Last month I spent a whole day out in the Slocan Valley, sitting and writing with a group of women. We sat on a porch, looking over a pool, fields full of trees and flowers, and the green mountains across the valley. The silence got deeper and deeper. We sat, we wrote, we read out loud, and worked with each other. We walked, stretched, and wrote some more. The whole day passed like this, and it was good. All my life I’ve noticed this—that when we allow ourselves to be creative, a deep contentment fills our being.

The first thing I want to say about creativity is that is belongs to all of us. We are deeply embedded in a relentlessly creative universe. The most natural way we can be is intensely creative. That’s our authentic nature. But we started to believe something else: creativity is for the gifted, for the special, for the other person, not for me.

Have you ever had thoughts like this? Have you turned away from the creative side of yourself? From the openness inside you that just wants to flow, to express itself fully. I’ve heard so many people speak to me about this longing they have carried, for so long, to somehow open to this field of creative energy they sense inside themselves, and let it flow. They speak to me, and I listen, not as someone separate, not as an expert. I listen from the place that sees how easy it is to fall back, again and again into what is comfortable, known and secure.

In order to follow another part of myself, I have to learn to value that part, listen to it, learn about it, follow where it is calling me.

My conditioned mind knows so many things. It has a vast supply of information about almost every area of my life. But in this area, my mind cannot really help me. It doesn’t know anything about the nature of this creativity. It is wild; it is free; it is profoundly authentic. Creativity cannot be domesticated. If I connect with this force of creativity, I do not know what is going to happen in my life. I can no longer cling to the illusion that I am in control of my life, that things happen according to my plan.

If I am willing to let go of my own agenda, creativity begins to bubble up, like those bright flowers that push right up through the rock. Did that ever happen to you—that you finally gave up trying and something emerged, all by itself? Have you noticed how rarely that happens through will and struggle? How it’s not really about techniques either? For me, it’s about a deep willingness to turn toward that which is mysterious, unknown, and alive within me, right now.