Conduits for inspiration : removing the pesky ego from creativity

I bought Elizabeth Gilbert’s book on writing, inspiration and creative ‘magic’ Big Magic : Creative Living Beyond Fearsome time ago. I got as far as the chapter where she shares how writer Ann Patchett and she picked up on similar archetypal ideas for novels in which Gilbert goes on to explore the notion that for some of us inspiration or poems or ideas can come through from some kind of archetypal dimension accessible to conduits or channels, the self same idea of a kind of ‘daimonic’ force which strikes someone who is open and can act as a scribe or creative channel.

For some of us this it starts to happen when we go outside into nature or connect with other poets and their writing, and for American poet Ruth Stone it would be there in nature, working in the fields in rural Virginia that she ‘heard’ or caught the tail of the tiger of a poem streaming through the ethers and then had to race home to write it all down.

Elaborating on this idea of us being vessels for inspiration, Gilbert explains how taking this view prevents the ego getting grip in either fear or over inflation for a writer influencing our ideas of the poem or piece of creativity’s ‘worth’ or ‘value.’

Apparently it was the Romans who first developed the idea of a creative daimon or guiding spirit that could enter a person and use them as a channel. They called this force a genius rather than locating the sense or source of genius within the Self.

Gilbert writes

The idea of an external genius (which visits an artist) acts to keep the artist’s ego in check, distancing him (or her) from the burden of taking on either full credit or full blame for the outcome…… If your work is successful, in other words, you are obliged to thank your genius for the help, thus holding you back from total narcissism. And if your work fails it is not entirely your fault. You can say, “Hey don’t look at me my genuis did not show up today.”

Either way the vulnerable human ego is protected.

Protected from the corrupting influence of praise.

Protected from the corrosive influence of shame.

Interesting to read that and understand how vulnerable Gilbert’s ego was after the publication of her first book and how people reinforced this with the mentioning the great fear she should feel should she not be able to maintain the acclaim of the public and ‘fail’ with her next offering.

But should that be the primary motive of creation? The approval and acclaim of others? Or is there something different and more solid we can aspire to as we attempt to open our own channels to create and bring some form of something new into being?

As I write this I think of how the Goddess Venus was born after the severed genitals of Uranus were cast into the ocean by Saturn.. bringing something to birth may come out of great pain, severing or even the dissociation of trauma states which drop us into another level of consciousness..

In the same chapter Gilbert discusses the case of Harper Lee who remained silent as a writer following the success of her famous book To Kill A Mockingbirdi as well as other writers who ‘vanished beneath the shadow or their ‘reputation’ or the burden of collective approval such as F Scott Fitzgerald.

Gilbert concludes

Just because creativity is mystical doesn’t mean it shouldn’t also be demystified – especially if it means liberating artists from the confines of their own grandiosity, panic and ego.

That said when the creative daimon does arrive how good does it feel to connect to it? What greater joy is there to experience but the healing flow of that river or stream?. Were these other writers less successful due to having faced periods where they could not birth or free another piece of creative work, or was that not just the path they were supposedly meant to tread in this life where creativity and self expression can meet so many different arrests or roadblocks along the way?