My newest book Once Upon A Place touches on the origins of creativity. Where do ideas come from? How can we be open to them? What the hell is epiphany and why is it so frustratingly fleeting?

Do We Need Creativity?

The journey of personal transformation always includes creativity and the search for enlightenment. We can’t grow if we maintain our old ways of thinking or our familiar patterns. We can’t expect things outside of us to change if we don’t change inside. Creativity is both an outlet and a way of being; it’s a refreshing new thought as well as a maddening goal.

Having dabbled in acrylic painting, without being an artist or professional, I often feel intimidated at the blank canvas in front of me. It’s an example of what I call the Void, a place (and metaphor) containing no paths and no markers and no direction. A blank canvas is the epitome of possibility. That’s what the journey is: it’s potential disguised as a challenge with options throughout that appear as obstacles. The journey is our opportunity to choose, to create, to ideate, to wonder, to try and experiment and succeed and fail.

How Imagery Helps Us Learn

We’re all on the journey though it looks different for each of us. That’s why we need imagery – the symbols of fairy tales and myths and film shift and morph for each of us, appearing as we need them to in order to establish that the character we’re watching or reading about is going through something that we can relate to, and that we are going through, as well.

Often, in stories the images are fantastical and the places look like caverns or labyrinths or mythic cauldrons. But the reality is we’re facing depression or the loss of a job or a difficult choice to make. The image makes our challenging journey understandable and, because of a familiar metaphor, our minds can process what we’re going through more easily... and we can grow and change into the version of ourselves we're meant to be.

The story also makes us aware that everyone else is going through something similar and we are not alone. What’s the point of creativity if we are alone? It can be therapeutic to pick up a paint brush but really, we want someone to look at the finished result, someday. Creativity is an act of expression and also an act of connection. We relate to each other through our creativity just as we do through the images of storycraft.

How to Open Yourself to Creativity

As I researched the book, it became clear that there are two major forces at work when it comes to personal transformation: Chaos and Void. Quite simply, these are the two head-states you will find yourself in when you’re seeking answers or feeling emotions. They are really the same thing, but they can be visualized or experienced differently.

Chaos is cluttered and wild while Void is empty and plain. But neither has a path, nor roads, nor boundaries, nor rules. Each is a place where you can get lost and feel utterly bewildered. This is where we must go to open ourselves to creativity–and to personal growth.

When we’re in a state of receiving instead of a state of controlling, we are open to creativity and learning. As they say, you can’t add more tea to a full cup. If your cup is full, what have you got to learn? How can you improve yourself? How can you experience magic and the creative impulse? You must look at your life as open to abundance rather than full and done. That’s a recipe for over. That’s a mentality that hinders epiphany and new thinking.

Consider your cup as having a tiny hole in it. Life can pour the tea in and continually refill you, adding more flavor and taste and deliciousness, while at the same time you’re letting go of old patterns and disabling thoughts. They flow right out of that little hole and your cup is constantly receiving new and better. It’s an image of tea but it really denotes sacrifice and openness to change and growth.

That, in fact, is what the World Journey is all about.

Once Upon A Place: Forests, Caverns and Other Place of Transformation in Myths, Fairy Tales and Film is available for pre-order now! Purchase from your favorite bookstores or order from Amazon, Llewellyn, Barnes and Noble, and anywhere you get your favorite books.