of productivity. This means we have been conditioned to run our lives based on what to do next. We wrack our brains making "to do" lists, we pack our schedules full of "things to do", we commute, we rush, we move constantly in our effort to achieve more productivity.
What we have not been taught - and what is not valued as publicly - is how to act from the energy of creativity. I have learned from my own deep practice that the energy of creativity is openness, space, and peace. The act of creativity is allowing.
All of that may sound way too passive to you, if you, like me, are a product of this culture we live in.
But if you are willing to explore your true nature, the source of the energy behind your actions, and to take the time to become familiar with peace, with openness, with space, then you are going to come face to face with your own creativity. And it might feel foreign to you. (Meaning, easy!) It might feel impossibly difficult to allow yourself to calm down, slow down, and even stop doing some of the things that have become so familiar to you.
It requires a certain trust in order to allow.
So many of us have been systematically reminded not to trust our core of peace, but to look outwards for evidence - a "reason" to trust. We want to know what it is that we need to do in order to be able to trust. The reality is that we must first trust in our completeness as we are, and learn to rest in that emptiness - that feeling of space and freedom that we may have been taught to fear, and to try to fill up immediately. We must practice the trust of watching the emptiness, and feeling the spontaneous positive qualities of joy, peace, enthusiasm, love, and compassion arise within us. From that energy of spontaneous positive feelings come our greatest acts of creativity.
So yes, creativity involves actions. However, the energy behind these actions is the focus of the effort and attention. We dedicate ourselves to a practice of cultivating peace, openness, space, and allowing. We don't think first, "What should I do?" We simply learn to recognize and rest in an energy of completeness, as we are, in this moment. And the actions of creativity spontaneously arise, without the kind of effort and struggle that we had been taught to believe was necessary.
This kind of learning cannot be given to a person. It has to be practiced. It has to be experienced and explored in one's own life.
And it is what each of us already has the ability to do, if we are willing to trust.