Creativity, Sexuality, Kink & Weaving A Safety Net

aka How far do we let ourselves fall into life’s arms?...

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The realm of creativity is the realm of chaos. It’s the dance between the feminine energetics of wild freedom, playfulness, shape-shifting extravaganza, beauty, sensuality, luscious abundant growth, and the ever-changing flow of life in its many kaleidoscopic possibilities; with the firm edge-boundaried, support, containment, accountability, golden-ornated frame, of the masculine energetics. Playing out. Fucking to eternity. Their cosmic fornications the wet globules from which all of life forms! You just have to look at the statues of Shakti and Shiva to know what I’m speaking about. Or ask your folks where you came from. Same thing babes, same, shockingly delicious, thing!

To live a creative life takes guts. Reams and reels of intestinal messiness. Of letting it all spill out untidily. Unapologetically. Riding improvisation like the God or Goddess or Godlyesque creature that you are. For the realm of creativity is the realm of creation, a holy endeavour for sure, and not one for the faint of heart ~ just ask any artist soul out there!

To dance with the unknown is to feel a certain safety with gallivanting with the erotic tease and charge of being the one who’s responsible for life, death, rebirth and everything in between!

That ain’t no small matter now, is it!?

So. Let’s talk about safety. And how we cultivate safety as an artist of our own precious life.

The thing is, we’ve been told that it’s unsafe to play out in these landscapes of the mystery and magic. That ‘be careful’ is a slip of a phrase, with a sharp cutting paper-cutting edge, groomed within us since a very young age. That we need to ‘fit in’ and not to rock the proverbial boat. Society’s boat to be clear! What we’ve been taught is the safety net in society. Which is outside of us. Made up of the fibres of security. Finances. Work. The traditional family unit. Being like one of those wobbly headed dogs on the back of the car window ledge, simply nodding in blind resignatory submission without question or thought.

Blind faith.

Never doubting what we’ve been taught.

Therefore, denying our own inner knowing. Creating a fracture, a splitting, within the atoms of our own sovereignty. That is, the power is outside of us. That’s what we’ve been taught.

Safe.

Safety.

If we’ve always known safety outside of ourselves than that in itself is a highly alert state to be living in. All that plate spinning. All of that control. Controlling the only uncontrollable thing there is ~ the world outside of us. Life itself.

How ironic.

How bonkers when you truly think about it.

Fear keeps this faux safety net in place. Fear is the rubber bands that every year of our lives get placed around our bellies, squeezing our solar plexus, our seat of power, until we’re rigid, unable to take the deepest breath, nor to sigh out into the grandest ocean of all ~ that of limitless potentiality.

Where do you place your trust?

What are you trusting in?

Are you trusting in this outer safety net? Have you ever paused to wonder whether it serves you? Is it allowing you the freedom to play? Explore? Try new things? Have a go? Risk? Or does it squeeze you even tighter in constriction even if you deigned and dared to think about another way of cultivating safety?

Being an artist isn’t safe. Let’s get that clear from the get-go. It’s the ultimate rebellion. The ultimate revolution. The ultimate ‘fuck you’ to society’s conformity costume.

It’s the path of the Brave and Vulnerable. Or B.A.T. as I suggested to a friend the other day. Which, as a lover and slight obsessive of Batman, suited me perfectly!

So, what does a safety net mean to you if you’re curious about having an inner one?

It makes me think of the three diaphragms we have inside of us. I used to teach Yoga for twenty years, and there were plenty of exercises and practices for strengthening these muscles. These muscles of support. Supporting our inner organs from collapsing. Holding us with just the right quality of softness, from the inside out.

As I write this, I think about those deep-sea creatures. Maybe our inner diaphragms are like inner jellyfish? With their lightness of support. Not heavy or constrictive or rigid. Yet responsive. Subtle. Listening.

A gentle yet firm holding.

Muscling our own inner safety net.

This makes me think of fishermen and giant nets. My travels to Southern India. Cochin in Kerala. Trawling for fish. For supper and sustenance.

These nets are made of strong fibres.

I have a safety net inside of me. I had a hernia many years ago and they put a piece of mesh in me. As an Aquarian with a kink for the robot human hybrid (I have one too for Mr Tumnus from ‘The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe’ fyi) I like this. It also reminds me of a situation with a one-legged astrologer which I will leave for another time! And, for another huge project to be revealed at a later date! 😉

But we’re not robots. (Though there’s an argument that some folks certainly seem that way!)

