Welcome,
Welcome,
Welcome.
Welcome to the Wild Becoming Podcast.
Today we are talking all about the art of conscious creative living.
This is devotional living.
This is harmonious living as intended,
Coming home to our natural state,
Coming home to our natural way of being and creating with the earth,
Creating with the universe,
Creating with each other in a way that was always intended.
So why don't we create in a creative way?
Why don't we live life in a creative way?
What's stopping us?
Grief,
Pain,
Suffering,
Perhaps perfectionism,
Feeling like whatever we're doing is just not good enough.
And yet,
Many great minds,
Great artists who have suffered have created great art.
And so my name is Amanda Machado.
I'm a creator.
I'm an artist.
I'm an epidemiologist and a teacher of conscious living.
If we haven't had the chance to connect yet,
Namaste,
Hello,
Welcome.
And so who were these great artists that created great art from suffering?
Van Gogh.
Van Gogh was bipolar.
He had bipolar disorder.
He suffered from intense emotional pain.
I always wonder what did he long for that caused him to create such great art?
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I love to hear your voice.
I love to hear your thoughts.
I love to hear your creativity.
Another artist who created great,
Beautiful art,
Michael Angelo.
His creativity led to the development of the Sistine Chapel ceiling,
That beautiful,
Famous,
Profound ceiling.
And yet his relationships were strained.
He suffered from isolation.
He suffered from perfectionism.
He was very self-critical.
And he also suffered from religious and financial struggles.
And yet created what is known today as some of the most profound art.
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Frida,
Virginia Woolf,
Emily Dickinson,
All had some form of mental illness,
Clinical depression,
Some physical ailments as well.
And yet,
Some of the most profound insights into human consciousness.
They shared their streams of consciousness with the world.
They shared their ideas about the nature of our existence,
Our identity,
Our authenticity as of humanity,
But also their own authenticity.
They had great insights into the human experience and they shared this through their life and through their artwork.
And there seems to be this link between chaos and creativity.
Quite stigmatized,
We tend to see mental illness,
Mental disorganization as chaos.
And yet neuroscience shows us that chaos is actually a catalyst for creativity.
This is because the brain is pushed to break out of patterns,
To reorganize,
To create space for new ideas to flow through.
And we see this in nature.
We see this in nature with the volcanoes that create chaos and then beautiful islands for people to inhabit.
We see this with wildfires that rip through our forests.
They become more unnatural and more leading into drama than chaos,
But the natural chaos that occurs actually allows for a renewing of the forest,
For new creative growth.
And Nietzsche also said,
One must have chaos to give birth to a dancing star.
Christina says chaos is a catalyst to creativity.
That's interesting.
Yes.
When we think of our world,
Even when we think of our natural world,
Even when we think of our universe,
There is chaos and order.
If we only created from order,
It'd probably be pretty boring and just be rational.
And as we know,
Art is not rational.
Art tends to come from the heart.
And Rumi,
That beautiful poet,
Rumi,
He said,
Let yourself become living poetry.
And to me,
This is the foundation of devotional living,
Letting yourself become art.
Each movement,
I think of when I do my yoga flows,
It's like I'm dancing.
I'm dancing in the flow of life in that moment.
But it doesn't just have to be confined to a yoga mat.
It doesn't just have to be confined to a moment where I'm physically dancing.
We can dance through life.
As if we are the painters of our life,
Creating and painting with something greater than ourselves that we are part of,
Nature,
God,
The universe.
And we can do this by living a life aligned with truth.
There's something deep about deep truths,
Deep truths of our own heart,
Deep truths about the nature of life,
Deep truths about our human experience.
They allow for this wonder and this beauty to be born.
And life does come with pain.
We experience pain,
We experience suffering in our life,
And it's energy.
So it's constantly being transformed from one state to another.
Have you ever felt like,
Oh,
This feeling,
It's overcoming me.
I feel sad.
I feel grief.
I feel pain.
And then you hear the laughter of a child.
