Channeling - How to Live a More Creative Life
There are so many misconceptions about what it means to be creative. I personally always denied that I was a “creative person” because I wasn’t very good at coming up with novel concepts for art or pushing boundaries (the avant garde movement was what I considered the epitome of creativity). I felt like I was a very in-the-box kind of artist, and that’s why I stuck mostly to crafting techniques (working with clay, wood, metal, etc.) instead of visual art. I felt more comfortable creating utilitarian objects instead of conceptual art because I felt like I had nothing outlandish or extreme to say through my art.
So before we get started, I want you to ask yourself and reflect on what your concept of creativity is. Maybe you share in the narrow perspective I used to have, or maybe you limit creativity to the genre of art in general. No matter what your concept of creativity is, I want you to forget about it. By the end of this post I hope you walk away feeling like a bad-ass Creator and learn how to own your unique creative expression.
Okay. Now that you’ve cleaned your slate of what you thought creativity is, let’s redefine it.
What is Creativity?
Creativity is Channeling
From now on we are going to view creativity as a form of channeling.
What is Channeling?
In the spiritual/metaphysical community channeling is often seen/defined as allowing another entity or spirit to speak through someone’s physical body/voice. However, even though that might be out of some of your comfort zones, the word ‘channel’ has more common meanings. For example, you can think about channels on a radio or tv being a specific frequency, and when you tune into that frequency you are able to receive what’s being transmitted through it. You can also consider a channel to be a tube, waterway, or other structure that essentially guides or funnels things from one place to another.
No matter what definition you resonate the most with, it’s actually all the same. Channeling is a way of transmitting/transporting something from one place to another.
In the case of creativity, we are channeling an idea, energy, or emotion into physical existence through our bodies. So anything that goes from an internal state to an external state has been channeled and I would call creative. By that definition, being creative really means any form of self-expression.
To take it a little deeper I would like to propose that although a lot of our choices in expression are conscious and deliberate, “real” channeling (or the kind of channeling I am referring to) happens when we also allow parts of our subconscious mind to make its way through our bodies. For example, I might use my conscious brain/prefrontal cortex to make a decision to sit down to make a piece of art and prepare my materials, but then I will actually allow my conscious/logical brain to take a back seat and let my subconscious brain come online to manipulate the materials via my body.
If this is a little tricky to understand, what I am referring to is similar to what has also been called the ‘flow’ state (coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). It is essentially a state of being where you are so focused on something (executing some kind of goal), that you actually start to tune out all internal and external stimuli (like outside noise or internal thoughts). I’m not going to go into detail about how Csikszentmihalyi defines the sate of ‘flow’ or the criteria for getting into it (because you can easily go read his book or research it yourself…he has a formula for it), but I thought I would bring it up in case it provides a perspective that is more easily digestible for some of you.
But yea, instead of regurgitating the theory of ‘flow’ I thought I would describe creativity through the lens of channeling.
Living Creatively through Channeling
Before I get to the “how-to” portion of this post, let’s talk about what channeling feels like and how you can use it to live more creatively.
Like I mentioned earlier, when you are channeling it is like you are letting your conscious/logical brain take a back seat. That means that you are no longer making decisions with your “mind” and you start tapping into other parts of yourself. Without getting into the nitty gritty of these other aspects of yourself and where these terms come from/how they’re defined, I am just going to call them your subconscious, your intuition, your Heart, and your body. These are all other parts of you that have their own kind of intelligence/messages for you.
Our conscious brain is really such a small portion of who we are and it has a very limited capacity. The other parts of your Self are what provide you with feelings/sensations, emotions, abstract thought, muscle memory, and other things that you can’t quite define/describe. For example, although dreams can be described through visuals, think of how much of your dreams are indescribable because they evoke emotions and ideas that don’t really fit into a box that can be experienced in physical reality. Other sensations that fall into this category are the experience/perception of sound, color, smell, or taste. Think about how hard it is to describe any of these things “logically” without using analogies or comparing the experience to something else that provokes a similar sensation or emotion.
