Everything within us, past, present, and future lives in story. When we create around our story, we gain clarity. When we create with intention, we activate both sides of the brain. When we activate our brain, we gain greater access to our own information, how to articulate it and how to move it from the stuck places.
Creating with intention is simply working with mindfulness in whatever we set our hands to. Whether it is creating a soup, a garden, a business plan or a painting. We are more present because we choose to be and the results are different than if we are not paying attention. Intentional Creativity is an approach to creating that yields greater access to who we are now and who we are becoming, and what is possible for us and our unfolding future.
Often we fear the places within us, because we don’t understand them, or don’t have any idea how to reach them. The wounds are many layers deep – how do you get inside to where the stories live? In our work it is at the canvas that the hidden stories start to come unraveled and revealed. The light pours into the wounds with brush in hand. This is Intentional Creativity. Wounds become tools for transformation, and then potential for teaching and healing others emerges.
This is the movement the soul has been seeking for so long – to be expressed. Self-expression is one of the keys to healing the past, living in the present fully-embodied, and authoring a fascinating future, a legend even. This is about fearless belonging. To yourself. To your life work. To the universe. To one another. We belong here – when we create, we come to life. We tug on the red thread and realize we are indeed connected to everything – and that connection cries out for self-expression.
Intentional Creativity Teachings
Core Teachings
Intentional Creativity is a framework, a chosen approach, a viewing window and a portal of inquiry. Here is our essential operative vocabulary as seen through the framework of Intentional Creativity, meaning there is a lens through which you are viewing the words. Each word serves as a linguistic abstraction that can be applied to any medium, including thought, movement, art and sound – anything you make. And especially if you do it with love and or a sacred intent.
Intentional Creativity does not necessarily refer only to painting or writing, rather it expands on a philosophy of being, living, and falling in love with our lives, one another, and creation itself. There are, of course, 13 core teachings based on chosen conscious transformation. These are the practices of those in our tribe and the practices employed in every class or experience using Intentional Creativity.
These remain conceptual until brought into form, hence the reason we call ourselves the Guild of Intentional Creatives. We are makers and collaborators with quantum potential. We all contribute our ideas, dreams & curriculum to the greater community as we develop ways of working and self discovery. Here’s the amazing part, when we create with intention, all of these are somehow active at once without us needing to name them at all. Separating them out as words simply helps us take a better look. It’s rather like trying to lasso the mystery. This kind of thinking has been around since the beginning of time, it’s nothing new, but we may be new to it. The idea of working with image and word together as a path of intentional inquiry was sparked within the framework of our Intentional Creativity Lineage in the 1930ies by Lenore Thomas Straus and passed to my teacher, Sue Hoya Sellars, and in collaboration with my mom, Caron McCloud on to me. ~ Maestra Shiloh Sophia
CURIOSITY – Enter into the space of inquiry inspired wonder
ACCESS – Journey and establish pathways of connection with your heart and soul
AWARENESS – Inquire within, you are not who you think you are: ‘who lives in here?’
CONNECTION – Claim that you are a co-creator in the greater circle of sacred life
INTENTION – Activate quantum consciousness through mindful creations
INVITATION – Allow discovery, and being your own witness to enter into your processes
CREATION – Alchemize your content across the veil into form, and practice regularly
CATALYZE – Choose to continually move out of default settings into possibility
COMPASSION – Lovingly collaborate with the collective through your offerings
AWAKENING – Explore and expand the infinite palette of your many senses
COHERENCE – Create alignment between your gifts, your Source, and Creation
BELONGING – Choose to be embodied, and belong to a tribe of creatives
CEREMONY – Design experiences which both mark transitions and celebrate!
We asked some of our graduates from the Color of Woman School what Intentional Creativity is for them, because beyond the basics of creating with mindfulness, it really is up to the individual to define what Intentional Creativity is for them.
Intentional Creativity is about creating a connection, connecting to your inner guidance. Listening and creating, asking and seeking from the space within that knows your truest hopes and dreams for yourself. When creating, I may (often) (always) meet up with my perfectionist self who then makes way for my bold self and brave self, and my freedom-seeking self.
When I have intention, I open up a space for myself. This space encourages CONNECTION, celebration, play, wonder, validation, mess, TRUTH, self healing, color, collage, embellishment, possibility, dream tending, memory keeping, release, questions, answers, guidance, introspection, inspiration, – a well spring of wonder. I believe it’s sacred – because when you take an ordinary thing and add intention and love, it becomes sacred and sensory.
~ Denise Daffara
Intentional Creativity provides the opportunity to come from a place of intention, to delve into our innermost sanctuary of the soul, to listen to her voice, and to access information we don’t know that we know. When we courageously allow those messages to manifest on the portal of our canvas they reveal the truths and gifts of our own Being, resulting in a Healing, and Re-Membering of our Truest Divine Selves.
~ Carole Thomassy
I do not see Intentional Creativity as being a totally “inside job” or just about accessing our own inner experience and resources. My Red String Theory is as follows: Taking action rather than being reactive requires forethought which is a function of creativity. This function is empowered by the focus of a clear and stated intention of the desired outcome of the action.
The degree to which this empowerment has been observed leads us to speculate that the desired result is somehow already in effect and that being targeted by the focus of clear and stated intention releases the energy that empowers the action in process to manifest that intended. This is what I hold as being “intentional creativity” regardless of the specific project or application.
~ Caron McCloud
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