You do something new and all of a sudden your energy shifts and switches.
It's transformed.
This is one way that we are creative in our everyday life,
Transforming our energy,
Transforming our emotions.
And all of it gets to be beautiful.
We can allow beautiful emotions like love and peace and harmony into our life.
And yet sometimes these emotions can feel quite extreme or intense.
And sometimes we even avoid feeling them because we fear the loss of them.
We fear the longing.
And coming back to Rumi,
One of my favorite poets,
And I'm sure that many of you are also familiar,
Rumi was someone who turned deep personal loss and longing into something deeply creative,
His poetry.
And his poetry just has this ability to touch the deepest parts of the ocean of our hearts and our souls.
Rumi said,
Within tears,
Find hidden laughter.
Seek treasures amid ruins.
So beautiful.
So Rumi lost somebody who was really close to him,
A teacher,
A fellow teacher,
A fellow mentor,
A best friend,
Someone he deeply,
Deeply loved and was connected to on that soul level.
Almost like a divine,
Mystical type connection.
And so when this friend,
This teacher of his was taken out of his life,
He was deeply sad and he had this sense of earthly longing,
That deep sense of longing that I'm sure at some point in our lives,
We have all experienced at some,
In some way,
Shape or form.
And this deep longing led to his great work,
His words,
His own way of devotional living,
Connecting to something greater than himself.
He ended up turning this experience of loss into one of peace and unity and purpose,
Where he discovered that his longing was really connected to this deeper longing to be connected to the greater whole,
To be connected to God,
To be connected to the universe.
Because one of the things that he said was that your body is a way for me,
But there is a window open from my heart to yours.
And so through this deep longing that he had for his dear friend,
He was able to feel,
To continue to feel that connection,
Even though that person was no longer in his life.
And this opened the door to a greater connection to the divine.
And it allowed him to cultivate a profound love,
A divine love for our creator,
To recognize the divine love that our creator is for creating everything.
And to understand this form of sacrificial love on a deep,
Deep level.
And those of you who have ever suffered from emotional pain,
Which all of us do at some point,
Some deeper than others,
Especially when it's coupled with mental illness.
Someone can look like they have everything on the outside,
And yet on the inside,
They feel like they are slowly dying.
Deep,
Deep emotional pain.
And yet,
This deep emotional pain can be transformed,
Can transform the lives of others,
Can bring magic to our life in how we feel,
In how we live,
In how we connect.
This birth through expression,
This birth through repackaging what's happening inside and expressing it on the outside so that it can be shared amongst all of nature's creation.
As part of creation,
As part of our contribution,
Because all of nature is creative in different ways.
And we all get to be in that song through each action that we take,
It gets to be creative.
And Rumi also said,
It's not the ones that are speaking the same language,
But the ones that are sharing the same feeling that understand one another.
And it really speaks to this idea of feeling,
Feeling into your life.
Feeling into each moment,
Allowing the feelings to guide your creativity in a way.
What do you want to create?
Where can this depth that you have found take you in terms of how you transform it or how you share it in a way that is meaningful,
Purposeful?
And we all have biological creativity.
Some of us may feel,
I don't feel very creative though.
So we were all born with a biological creativity.
And this happens at a very cellular level.
Even when a baby is being created,
We see this interplay between chaos and order.
And it's actually called within science,
It's called biological creativity.
When a child is created,
There's this uniqueness that happens with the genes and how they organize and are formed and selected and how they come together to create this human life.
The energy that's inside of us all,
Even if we don't use that energy to create another human life is highly creative.
And then we also see even through process,
Life processes,
There's a highly creative process that takes place.
So thinking about the birth of a baby,
Birth,
Birth itself is creative.
It's chaotic.
It's rhythmic.
It's harmonious.
And a lot of mothers will describe birth as being an excruciating and yet beautiful pain and suffering.
It's an interesting way to look at suffering.
Because oftentimes we just want to get rid of the pain.
And to a certain extent,
We want to be transforming it.
We don't want to be hanging so low all the time that we collapse.
