Creativity Central
❊
The Starting Point
To start with, you have to open a door to your un-derstanding of life. It’s not enough, to repeat it, that you read this book. It is not enough that you know ex-actly what has been written. What is important is what is going to happen on your feeling level, and regard-ing your set opinions.
As long as those set opinions are alien to the idea that there are multiple universes and layers of con-sciousness, you’ll have a hard time to get to grips with the idea of the subtle realm of energy I am talking about here.
In other words, sitting in a coffee shop and listen-ing to rock music, you may get to understand even a complex programming language or master your latest
computer application, but you won’t connect to your inner child. For this to happen, you have to move onto another plane. Yes, it’s as esoteric as it sounds and I do not make a fuss about it. If you believe you can do this in a linear way, the way you learn math or job knowledge, you are off-track and I cannot help you. Life is not linear and dealing with your inner child is dealing directly with life. Dealing with your inner child, you have to prepare for the unknown to occur, and you should rather implement the following:
—Accept the irrational in you and others;
—Accept the idea that culture should foster nei-ther rational thinking, nor irrational thinking—but both;
—Accept the fact that male and female are rela-tive expressions pointing to an energetic interplay of yin and yang;
—Forget all what you learnt in school and unlearn it as fast as possible so as to again become truly natu-ral and integnatu-ral;
—Forget all moralistic concepts and black-and-white theories.
WALTER’S INNER CHILD COACHING
72
If you agree to approach these ideas and to inte-grate them in your existing worldview you have a good chance to succeed with enhancing your creativ-ity level. But an action must follow, too. It’s not
enough to do this in theory but to remain passive in practice. A fine practice that could accompany those mental or emotional processes is the following:
—Prepare some paper and color crayons. Take one crayon or several at a time and, after breathing deeply three times, just express the first emotion that moves through your heart. Try to jot down this energy, as you feel it, onto that paper. You can accomplish this through the strength and spontaneity of the movement or through the colors or through both.
—Do more and more spontaneous activities every day.
—Make a little list where you drop ideas what in your life could be done in a more spontaneous, intui-tive, more joyful and less brain-draining way. This will activate your inner child and invite this energy to par-ticipate in your daily activities.
CREATIVITY CENTRAL
73
Write About What You Like Write about what you like, not what you dislike.
Once in a while, when you have a minute, sit down, take your laptop or a notepad and write a few sen-tences like:
—Since I was a child I liked to be around paint-ings. And there was aunty Ida who had these wonder-ful flower paintings in her house, and every time I was there, I loved to be around her cats and the oil color when she was painting. I liked that smell of the paint.
It was like the anticipation of something joyful to hap-pen. Since then I love paintings. So often I had that idea to open a café-gallery, a place where people en-joy art while they sip a cup of coffee or a glass of wine . . .
—I once had the opportunity to drive a Rolls Royce. It was a unique experience. I felt like the world had changed, like I was seeing things from another perspective that day. All was magic, not real, not down-to-earth, but somehow transformed. I thought there are things in life that are not commonplace, but result from a challenge, the challenge to be daring and bold. This car was that, I thought— daring and
WALTER’S INNER CHILD COACHING
74
bold. And beautiful. And in that moment I saw why I always wanted to have that car and yet condemned the very wish a moment later!
I just gave you two little ideas from my own life, but you will of course jot down your own! Doing this once in a while, without a feeling of obligation, helps to give your inner child a signal to be loved and ac-cepted, and that shall be an uplifting experience for you.
You can’t recover an inner child that is not collabo-rating, that prefers to remain the rebel because that child was always betrayed, hurt and neglected, be-cause it lost trust in adults.
Don’t misunderstand me. It’s not that you have to do this or that. No. Just when you feel like, when you anyway daydream and indulge in those wonderful thoughts, take a further step and write those thoughts down. That little step makes a huge difference! You will see for yourself.
Express Your Feelings
Once in a while, follow your intuition to express your feelings toward another person in a way that is
CREATIVITY CENTRAL
75
not calculated, but spontaneous and with the im-pending risk that you may be rejected or regarded as being off-track, such as—
—telling a woman or a man in the bus or train that she or he has a nice haircut or a pretty face or very beautiful hands; and see what happens;
—telling your employer or your employee that you really like him or her as a person, not just as a supe-rior;
—telling your child that she or he is a unique per-son and that you had never thought you’d get such a gift from heaven when you once wished to have that child;
—telling your parent that despite of all the prob-lems you had with her or him, you value the excep-tional bond between the two of you and the signifi-cance that this relationship has for all of you in the family.
Jot Down Creative Ideas
Jot down your little creative thoughts, those that come to you in moments you are not prepared to
re-WALTER’S INNER CHILD COACHING
76
ceive them. It is often while you are in the restroom, under the shower, or doing household tasks. These ideas are often as smart as they are soft-voiced; they do not come up boldly, being more like inner whis-pers. And they are easily forgotten if you are not at-tentive enough, and this so much the more as they appear in moments when you are not prepared to re-ceive them. Often you don’t even have stationary with you and thus must become creative in marking your thoughts for later recovery. The best technique for this is to summarize a thought or idea with a keyword or a symbol.
For example if you get a new idea about how to market the soap you are selling and it has to do with the Internet, key it something like ‘soap online’ or
‘soap opera online.’ It should be catchy or funny. Your inner child likes a funny and unusual markup of things and ideas, and will help you developing your creative intuition further.
Just rely on the wisdom that inspired you in the first place! Rely on this superior intelligence, that sub-tle guidance. This force is connected with all of our inner entities, but primarily with your inner child,
be-CREATIVITY CENTRAL
77
cause it’s primarily innocence that creates the open-ness needed to receive: a beginner’s mind, as it is called in Zen.
By contrast, what most effectively blocks off this superior guidance is pride, arrogance and the feeling that one possesses special professional knowledge that one regards as the ultimate truth.
WALTER’S INNER CHILD COACHING
78