The creative process is always chaotic at the start, and necessarily so. In order to create, we need fuel—tumescence. In order to create with it, we must wrestle with it. We must work it like clay and direct it with our attention, and we must do it with love or we will have no control over the process. Love and desire are the only things that can counteract and navigate tumescence. They allow us to see tumescence for its potential power, not for its opposition. We tend to quit when we enter this wrestling stage. However, the joy is in the wrestling: discovering our acumen through it, and watching the tumescence convert.
There is no joy quite like watching this conversion process, and yet we choose non-tumescent, low-maintenance situations and connections in order to avoid the wrestling. But in doing so, we miss the conversion. That which we convert—such as anger into play— becomes beneficial to our experience. Loyalty, devotion, sympathy, and a deep understanding can only happen when we go through the wrestling and conversion; this is craft.
In the process of converting, whatever we are converting is also converting us. By the time we make it to this stage of expression, the process is like a handmade glove: the fit of it is so impeccable and true to us that no matter what it looks like on the surface, it will have the transmission of congruency and truth to it. That transmission not only conveys itself to the world, but sustains us all the way through the expression.
Most people want to start at the final stage, where the majority of tumescence has already been converted and is ready to be expressed. That desire to already be at the end of the process is why we have so many formulas and formulaic behavior. The potency of real tumescence and truth would destroy those formulas, and formulas have a built-in resistance to living truth.
This is why, when we understand that conversion is a function of the amount of wrestling we will have to do, we know that the most creative acts begin at the edges of our abilities. We look for our own edges where it is most challenging to wrestle, and begin to convert from there.
Many people try to start at the most de-tumesced level of expression, but that place does not have any living transmission to it, because we can neither contain nor use any of the tumescence by that point. This is why we use formulaic processes for most projects. However, anyone engaged in a creative process will know, it is not bound to a controlled, step-by-step instruction guide. Creative/tumescent energies will always require a wrestling through and willingness to absorb “obstacles” as part of the of the procedure.
Without the willingness to wrestle, we are unlikely to end up de-tumesced. When we are in bondage to the tumescent mind, we can only afford to live in outcomes, results, and climax. We keep pursuing climax over and over. But when we are looking to live a life that has life and creation in it, we are going to look to live in the highest state of rub that we possibly can.
That rub both generates and converts energy, and holds our reality to us specifically. However, this will only work if our attention is greater than the tumescence. Otherwise, we are working with tumescence to generate more tumescence, rather than working with tumescence to convert and end it.