If you are starting to understand what I am referring to, and can recall your own experiences that fall into these categories, then you are starting to grasp what channeling (or being creative) feels like and how it differs from using your analytical brain.
Examples of Channeling
I think the easiest and widely-experienced form of channeling that most of you can probably relate to is when you “go off on a tangent” or “rant” about something. When you do this it’s like the words just start pouring out of you and before you know it you’ve been talking for way too long and you can’t even recall most of what you said. You know what general idea you were trying to get across, but you were so emotionally charged about the topic that you didn’t have to take the time out to choose your words or how you wanted to come across (with your mannerisms, inflections, volume, cadence, etc.). You just “let it out”.
Similarly, if you have done this while writing/journaling, the sensation of channeling is even more apparent because writing takes much longer and involves more deliberate choices than talking does. Therefore the difference between writing a sentence consciously versus channeling a written sentence is very obvious. If you have experienced what it’s like to write without stopping to filter, evaluate, re-read, or choose your words, then you have actually performed what is called ‘automatic writing’ - a very popular form of channeling.
But besides the more obvious forms of channeling like automatic writing, dancing, “jamming” as a musician, or doodling/playing with art materials, I want you all to understand that channeling and being creative is not limited to the “arts”. Like I mentioned before, speaking is a very common form of channeling that people might not consider as being creative. But think about how much creativity and improvisation you need when you’re teaching, speaking publicly, acting/performing, having a conversation, or telling a joke. You are constantly and instantaneously adjusting your delivery based on feelings and emotions that you perceive within yourself or are observing in the people you’re addressing, yet you aren’t using logic to make those adjustments.
Okay. I’m assuming you get the idea now. Creativity just means you don’t limit your decision-making or processes to your logical brain and you allow other parts of yourself to inform how you put together and express what’s inside of you. Therefore, in order to live a creative life, you just need to allow yourself to tap into those other parts of you more often. Instead of thinking through what would make the most sense for you to do (with your day, with art materials, with any form of expression), tap into what you feel like doing and allow it to unfold without consciously controlling it. But why even bother with this whole process?
The Benefits of Being Creative
Maybe you feel like creativity should only apply to hobbies, artists, or those that have the luxury of sitting around and daydreaming - and that it has nothing to do with being productive, useful, or lucrative. Well, believe it or not, being creative will help no matter what your interests, hobbies, career, or day-to-day life looks like. You can still choose to be creative with whatever job you have no matter how mundane or predictable it may be. For example, if you work with numbers or data, you can use creativity to tap into new ways to collect, organize, analyze, or communicate that data. If you do research, think of how important it is to see the bigger picture in not only how to design a study, or for conducting a meta analysis, but how you choose to apply and translate your findings towards further research/solving for an issue.
At the end of the day, being creative is part of who we are as humans. We are meant to create. When we utilize our creativity we stimulate and tap into the Life Force Energy that makes us feel alive. Creativity increases motivation, inspiration, and momentum. If you feel like it’s always a struggle for you to get out of bed and find the motivation to do anything, then you probably haven’t allowed yourself to be creative in a very long time. You might be totally disconnected from your creativity which has led you to just “go through the motions”, resulting in a very gray existence.
I’m not saying you have to go pick up painting or dancing to instill creativity into your life, but start letting your body, emotions, and intuition have some say in your choices. By starting to reconnect with the more hidden parts of your Self, you will slowly feel more whole and alive as a human being. You can even start by doing something as simple as trying to remember your dreams, try playing around with new ingredients while you cook, or just play in general. Get yourself to stop thinking in strictly practical ways, and you will see the color come back into your life.
Feeling motivated to be more creative? Great. Let’s get to it.
How to Become a Channel
There are many ways people prepare themselves for channeling, and over time you will see what works best for you, but here are just a few things that work well for me.
