Watch a bicycle moving along the street. Most of us have learned how to ride a bicycle and readily recall the smooth gliding motion, which is the point of view from the bicycle seat.

What happens if we shift perception, move the point of view to another location on the bike? It still is smoothly moving down the street, the same reality. But how does it look and feel from a spoke on the wheel near the rim?

Blue sky, flash of leaves, pavement, car fender, sky and clouds, more leaves, flattened frog on pavement, etc. In short, the perception is of being right side up, whirling upside down, and then back right side up, repeatedly.

It is still the same bicycle moving along the same street, but an altogether different experience. Conversations between the two sets of perception usually go nowhere.

The bicycle seat conversation may discuss a feeling of graceful flow, the enjoyment of the breeze and warmth of sunshine. The bicycle spoke conversation may speak of feeling queasy, overwhelmed, and dismayed over turbulent contradictory experiences.

The bicycle spoke thinks the bicycle seat is a dreamy fool detached from reality. The bicycle seat thinks the bicycle spoke is too absorbed in a drama/trauma game.

The fact of the matter is that each has a perfectly valid and real perception of what is happening. Neither is wrong.

Each point of view gives rise to questions and answers natural to it. The bicycle spoke may ask why it goes upside down every time it gets right side up. Much thought and introspection may go into this painful and pressing question.

The focused mind may analyze observed data and come to all sorts of interesting conclusions about the world, but the experience remains disruptive and disturbing. The bicycle spoke point of view continues to feel queasy, which can become a source of despair.

The spoke’s question is of no concern to the bicycle seat. Instead, this point of view is interested in the myriad small balancing actions required to stay on the seat. Descriptions of these balancing movements sound like complete nonsense to the bicycle spoke.

While the two points of view may not be able to communicate their perceptions understandably to each other, they certainly can get into shrill arguments.

As artists, we see this happening constantly. All those tedious arguments about Art, art with the big capital “A”, start from differing points of view and experience.

But instead of having the grace to say, my experience of art, or my perception of art, many artists make sweeping pronouncements about what Art with the big capital “A” is, as though no other point of view could possibly exist or have any validity.

Somewhere in all this noisy clutter, we might ask what point of view, what sort of perception, would be best to choose? That question only comes once we have finally noticed our bicycle moving down the street carries many other possible points of view.

And that question brings us to the next post in this series, The Bicycle and Perception Part 2.

Creative inspirations come in many ways. Sometimes they are elusive willow-the-wisps, dancing just out of reach. Other times they make themselves known in our hearts and minds with the force of a nuclear explosion.

Either way the challenge is how to bring them into this dense physical reality that can be so resistant to our efforts. Sometimes it feels like trying to put a nuclear explosion in a teacup.

It just won’t fit. Even if we somehow managed to get it in there, the teacup would instantaneously be obliterated.

This conundrum bedevils creative folks in every walk of life. Artists carry a particularly turbulent notoriety about these issues, but everyone else struggles with the very same difficulties.

This is the human condition. How do we translate our dreams and visions into practical physical reality? We live on the knife-edge of the interface between the soul and the physical and feel an enormous abyss yawning below us.

The dilemma has led me to create a new way of teaching the creative process itself. My approach is actually two classes rolled into one workshop.

In the mornings you will learn energy processes, the new CCT Earth Healing class, needed to protect your own creative energies and how to heal any interference and distortions in those energies. You will powerfully transform your perception of creativity and how to work with it. This transformation results in a new understanding of your own creative purpose and power.

In the afternoons you will practice creating in this transformed way. After you learn it, the process can be applied to any creative activity you choose. As I am an artist, I will teach painting in the afternoons as an exercise in directly applying these creative energies.

This would be quite enough to accomplish in one workshop, but I do not stop there. We have the gift of living on an incredibly beautiful living planet. We are physically part and parcel of this lovely Earth. After all, were we not created from the dust of the Earth?

Without troubling you with the details, scientists and religious people alike agree that all life is interconnected, ultimately woven into an amazing tapestry where each of us affects all the rest. It is our calling and our opportunity to each bring our own unique gifts to share in this great web of life.

This means, in surprisingly practical terms, that when we heal ourselves, we heal the Earth. It means when we transform ourselves, we transform the Earth. It means that when we create with joyous inspiration and power, we bring that joyous inspiration and power to the Earth.

So that is what we will be doing in this new workshop. What could possibly be more fun?

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The first unveiling of this new workshop will be at the Earth Healing Montana Retreat in February of 2011.

