The Fire of Creation
In certain Gnostic texts fire is also called the great judge because it judges, so to speak, what is worthy of survival and what should be destroyed.
Without the fire of emotion no development takes place and no higher consciousness can be reached, which is why God says: ‘Because thou art lukewarm, and neither cold nor hot, I will spew thee out of my mouth’
So the fire, even if it is a destructive sort of fire — conflicts, hatred, jealousy, or any other affect — speeds up the maturing process and really is a ‘judge’ and clarifies things.
People who have fire run into trouble, but at least they try something, they fall into despair.
The more fire there is, the more there is danger of the destructive effects of emotional outbursts, of all sorts of mischief and deviltry, but at the same time this is what keeps the process going. If the fire is extinct, everything is lost.
That is why the alchemists always said one must never let one’s fire go out. The lazy worker who lets his fire go out is just lost.
Have you ever, in a state of affect, done horrible, irremediable things? Haven’t you ever written a letter that you would give anything not to have written? Or said something because of which you could bite out your tongue?
Perhaps you have done destructive things through emotion — something you cannot mend, something ruined forever, a relationship with another human being destroyed.
~ Marie-Louise von Franz
*
When I painted, I always looked for the spark that could turn into a fire. There’s nothing worse than trying to create something without any inspiration. It’s the same no matter what you’re doing, art or any other activity, you have to find the emotion in it. It has to mean something to you that goes beyond simple intellectual interest into the irrational and mysterious. You may not know why or what it’s about but you are carried along in a flow of feeling.
Toward the end of my art training my work started to become dutiful and deficient in passion because of the uncongenial methods of the system I was in. I contemplated giving it up. The passion had gone out of it. I rekindled my creative energies by changing schools and my approach to creativity. It happened quite by accident; I found myself in Florence, Italy and stumbled into exactly the kind of art instruction I needed. I still wonder whether it was purely accidental or intended by the all-wise universe.
That it was an accident seems highly unlikely to me.
But that showed me that your inner creative fires can be brought forth or snuffed out by external forces, especially in your early years when you don’t know how to sustain them on your own. Developing a reliable way to access and release that kind of energy in yourself means inspiration never becomes a problem. You know how to communicate with your most basic issues, the ones you’ll spend your life learning about.
Creativity, for some of us, starts in the body and its reactions. The sheer force of those energies is unexpected. We’re used to controllable and well tempered energies that we can direct with logic, not unruly emotions that come out of nowhere and which take over the whole process. We have to learn how to both encourage that energy and still maintain control over how the product is structured. If it’s going to speak in artistic terms it can’t just be a giant explosion.
Instinct and logic dance together in this way of creating. Sometimes instinct can carry the whole thing from start to finish, but sometimes knowledge and training are essential to the best outcome.
You will only know in the moment by listening and paying close attention to the interaction between inner and outer realities.
*
Here are three reviews of my writing:
David Price has become one of my favorite writers once I discovered his work on the Medium site a few years ago. I’m amazed at how he continually is able to spark my consciousness with thoughts, ideas and observations of our world and the range of possibilities in the human experience. The best way to sum it up might be to say that through his words and images, Mr Price has a knack for providing rich sustenance for the human soul.
*
Insightful and eloquent musings on the human condition
A regular contributor on Medium, David Price’s articles caught my attention a couple of years ago. Combined with stunning artwork — some of which is his own — and often wonderful quotes from celebrated sources, his daily submissions became a fixture with my morning coffee. He combines an almost poetic prose with razor-sharp insights into the state of humanity and the world we’ve created. Time and again I’ve been thoroughly impressed by his views of the state of things, both the good and the bad, views that will often follow me around all day. This book is a collection of a number of his articles, and I highly recommend it.
*
This book encourages in the true sense of that word as no other I have known the creative process in oneself as spiritual necessity. David Price’s writing is beautifully alive, articulate, kind. The form is prose; the feel is poetic, flowing, metaphoric. There is not a dry line in it. I heartily recommend it to anyone who longs to crack the shell around their own creativity, to become more sensitive, creative, and alive themselves.
*
Plus this comment:
There is something about your writing, an ineffable quality I can’t quite place. It’s brilliant.
— Shain Thomas
*
It is this version:
