The Experiment
The 10 Territories of The Experiment 🌿
Over the next 10 weeks we will move through 10 areas of life - one at a time, with full attention and intention.
Think of each as a territory we enter together. We are here to explore, to see it clearly, feel it fully, and experiment with what shifts when we bring conscious awareness to it.
Week 1 — Body
Week 2 — Mind
Week 3 — Spirit
Week 4 — Time
Week 5 — Stillness
Week 6 — Creativity
Week 7 — Relationship
Week 8 — Nature
Week 9 — Vision
Week 10 — Integration
Each week builds on the last. By week 10 you will have touched every layer of your life - intentionally, experimentally, with awareness you didn't have before.
Week 6 Menu - Creativity 🎨
Welcome to your sixth open buffet.
This week our territory is Creativity. And I want to begin by dismantling the lie most of us were told about it.
Creativity is not a talent. It is not something you either have or don't have. It is not reserved for artists, musicians, or people who are "good at" making things. Creativity is a fundamental human capacity - the ability to bring something from the inner world into the outer world. Every human being who has ever cooked a meal with what was left in the refrigerator, solved a problem in an unexpected way, or found exactly the right words to comfort someone they love - has been creative. You have been creative your whole life. The question is not whether you are creative. The question is whether you are giving that creativity a conscious place to live.
What blocks creativity is rarely lack of talent. It is almost always fear - of being judged, of not being good enough, of making something that doesn't match the image in your head, of wasting time on something that doesn't produce a result. This week we bring awareness to that fear and experiment with creating anyway. We don’t have a task to produce a masterpiece which will be sitting next to Mona Lisa in Louvre. We just want to stay in contact with the part of you that knows how to make something out of nothing.
That part of you is not separate from your spiritual life. In almost every tradition, creativity is understood as participation in divine act. When you make something, you are doing what the universe does.
Below is your menu. Choose one from each category, something that genuinely calls to you, let your instinct lead.
Trust your first instinct.
➕ ADD: choose one creativity practice to bring in this week
Morning pages or a daily uncensored writing practice - three pages of longhand writing first thing in the morning, before the inner critic is fully awake. No topic, no structure, no rereading. Just the hand moving across the page, emptying whatever is there. This practice, taught by Julia Cameron and drawn from much older traditions, has unlocked more creative lives than perhaps any other single practice. Give it seven days. I have done this during the first two years of my spiritual awakening, daily. I have benefitted it from it so much!
A daily creative act of five minutes or less - not a project, not a commitment, just one small act of making each day. A doodle in the margin of your notebook. A single photograph taken with real attention. A line of poetry you don't show anyone. A dish made differently than usual. It is not about the size or scale of the project but the act of making itself.
An artist date with yourself - one solo excursion this week, alone, for the sole purpose of feeding your creative self. A market, a gallery, a botanical garden, a neighborhood you don't know. No companion, no agenda. Julia Cameron called this filling the well. You cannot pour from what hasn't been filled.
A creativity altar or dedicated creative space - choose one corner, one shelf, one surface in your physical environment and dedicate it to making. Put things there that inspire you. Give creativity a physical address in your home. Nourish the space with your attention and playfulness.
Learn one small creative skill you have always been curious about - a single origami fold, one basic chord on a guitar, a watercolor technique, a style of braiding, a bread you have never made. To feel what it is like to be a beginner at something beautiful.
Your own choice - any practice that puts you in the act of making rather than only consuming.
➖ REMOVE: choose one thing to release this week
The comparison as the internal voice that measures your creative expression against someone else's mastery and finds it lacking before a single thing has been made. This week, every time that voice appears, notice it, name it, and make the thing anyway. The comparison is a liar. It is comparing your beginning to someone else's ten thousand hours.
Consuming creativity instead of making it - the passive relationship with creative work, watching, scrolling, admiring, collecting - without ever crossing into making yourself. This week, for every hour spent consuming someone else's creative output, give yourself at least ten minutes of making your own. Reverse the ratio even slightly.
Waiting for inspiration before beginning - the belief that creativity arrives first as feeling and then becomes action, when in almost every creative tradition the opposite is true. Action creates the conditions for inspiration, not the other way around. This week, begin before you feel ready. Begin especially when you don't feel ready.
The inner critic's first word - that immediate judgment on what you have just made, written, drawn, or said: "that's not good enough," "that's embarrassing," "that's too simple." This week, establish a rule for yourself: no evaluation of anything you make for at least 24 hours. Create it and leave it alone. Come back tomorrow with different eyes.
Perfectionism as a creative strategy - the habit of not finishing, not sharing, not beginning, or endlessly revising because the thing in front of you doesn't match the ideal in your head. This week, finish one imperfect thing. Ship it, share it, or simply close it. Done is its own kind of beauty.
Your own choice - any belief or habit that stands between you and the act of making.
🌀 DEEPEN: choose one to commit to for the full week
Read or work through a chapter of The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron - specifically the chapter on recovering your sense of identity or recovering your sense of possibility, depending on where you feel most blocked. This is not a self-help book. It is a serious, spiritually grounded excavation of creative blocks and what lies underneath them. It has been changing creative lives for thirty years.
A seven-day creative practice log - each evening, write one sentence about something you made, noticed, or imagined that day. In the end of the week read the notes and observe your own creativity reflected back at you in a way that abstract thinking about it cannot produce.
Make one thing this week with your hands that has no screen involved - cook, sew, draw, carve, plant, build, arrange, sculpt. Whatever calls you. Let your hands be the instrument and let the making be slow enough to feel. We are animals who make things with our bodies. Few years ago I made a reel with this wisdom I resonate deeply
Explore the relationship between creativity and your spiritual practice - how does devotion create? How does your sadhana feed your capacity to make? How does creativity become prayer? Spend 30 minutes this week reading or sitting with this question from any tradition that speaks to you. When in seminary, every month we used to receive a list of names to choose from one person to study. I’m giving you a short version of it; Mirabai, Rumi, William Blake, Hildegard of Bingen - all understood creativity as inseparable from the sacred.
Share something you have made this week in the group as an act of witness. Choose something you made this week, something small, a photo, a written sentence, a voice note of you singing, a drawing - and offer it to the group.
Your own choice. Explore your relationship to creativity, what nourishes it and what obstructs it.
A few notes before you choose 🌿
Read the menu, read the moon cycle guide and listen to yourself. There is no right answer and no comparison. What one person removes another may need to add.
Once you have chosen please write your three choices in your notebook with today's date. If you can, make it your phone screen saver (using Canva if you fancy fancy :) or by just typing it in notes and adding to the screen saver) so you have a constant reminder. Then share them here in the group so we can hold each other's intentions.
I will share individual guidance from your natal after you place your menu. General recommendations aligned with the lunar cycle are on the separate page.