The creative process becomes distorted in myriad ways. The initial damage occurs as children since human beings begin life with a zest and enthusiasm for creative exploration that is delightful to observe.

However, after absorbing the flaws in the creative process from their parents, the school system, and other people in their lives, by adulthood an appalling percentage of the population does not think they are creative at all.

How does this happen? How do these vibrant, playfully creative little beings become so stunted by adulthood?

Creativity inherently is self-sustaining. The creative energy nurtures itself and grows quite naturally. Unfortunately this is where the first distortions enter. The self-sustaining aspects of creativity are stripped away from the child.

Surrounded by adults who have no idea how to create in a self-sustaining way, the child’s burgeoning energies become a substitute source of sustenance for those adults.

We all see parents who live through their children and their children’s activities such as sports. The child is molded to produce what the parent needs. This, to put it bluntly, is energy vampirism.

As the child loses the self-sustaining aspects of his or her inherent creativity, the child too begins to seek substitutes. Approval of others for creative efforts is often the first place the child looks.

This flawed approach leaves the child woefully vulnerable to criticism, even if the criticism is ignorant and without value. The crippled creative drive tries to flow through approved channels, becoming more and more stunted as it does so.

Sometimes there is no recognition at all of the unique gifts the child brings to the world and the child learns to place no value on those beautiful aspects of his or her being. These children usually become the adults with the least awareness of their own natural gifts.

The end result is a great distortion of identity. Instead of seeing that shining core of creativity as their true essence, the child learns to identify primarily with external forms.

I myself recall identifying myself only as a jeweler and at one time could not imagine myself being anything else. These days I know myself as that core creative essence and see jewelry, paintings, and who knows what else simply as possible forms of expression of my creative essence.

Lacking this perception results in a painful loss of freedom in the creative process. One sad outcome is, for example, artists who cannot bear to sell their best work.

Artists certainly do not have to sell their creations, but should feel free to do so if they want. Cringing at the very idea reveals a monstrous prison around their unique gifts.

Because of the assaults on their creative process the work has been created with such difficulty it seems a rare event never to be duplicated. Without the perception of an endless self-sustaining stream of creative energy, the finished work itself seems to be the only thing of value.

Stripped of the self-sustaining energies of creation, the wounded artist clings to the artwork itself as a substitute. Combined with a desperate need for recognition and approval by others, this artist often cannot even show the work for fear of the devastating rejections that may come.

The buoyant freedom to create exuberantly has been corralled into a painfully limited form and is in danger of coming to a complete halt. After all, the many violations of creative integrity do not necessarily stop with adulthood.

The second chakra is considered to be the seat of sexual/creative energy, and for good reason. Sexuality is a particular physical expression of the creative energy of life itself so the sexual and creative energies are indeed intertwined in our beings.

From outright physical rape to more subtle violations of their beings, many possible pitfalls lie in wait for the struggling creative adult. It is no wonder so many give up on the process, settling for as steady a paycheck as they can manage.

Alcohol, drugs, shopping, overeating, television, video games, and other distractions serve to dull the pain. People can almost forget the loss of that deep wellspring of joyous creativity as they immerse themselves in their chosen distractions.

However, despite all the distortions and hazards of a physical human life, the core essence, that creative shining core of each human being, is never destroyed. The expression of that essence may be stymied and distorted, but the essence itself remains intact.

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Next: How to Regain Creative Power and Freedom

This problem is so common that one of the easiest ways to identify an amateur artist without seeing artwork is to hear them say, “I paint only when I feel like it.” They have no control over their creative processes and are at the mercy of unknown forces as to when they can access their gifts.

Professional creatives usually are able to focus at will, which is part of why they can practice their art professionally. Yet, they too are subject to those tides of inspiration that beckon without a clear path to expression.

The CCT Earth Healing class offers a new solution to such dilemmas. The deceptively simple energy process strips away distortions and interference with the creative energies.

Aligning your creative energies with the divine and with the creative energies of the Earth opens a clear path of expression. Yes, you still have to master the technical aspects of what you are doing but even that is far easier to accomplish with the CCT Earth Healing process.

In the retreat in Costa Rica watercolor is the medium we will use to explore working in this manner. However, the very same process can be applied to writing, music, gourmet cooking, or any other creative venture that sparks your imagination.

A new way of being opens to your startled vision. The internal war between the creative muses and the awkward demands of physical reality quiets, becomes a new harmony that informs all your creative activities.

Note: No prior watercolor experience is needed for this class, yet watercolor experts can also benefit by accessing deeper levels of inspiration and creativity in the class.