Empty Your Mind
When I sit down to make art, write, cook, or even have a conversation, there are usually a thousand thoughts floating around in my head. Not only am I trying to plan what I’m going to do or say, but I have a bunch of anxious, limiting, and pervasive thoughts that are pulling me in different directions. So unless I “empty” my mind, I will either get into a state of “freeze” (or what some people call analysis paralysis), or everything I do will feel or come out “wrong”. I will be clumsy, disjointed, frantic, and essentially fuck up anything I try to do while in this state. And that is what happens when you are “in your head”. So how do you get out of your head or empty your mind?
This is a hard one to describe. Some people will use breathing techniques or practice meditation to train themselves to stay “present”. The best way I can describe my process is that I have learned how to purposefully “space out”. It feels like being in a dissociative state where I am no longer actively using my mind, yet I am observant and can “receive” thoughts instead of creating them. When I’m in this state my thoughts are no longer linear or sequential. It’s like I’m floating around and there are random things that pop into my head, but I don’t chase after them, attach myself to them, try to define/analyze them, or force them to go anywhere in particular. And many times the thoughts are not complete thoughts but are more of a feeling, a knowing, or an image that doesn’t really make sense to me (like a dream). Once I’m in this state, I will allow myself to start expressing/conveying/recording what I’m experiencing internally and more of the idea will unfold (more on this part later).
Some things I do to help me get into this state:
listen to white noise or ASMR (or any ambient sound that doesn’t evoke a lot of emotion or is overly stimulating/distracting)
“stare into space” (unfocus my gaze so that I am not actively looking at or focusing on anything in particular), or close my eyes
do something relaxing and repetitive/rhythmic with my body - like sway back and forth, rub a stone in my hand, twirl my hair, flick or tap my nails, bounce/shake my legs, rub my hands or feet together or on some other part of my body, or even hum random tones
focus on breathing consistently and deeply into my diaphragm so that my nervous system feels calm (I won’t mentally or physically force myself to control my breath for a long period of time, though. After the first few breaths I just let my body do its thing and stop focusing on making sure I’m breathing a certain way…otherwise it becomes a whole other distraction for my mind to attach to.)
making sure I don’t have any distracting physical discomforts or needs that I need to tend to (I’m not hungry, tired, thirsty, in pain, or need to use the bathroom)
making sure I’m fully hydrated (water is very conducive for channeling)
making sure I don’t have any strong emotions I need to process at the time
I think that’s about it. If I don’t fulfill most of those things I usually can’t achieve an “empty mind” state and then the channeling/creative flow will feel forced or just not work at all (so I will have to walk away and come back to it later). And if I force myself to keep trying to make something happen and manage to put something together without everything being “aligned”, the end result usually isn’t as cohesive, satisfying, or close to what I intended.
(Side note: That is why talking to people feels especially arduous for me - because I can’t do most of those things while in a conversation, so my communication feels unnatural and I end up either saying things I didn’t mean, expressing incomplete thoughts, fumbling my words, and just overall struggling to communicate effectively. And that’s why I prefer getting my thoughts out through writing.)
That being said, once I am able to get into this “empty” state, the next step is practicing receiving the “messages” or ideas that are trying to come through.
Receiving
The most difficult part of receiving a message is recognizing it. We are so used to using our brains to generate ideas that it is very hard to discern when an idea is not something our brain consciously thought of/created. For example, I have heard this is the hardest thing people (including myself) struggle with when learning how to listen to their intuition. They cannot tell when something is coming from their mind or their intuition. And the reason it’s so hard is that it’s not actually something outside of ourselves that we are channeling so it won’t feel very foreign or out of place. (People don’t typically receive messages as some outside, external voice.) If you “hear” anything at all it’s usually the sound of your own voice and it sounds just like your normal internal thought process. However, it feels different. It will make your body feel excited, alive, inspired, etc. as opposed to when you work your mind too much and it exhausts you.
Other things to look out for while receiving is any and all sensations, thoughts, images, emotions, etc. that you experience in your empty state (I talk about this in my post about Intuition too). The better you get at observing these things/yourself, the faster you will learn how to discern the messages that are coming up/are being sent to you. And once you get pretty good at observing and receiving this information, it is best for you to start letting things come out before you get caught up in your head again.