That our canvas,
That our brush collapses.
That the feet that we dance on is unable to dance.
We want to be able to move.
We want to be able to paint.
We want to be able to be creative and devotional in our lives.
Whatever that means for us.
And this is usually the beautiful art that we create when we're very centered.
Sometimes it's a bit extreme.
It's abstract.
When we're feeling something really deep and we need an outlet for that,
Which probably would speak to a lot of the poets and the artists that we were talking about.
A channeling of the energy to transform it.
To share it with the world in a way that is meaningful,
Purposeful,
And devotional.
What beauty can I bring to this moment?
What beauty can I bring to the people in my life?
What beauty can I bring to the world?
Just something small.
For me yesterday,
I was having a moment,
Maybe a more stressful moment.
And in that moment,
There was this sense.
There was this thought of,
This is going to be all night.
I don't want this feeling.
Why has this feeling come back?
And then I sat with it.
I sat with the longing and the feeling and the stress.
And then I felt this opening.
And the opening is my natural state trying to bring me back into equilibrium.
So I said,
Let me go upstairs and play hide and go seek with my son.
Everyone's having fun upstairs.
Let me go laugh and have fun and play hide and go seek with my son.
And just playing was an act of creativity.
It was an act of devotion to family,
An act of devotion to self,
To transform,
To be with and then transform.
And I didn't feel that feeling for the rest of the night.
It was transformed through the laughter and the joy with other human beings.
And we get to practice this in our life,
In our life movements.
Our life gets to be the art,
Like brushstrokes on a canvas.
And so there's parenting for those of you who are parents.
You know,
We're always adapting every day.
Children bring new life in different ways as they grow,
As they ask questions.
And we get to support them to become the creator and the writer of their own life.
And to connect as we find life together and create art together,
Like kind of like a collaboration in each moment.
And then there's just relationship,
Right?
We may not have children.
There may be other,
There may be children in our lives,
But we might have other types of relationships with our colleagues at work,
Friendships,
Romantic relationships.
And all of these get to be discovered again,
Like paint on canvas,
Where we bring this presence,
This authenticity,
This essence of who we are to be relational with another person.
And it's beautiful because even when we think of the chakra system,
The pelvis region where we create our sexual energy as well,
This is our area of creativity.
And it's also our area of relation,
Relational being with one another,
How we interact with the world,
Form coming from within,
Expressed outwards.
And so like paint on canvas,
This gets to be creative,
Where we bring an awareness,
A patience,
A love,
An empathy,
Where each person that we interact with can be seen as a sacred act of creativity.
Where you are creating something,
Whether that's through your words that you speak to one another,
Whether that's through the way you look at one another,
Small gestures,
Touch.
But this deep feeling of creating and growing together,
Painting something together in humility,
Being intentional with every act and feeling that peace or the transformational energy as we align more and more with our natural state,
The same natural state that ripples throughout all of the natural world.
And this gets to be true no matter how we suffer.
Suffering is universal.
It doesn't always feel that way.
Because perhaps we can look to other situations and feel,
I don't have a right to my suffering.
That person suffers more than me.
Or just differences.
We like to compare.
Our mind likes to compare.
It's logical to compare.
And we do it quite naturally,
Just to understand the world around us.
But we do have a right to our emotions,
Emotions,
Energy and motion.
It's all valid.
If you're experiencing it,
It's valid.
If it's in your experience,
It's valid,
It's there.
You have a right to your experience.
Your experience gets to be creative.
And at the end of the day,
It's really hard to compare expression.
It's very hard to compare energy and emotion.
Because two people in experience can experience something very differently.
And we all have that freedom of experience,
Of expression,
Of creativity,
Of our thoughts,
What we do with our energy.
And so while suffering is universal,
Two people in the same experience could feel two different things.
One could suffer and one might may not.
One person may think,
Why does that upset you?
While the other person feels intense emotional pain.
We all have different histories and backgrounds that we come from,
That we bring to the table as an author,
As a creator.
