Living from the Source

The Source of creativity in our lives is like a river that must run clean, clear, and full of light in order to keep us in continuous regeneration. The Source is ever pristine, waiting for us to find it within ourselves. How do we discover the Source? By living our lives wholeheartedly regardless of anyone’s opinion, yet sensitive to who and what is around us. When we live from the Source we feel joy and a sense of outrageous gratitude.

Whenever we struggle for existence rather live from a love of life, we let schedules, job pressures, fear of loss rule our lives. When we live wholeheartedly, the Source founts forth within our hearts and minds, and we create our lives anew in unexpected ways. We don’t allow poisonous thoughts to harm us. We get in touch with our instinctual nature, our body, and sensitively reawaken our intuition. To get in touch with Source we need to go to our own depths and clear the dead thoughts and habits we unconsciously took in from parents and society.

We ask ourselves: "How can I live more and more from the Source?" We need to ask simple, relevant questions regarding an issue or "problem." We need to go to our core and depths and emerge with an awareness we never had before. We need to overcome fear, to become bigger than any negative emotion. We allow vital force to flow through our bodies, deep feeling to flow through our souls, and insights to come to mind. All this helps our health. One definition of health is for vital force to flow through all systems of the body, and creativity does this. We need to have the courage to see and say what no longer works, and to replace it with a creative alternative that is for the benefit of ourselves and the whole of life.

I have experienced that creativity has five phases: receptivity, imagination, action, evaluation and release. To receive is to be open to inspiration, new awareness and ideas. To imagine is to work on those ideas and inspirations by imagining many viewpoints and possibilities of how to manifest. To take action is to have the courage to actually do what we are inspired by. To evaluate is to see what works and what doesn’t in a given situation, to detach enough from what we have done, to change it if need be. To release is to detach completely and pass on what we created, no longer attaching to having done anything at all. This may be passing it on to someone else, selling it, giving it away, or burning it.

As I see it, these stages of creativity—working from the Source—are essential if a New Earth is to emerge. A consumer society aims at results, products, grasping for the money to buy more and better products or be more esteemed by others. But in the view I’m proposing, no longer are results the criterion for success. Grasping for results often leads to addiction, short-circuiting the process. I find that when I live from Source, products and esteem happen as a result of receptive opening—"sourcing"—which resonates to Life. When I am filled with joy my deep self knows what I need to do. If I have the courage to take action, the process brings about results that are unstoppable, because my actions come from the Cosmic River of the Source that cannot be dammed or dried up. By this wholehearted way, I have transformed a ruin into a temple, with almost no money. I have overcome emotional wounds, and I joyously lived in a tipi through the winter in Mt. Shasta. I have created thousands of works of art and created five animated films. I facilitate ten-day intensives by "sourcing."

Once I’m inspired, I use a natural language of color, sound, movement and form that the elements and nature express. I know this language. It is the language of spirit, art and science alike. It is universal and innate. The child within me knows it: Yellow is joyous; red is intensely passionate; blue is serene. Branches are for distributing, radial for broadcasting; spirals for generating and unfolding, circles for protection and storage. This isn’t just an artsy language. It applies to business and computers as well as flowers and stars.

This universal language is a natural vibrational medicine. I find that it only works when I live from Source. The innate knowing of how to use color, sound, movement and form comes alive when I follow my joy rather than what before I was habituated to doing. No longer do I live from what I "should" do.

The masculine and feminine balance is another aspect that I have found needs attention. I have both tendencies within me, though I was born female. In Taoist Yoga there is a reversal of the qualities of the subtle current up the back and down the front for men and women. The qualities are the same, but they are polarized in a complementary way. The qualities are defined as specific hexagrams in the ancient Chinese book, the I Ching. This book is an oracle, and true oracles are comprehensive world views that have access to Source. Oracles are a way of "sourcing"—of finding the fountain of Truth, Love and Beauty within. When I become a clear vessel of the Source I become my own oracle.

We live in a time of extreme transition—inwardly and outwardly. The extreme polarization of our times—anomalous earth and weather conditions, political extremism, social violence—is a result of unbalanced tensions between yin and yang energies. It is now a time of healing and rebalancing. The poisons are coming out because the Source is coming in.

Another way of exploring Source is to examine creation myths and cosmologies. These are not things only anthropologists and physicists do. We all have world views, and these world views are largely cultural heritages. I have examined creation myths from many different cultural perspectives, as well as those of modern cosmologies.

What is the nature of your world view? How do you view "polarity," for example? Is it from a place of opposition or complementaries? War or peace depends on your answer. Do you believe life has a terminal end, is a cycle, or is regenerative into something new? How you answer qualifies the Source as it comes through you.

The vicissitudes of my life are washed away when we live from Source. Facing and compassionately embracing our emotional reactivity allows our pain to transform and transmute. We can then clear our conscience and steer our lives according to our essence. This is Source within. To summarize, getting in touch with Source can be fulfilled by the following seven steps:

1) stripping myself of redundant "padding" or protection

2) identifying and clearing away outworn beliefs, "shoulds," social conditioning

3) affirming that I am an indestructible vessel of creation

4) believing in essential self amidst trials of doubt, confusion or anger etc.

5) taking wholehearted action on my innate calling

6) using simple, universal language of color, sound, movement and form to express what we really know deep in our spiritual hearts

7) giving to the regeneration of myself, others and the earth unconditionally.

Once we know who we are and what our soul purpose is, we find that we are unstoppable if we apply devotion and work to it. The rewards are intrinsic. No fooling. Live from Source!

Rowena Pattee Kryder, M.F.A., Ph.D., is author of Tiger and Dragon I Ching, Vibrational Medicine Cards, Moon Mother Tarot and Gaia Matrix Oracle. She taught I Ching, Sacred Art. World Myths and Symbols and Shamanic Art and Ritual Healing at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco where she was Chair of Art and Creatvity. currently she resides and teaches in Crestone, Colorado.