We’re humans with squidgy bits in us. That cut and bleed and bruise and hurt. We have guts that spill out and make a mess. And we’re strong. Impossibly so at times. And we have a spirit that defies crushing at times, which is something holy in and of itself.

So. Human.

We need to feel safe.

From threat. Danger. Annihilation.

From falling.

Falling to what though?

To our death? Ego death? Actual death??

How far do we let ourselves fall?

To fly through the air.

Untethered.

Free.

A cosmic exploded star floating in space.

Until we burn out one day. Maybe 10000 years from now!

The irony isn’t lost on my tender, slightly achy heart right now, as literally a few hours ago I actually fell on to the pavement slab as I was on my way home from the coffee shop that I was working in this afternoon. I fell face first. Thankfully I haven’t done any serious damage, which as a glasses-wearing woman could have been pretty gnarly. I’ve a grazed right cheek bone, a sore hand, and a bleeding cut knee. The latter made me remember being little and having fallen and cut my knee, sitting on the lap of our nanny (don’t ask) and being given a pack of Smarties as she soothed me. The Smarties, I suspect, were the real heroes here. Devoid of Smarties, I’ve settled for a shake out to some banging tunes, holding myself whilst I let tears flow, and a wee glass of brandy. The latter a stand-in for the Smarties.

Safety needs a certain containment. Edges allow us to know where we are in space and time. To feel out the perimeters of our playground. Safety is secure attachment, if you’re into all of that jazz. Safety is about Boundaries that support what we need to be in right relationship to ourselves. To not betray ourselves. These aid us in being able to honour and uphold our values. Our dignity.

And when we have these, and thus we feel safe and relaxed, then our creativity becomes this field that opens and expands for us to wonder around in full delight and desire, and we can play. We can create. We can be willing to be surprised by what we might discover.

It also gives us the ability to break open. To fall away the known and the ego parts of us that are the rubber bands. We get cracked open.

Take the story of Rumi and Shams of Tabriz for instance. Rumi, the clever scholar. Shams, the fool, the one who broke down Rumi’s dignity and values that upheld his rigid, albeit useful, identity. Until he cracked himself, like a cosmic egg, and allowed God into the crack, and all this extraordinary sacred cosmic holy beauty poured out in his words and heart. He became untethered from his idea of safety, didn’t he?!

What if we willingly fell to our own devastation? And it freed us. Illuminated us? In a kind way of course. To be the fool, to be foolish, but from a wise place. The first card in the archetypal Tarot journey. To start from zero. To reset all the conditioning. The coding. The imprints of how and should and can and can’t.

Safey is an inside job for all of life outside of us will change. That’s nature being, well, nature.

Safety is the cultivating of the strength and support of our own inner muscle. Not the body-beautiful ones. But the ones you cannot see and preen over. It’s the firing of one’s physical pot so that we can hold the electric charge of our own creative dance. Our own magnificence. Our own willingness to be a vessel for the lightning of creation itself. We don’t have to choose this of course. It will stretch us and destroy us. But if we’re brave and vulnerable, it will liberate us too.

For just like nature, and creativity, we are always dying and being reborn. It’s just whether we’re up for the lunacy of it all. As an artist, we are. We risk rejection. Failure. Being laughed at. Misunderstood. Disapproved of. We know the cracking open of disappointments and the high-drugged thrill of an extraordinary performance and the belly crawling low on the other side. We know the frustration of things not working out even though we’ve invested our blood, sweat and tears. And we know the ride of having, what appears to be, no safety net beneath our feet.

But, as a friend pointed out to me the other day, we do. You do.

It’s in the trust you have. In the belief in your craft and your capacity. It’s in the community that supports your creative adventure. In the coaches, the mentors, the teachers, the training. It’s in the resilience that gets weathered into finery from each knock, and the ability to hold more excitement as you grow, thrive, and have fun as you play.

I’ve just received my certificate for the training I’ve just completed in Nervous System for Artists, Performers and Creatives, and so I’m now a Trauma-Informed Artist & Educator to add to my toolkit of inner safety, I’ve the tools for my own life. And have tools to share with you, if you would like that support too.

Here’s to you.

Here’s to you building your own inner safety so that you soar and have fun whilst doing so, in a healthy way.

And here’s to the Creative Revolution!

Aho X

P.S. I survived my fall today. Sure, I’m a little tender but I’ll live. To dare, to try, to risk, to explore, and to fall and fall again! X