All of it impacts our creativity,
Just like those great artists.
Their suffering,
Their mental illness,
Their longing,
Emotional pain,
Physical pain,
Financial and religious and spiritual hardships,
It all impacted their work.
And our history,
Our life experiences,
They all impact our work and how we express.
And sometimes the chaos is hard,
Challenging.
Just like the volcano,
It doesn't mean that the lava isn't hot.
It's still chaotic.
It's still hot.
It still burns.
And how we feel that heat is universal and yet unique to each and every one of us.
And sadly,
Some lessons can only be learned through chaos,
But we get to decide.
It's like the volcano that erupts or the fire that rips through the valley.
Are we going to create more drama when we're moving through that experience?
Or are we going to stand back and look at the fire and the volcano with a sense of reverence for our life experiences?
I endured this.
I overcame this.
Thank you so much for supporting the podcast,
Christina.
Appreciate you.
You're welcome to support in any way.
Can we paint with the fullness of the spectrum that we are given?
The grief,
The pain,
The suffering,
The happiness,
The joy,
The peace.
Can we come back to center so that we're not running away from the canvas and the paint,
So that we are bravely picking up the brush and allowing that inner fire to fuel us,
Allowing us to be connected to a greater source and a divine energy so that we know we're not creating alone,
But also so that we know that we're still in this human experience.
Sometimes we want to bypass the human experience.
And while fear and grief and worry and anger in Buddhism,
We often talk about how anger is not really productive.
And yet anger is not necessarily a bad thing.
It's telling you something.
Energy is information.
But it's important that we mediate,
That we witness,
And then we allow ourselves to come back to our equilibrium so that we're not acting impulsively on the anger or acting impulsively on the fear or the worry or the grief or the shame,
Whether that means we're running away and not facing what we need to face or whether that means that we're running towards the fire in a really unhealthy way and getting burned.
It's all part of the experience.
Our spirituality,
Our emotions,
Our energy,
Our thoughts,
Our minds get to be creative and beautiful too.
Our bodies get to be a place of creative expression,
The feet on which we dance through life.
And we can connect with our bodies in very creative ways through yoga,
Through different forms of exercise,
Through culinary,
Cooking a meal and just spending all of your time and attention on this meal,
Preparing every little item,
Becoming aware of how each piece came from something else,
How each piece came from the earth,
From another form of nature here to create with you,
To create life with you.
So I encourage you to find that creativity in your life through devotion,
Perhaps throughout a day being devotional to the people in your life,
Giving them your time and your presence and your love,
Connecting with someone that you don't know,
Maybe you smile at somebody in passing.
Acts of devotion,
I don't even like using the word small because small acts can be felt on such a profound,
Deep level.
Being devotional to divine source through meditation,
Through prayer,
Through connection,
Through being in community just like this.
We are in a creative devotional practice right now together and how beautiful to spend this time to create and allowing the different fluctuations to come and go.
Like different colors,
Some are darker,
Some are lighter,
Learning to paint with all,
Learning to transform one color from another,
We can mix,
We can mix the colors just like we can paint,
We can mix emotions,
Many truths at once,
Many motions can be held at once.
Those that become unhelpful after we've sat with them,
After we've been with them can be transformed through awareness,
Through breath,
Through life force,
Through grounding,
Through creator,
Through creation,
Connection to the earth.
And so if that deep longing comes,
Just know deep longing from the heart creates art from the soul.
Deep longing from the heart creates art from the soul and that art gets to be shared.
And so we're going to go into a practice.
I'm,
For those of you listening to this on the podcast,
I will share the practice in a separate episode so you can listen there.
And for those of you live with me today,
I just want to say before we get into our practice if you want to stay connected,
Feel free to click on my picture,
Connect with me,
Send me a message,
Love to hear from you.
And we'll close the discussion and we'll open the space up for some magic,
Being in our bodies and connecting to our creativity and our creative energy.
And so I will see you in this next,
This next piece that we are creating together.
