Psychological Creativity:
Therapeia Studies and Creative Workshops
Creativity has two differentiated threads. The theoria and the praxis. Like a warp and weave on a loom, it is the two aspects together that give the creative process context, meaning and value.
Theoria refers to the ideas, images and feelings, the imagination that allows and drives the processes of creation. It might be a flash of inspiration or a slowly developing sense of something asking for attention. Some parts might include academic study and careful thinking. It might include fantasy thinking and playing freely with images and possible and impossible ideas. It could be intuition, an immediate sense of knowing, and it might be felt-meaning, the emotional awareness of the body that asks for expression. And it includes feelings of sanctity, wonder and devotional awe, as well as feelings of irrational lust and wild desire and erotic splendour. It is the inner content of the dance, where the gods visit and speak, in a language not always understood.
Praxis means the practice, the things done, the application and expression of the inner content into the living world. To dance and paint and sing and shout. To play music and prepare a meal and place flowers in a vase on a table. To write and to behave into the body and into space and time. This requires practice and the development of skill. Some have greater talent and some need to apply themselves with greater efforts to develop their craft. It also requires understanding of the values and limits of the tools of any practice, and also respect for the space in which the activity happens. Brushes and colours, stones and instruments, inks and papers, cutting boards and knives, costumes and makeup, training the body to allow the fluid flow of energy to find its form.
Within the learning community of Tamboo, and after the early learning has created a foundation, these two aspects of the creative process are accommodated in two interdependent and yet differentiated streams. The Therapeia courses serve the more formal studies; and the Creativity workshops attend to the practical aspects.
Whatever the form of expression, and however unique each person’s imagination, these two aspects work together to further the development of psychological awareness, the deepening of presence of the soul and faith in the psychic reality that underscores our lives.
Both are necessary. Like two hands in prayer or in making love. If we only have one, then we do the best that we can. Two is better. Dancing on one leg might be a necessity for some, but for most, both limbs working in unison allows for a fuller and freer expression. Too much theory and reflection debases and ignores the bodily dimension of life; and physical expression without insight soon becomes rough and compulsive. Then we have zombies, bodies without soul, violent and cruel, and hungry ghosts, souls desperate for embodiment, never satisfied.
First to rebuild the temple. Then to enter therein, and to dialogue with the gods.
Therapeia studies
Some reflections of therapeia.