{"id":29,"date":"2008-03-16T01:00:00","date_gmt":"2008-03-16T01:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/flowermandalas\/2008\/03\/cultivating-creativity-new-gro.html"},"modified":"2008-03-16T01:00:00","modified_gmt":"2008-03-16T01:00:00","slug":"cultivating-creativity-new-gro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/flowermandalas\/2008\/03\/cultivating-creativity-new-gro.html","title":{"rendered":"Cultivating Creativity — New Group Announcement!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Beach%20Rose%20III.jpg\"
\nBeach Rose III<\/strong>
\nI’ve created a new group designed to foster creativity in your lives and I’m inviting you to join, and to ask you to invite anyone you know who may be interested in enhancing the creative parts of their lives to join, too.
\nEarlier this week, I did a workshop with about 20 local folks who all wanted to build more creativity into their lives. Some were already artists of some sort, some had done a lot of creative work in the past but had left it behind years ago, and others just had a recollection of being creative when they were young and a yearning for that part of themselves to come back. The workshop was very alive and seemed to me to be really successful. I think it has already jump-started a few people and that good things are yet to come.
\nIn that spirit, I created a Beliefnet group to try to get the same thing to happen here in cyberspace. The group, Cultivating Creativity<\/a>, is designed to provide a safe, supportive, and encouraging — yet stimulating and challenging — environment for its members to cultivate their creative selves. Its basic framework is to use a series of questions to help people help each other do that:
\n1. Identify the problems in your creative life
\n2. Imagine what your creative life will be like when those problems no longer exist
\n3. Determine what parts of this ideal are already there
\n4. Discover how to move, in a step-by-step fashion, to making the ideal a reality.
\nIt will, I hope, use the power of the group to propel its members forward, within this framework.
\nThe group is an experiment. I’m able to help groups of people do this in the “real world,” and it will be interesting to see how much can happen, and how it can happen, here in cyberspace.
\nThe first step is for anyone interested to start his or her own post in this group. Begin the post with a short description of yourself, then start complaining! Identify, for the rest of us, issues you have or problems you are facing as a creative person.
\nThen, following the framework outlined in the post entitled The ‘Miracle Question,’<\/a> write your miracle, and share it with at least one other group member by inviting that group member to respond to your miracle, in the thread that you have created. You, in turn, will respond to that person’s miracle in their thread. The two of you become “miracle partners.” Others can — and, I hope, will — join in to help you make your miracle a reality.
\nOnce you and your “miracle partner” have shared your miracles in your respective posts, identify how much of the miracle is already there, even a little bit, in your lives. Write this up in your post’s thread, too.
\nNext, also in your thread, rate yourself on a scale of 1 to 10, where “1” is you are as far from your creative life miracle as you have ever been, and “10” is you are solidly in it. Share this, too, with your “miracle partner” from the previous step.
\nFinally, with the help of your partner, come up with an experiment that will move you a little closer to the miracle. Choose something that you are sure you are willing to do, but something that also breaks some new ground.
\nWhen you’ve done the step, report back to your thread and let us know what you did, how it went and how it affected your 1 – 10 score.
\nAfter that, it’s a matter of getting the support of your partner and the group, and coming up with a new experiment that moves you one step closer to your miracle, and reporting back.
\nAs they say in the Hair Club for Men ads, I’m not only the leader, I’m also a member, so I’ll be posting my miracle in the group soon, and I’m as interested in anyone else in getting help working toward my miracle.
\nIn your posts, I suggest you identify your thread with your Beliefnet name, followed by whatever else you’d like to add to identify the purpose of the thread.
\nNow, as Maurice Sendak said in “Where the Wild Things Are,” let the rumpus begin!
\nNOTE<\/strong>: This is primarily a group for people who want to actively work on their creative selves and want to team up with others doing the same. So, when you sign up, sign up to post, and to help others with their process, not only to read what others are doing!<\/em>
\nMore anon,
\nDavid
\nDiscussion:<\/strong>
\nCultivating Creativity group<\/a>
\nThe ‘Miracle Question’<\/a>
\nArt, Healing, and Transformation group<\/A>
\nFlower Mandalas Project group<\/A><\/P>
\nRequest a flower mandala screensaver<\/strong>: Fifteen Flower Mandalas<\/a>
\n\u00a9 2008, David J. Bookbinder<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beach Rose III I’ve created a new group designed to foster creativity in your lives and I’m inviting you to join, and to ask you to invite anyone you know who may be interested in enhancing the creative parts of their lives to join, too. 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