Letting It Out
The best advice I have for getting over any confusion is to just trust it/go with it. The more you practice allowing yourself to execute or follow through with those inspirations without questioning them, the more you will start to discern the difference between doing something from logic versus channeling. When you start to execute a channeled idea/energy, your motions and actions will come more naturally to you, and you will feel both regulated and calm but also inspired and alive. For me, if I am channeling through materials, it’s the same feeling I have when I am rock climbing - just fully present, in touch with my body, not worrying about anything, and just observing myself/my sensations while I am simultaneously creating/taking action.
And like I said earlier, when you’re trying to create something while in your head everything just feels harder and forced. You might stop and start what you’re doing a lot, get frustrated, feel impatient or anxious, and just generally not really enjoy yourself. It will feel like the whole experience is heavy and dragging you down instead of lifting you up.
Another tell-tale sign that you’re channeling is that you lose track of how long you’ve been doing that activity because you are so present. Or you might have very little memory of how you actually did the thing. For example, there are many things I made in the past that I would never be able to make again because not only can I not recall the techniques I utilized, but I can’t recall where the idea came from. It’s like I got inspired to make something and then my body just took over. And it’s not like I lost consciousness or “blacked out”, but my other systems were driving the operation while my consciousness became a bystander/witness.
That being said, there are different levels of channeling. If it’s a skill I am quite comfortable and familiar with, the flow is much more seamless. However, with other things (for me it’s writing or trying to play music), I will go in and out of this empty mind state from moment to moment. I will switch between my different consciousnesses - kind of like I’m checking in to see if it’s “working”. So I might start off executing/channeling something from my empty mind, but then sometimes my anxious thinking brain will just overpower everything and force me to come out of the moment. When this happens I will walk away either momentarily or for the day, do something to take my mind off of it (usually spend time outside), and then restart/re-approach it when I am able to get back into my empty mind without judgment of what I’m doing.
So you see, channeling and creativity doesn’t always come naturally, but it definitely improves with practice and is possible for everyone. The more time you spend initiating and creating space for yourself to play around and be in this state, the more familiar it will feel and the more easily you can tune into it. So if you have spent very little time throughout your life tapping into your creativity, don’t be discouraged if it feels awkward and doesn’t make sense at first. Just start applying these things within an activity you already enjoy and feel confident in, and then eventually you can start doing it with less familiar activities.
And if you’re completely at a loss for where to start, I would suggest getting a notebook or sketchbook and carrying it around with you. What you’re going to do is practice emptying your mind throughout the day and then jotting down whatever comes up. You can just write single words, doodle images, record feelings or images, etc. The important thing is that you don’t filter or judge what you put down on the paper - anything and everything goes (you can think of this process like a brainstorming session where people spit out random ideas and thoughts, even if they don’t seem to apply to the topic at hand). This takes the pressure off of executing or coming up with fully-fledged ideas/projects, and gives you plenty of practice with tuning in, receiving, and letting it out. With enough practice you will become very familiar with what it feels like to be an open channel, and you will be able to not only tune in more quickly, but you will be able to receive more detailed, specific, and developed ideas. And who knows, this might lead to the next breakthrough in art, medicine, technology, psychology, economics, politics, or whatever field you’re in.
Final thoughts
It’s been an interesting experience trying to write about a topic/technique while also applying it. This topic was particularly challenging due to its abstract nature but also how intimate and personal it is for each person. I used my intuition to channel the core of this topic, but my mind couldn’t help but want to take over for the more practical advice/breakdown, which caused me to walk away and come back to this multiple times.
Anyway, without judging myself too much, I hope that for the most part I was able to not only explain the experience of channeling, but inspire you to try it. Or, if all of this sounded familiar to you, I hope it validated your experiences and processes or gave you a new perspective on the ways you can approach creativity.
At the very least I hope all of your subconsciouses absorbed this information and will put it to use when the time comes.
