In recent years, the role of spirit in creativity is resurging, as more artists are turning themselves over to a "higher" power to direct their work.

For some people, the higher power is embedded in a religious tradition, while for others, their spiritual approach is rooted in a profound respect and appreciation for human creativity within a mystical cosmos. Whichever the case, a spiritual approach to overcoming stuckness suggests that you stop thinking about your creative problem and simply give yourself over to whatever higher power you believe in to provide you with the answer.

It is of course impossible to ascertain if the spiritual approach works because a higher power truly exists and answers the prayers of artists, or if there is something about releasing your worries into the cosmos that allows fresh ideas to come to you. Perhaps it is a combination of the two.

What counts is that the spiritual approach seems to help many people feel that their creative work is linked to forces in the universe that guide us into a more harmonious, peaceful existence. By releasing their creative blocks into the ether or to their worshipped God, they lighten their own anxiety about creating, which may indeed be an opportunity for new creating to occur.

If you are not religious, or are agnostic, your spiritual approach need not be any more than going up to a mountain top and contemplating your creativity as you sit among the boulders that have been on this earth for millions of years. I often go camping at one location in the Sierra Mountains in California where, at 12,000 feet, I experience profound insights into my place in the cosmos, which reinforces my love for the creativity that I possess.

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Next: The Reward Approach to Getting Creatively Unstuck

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©2005 Rick Benzel. All rights reserved.

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