Books |
Be, Awake, Create: Mindful Practices to Spark Creativity
Reveal Press – 264 pages – $19.95
“The Artist’s Way for the twenty-first century.”
—Nancy Coleman, PhD, clinical psychologist, writer, facilitator, and teacher
Settle your mind, connect with the moment, and unleash your creativity with this unique and mindful art journal.
In our demanding, fast-paced culture, it’s increasingly important to find ways to decompress and recuperate from the busyness and stress of life. More and more, mindfulness and creativity are being recognized as antidotes to the speed and over-stimulation of modern society. This beautiful book combines the two, offering both creative and meditative practices to provide a guided journey into contemplative art for healing, relaxation, deeper connection, and greater well-being.
Rather than focusing on any one medium or art form, this unique guide offers basic meditation instructions, and a variety of creative prompts and activities—from collage and coloring to meditative mark making and sketching to photography and perceptual exercises—making it perfect for anyone who wants to deepen and cultivate their mindfulness and creativity.
With these artistic and introspective practices, you’ll put meditation into action, and learn to view yourself and your own creative process without judgment or aggression. Using Be, Awake, Create, you’ll see beyond habitual patterns, discover the richness of your world, and recognize the ordinary magic of your own creativity, with greater freshness of expression and spontaneity.
By cultivating awareness and allowing yourself to play in the open space of artistic creation, you’ll come to discover all of the positive impacts mindfulness and creativity can have on every area of your life.
Excerpts from Endorsements
“Be, Awake, Create is full of inspiring exercises and motivating quotations. Once you pick it up, you can’t put it down, and when you do put it down, you just want to rush off and do something creative!”
Seyed Alavi, artist
“Rebekah’s voice is wise; her advice, practical; her insights, profound.”
Michael Carroll, author/Buddhist teacher/coach
“Be, Awake, Create is sure to become a classic, for no other book presents meditation/mindfulness as the complete ground from which to access our creativity, while leading us through the whole experiential path.“
Pat Donegan, poet/author
“This book is filled with enough wisdom and joy and encouragement to fuel an extended creative journey.“
Laura Peck, MPH, MtC coach/consultant
“Rebekah Younger has composed an elegant, accessible, and profound collection of practices, insights, and personal stories for those who are curious about contemplating and creating.“
Miriam Hall, author/contemplative arts instructor
“Wise, provocative, and playful, I highly recommend this book to all those interested in exploring and deepening their awareness of and creative response to the worlds in which we live.”
Ruth Wallen, artist/professor/Buddhist teacher
Excerpt from the Introduction to Be, Awake, Create
Be, Awake, Create, Relate Defined
Be: To exist
Sometimes we are so invested in doing—checking off to-do lists, setting goals, making plans—that we disconnect from simply being. This book encourages you to check in with yourself before heading into a creative project, to notice and accept who you are now without striving to be better or different, and to relate to your state of being, whatever that may be.
Awake: To be conscious, alert, and aware
When we pay attention to our experience of the present moment, we are automatically more conscious and alert. That awareness extends naturally to include not just ourselves, but also our surroundings. Our experiences offer a wealth of inspiration for the creative process. Through the activities in this book, you’ll become more aware of your felt experience in being here now.
Create: To bring into existence
Whether we consider ourselves artists or not, we have the capacity to create through our choices and actions. We are translating our experience into an expression whenever we tell a story, take a picture, or make a gesture. By first connecting to our being and awakening to our experiences, the expression is genuine to the moment. Throughout the book, you’ll find opportunities to take action to express your
experience of being here now.
Relate: To connect to/with
Having expressed your experience, you can now contemplate what it
means and share it with others. You can also engage others in a contemplative creative process with joint and group collaboration. The
final chapters offer ways to reflect on your creations and share them
with others.
All the mindfulness practices offered in this book are designed to
spark your creativity and a contemplative state of mind. May they
enrich your life and how you express it!
Excerpt from Chapter 1 – Relaxing into Open Space
There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot. —John Cage, composer
John Cage created a controversial work that premiered in 1952, entitled 4’33”, which is the length of the composition. On a bare stage in the concert hall, a grand piano sat center stage. The pianist walked onstage to applause, taking his seat at the open piano. He opened the sheet music, as if to begin playing, closed the piano, and set a stopwatch. He then sat still for three timed intervals. Between each movement he reset the stopwatch and the score, which was written as bars of rests. At the end of 4’33”, the pianist stood, bowed to the audience, and exited the stage.
Needless to say, when first performed at the rustic Maverick Concert Hall in rural Woodstock, New York, the audience was in an uproar. Where was the music they paid to hear? All that could be heard were the ambient sounds of the audience rustling on creaky benches, the birds, and wind in the woods outside. This was the music John Cage wanted his audience to experience, the unintentional sounds of the present moment.
Even when viewing a later recorded Carnegie Hall performance of this piece, I found myself in a heightened state of awareness. Every shuffle, cough, or inadvertent sound in the concert hall was amplified by the performer’s contrasting stillness. These sounds, the continuous music of the world, of course, would change with each performance.
In 1988, in a conversation with William Duckworth, Cage spoke about 4’33”, saying, “No day goes by without my making use of that piece in my life and in my work. I listen to it every day.… I don’t sit down to do it. I turn my attention toward it. I realize that it’s going on continuously. More than anything, it is the source of my enjoyment of life.… Music is continuous. It is only we who turn away.”
His composition illustrates the reality that the world is in a constant state of creating and expression. As part of this world, we are creators too. Creative inspiration is ever present if we remain open and inquisitive about our experience. In this chapter, I offer contemplations and activities to relax and open awareness to the fertile ground of now. You can begin by listening, as John Cage challenged his audience to do, without expectation of hearing anything in particular. Simply be in the present.
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Upcoming Book Events
click on the highlighted text for more details
Shambhala Online Book of the Month – Talk and Q&A February 8, 1pm CST
Press Reviews
5 Mindful Exercises to Ignite and Deepen Your Creativity
New Spirit Journal Book Review
Interviews
The Psychic Coffee Shop Podcast
Guest Blog Posts by Rebekah
Applied Mindfulness Blog – Unraveling Creativity
The Creator’s Orientation – Working with the Gap Between Vision and Reality
Shambhala Times – Obstacles as Opportunities for Creation
Online Video Talks
Flash of Perception: Portfolio of Photographs and Artwork
by Rebekah Younger, MFA in Interdisciplinary Art
Blurb.com eBook 120 pages $9.99
From first flash of perception to prolonged gaze, Rebekah Younger records her visual experience, offering the contemplative viewer a potent opportunity to be enriched by the phenomenal world.
Begun as a personal journey of healing, her work explores the elemental energies present in the ordinary world of things as they are and our direct experience of them.
This body of work is informed by Ms. Younger’s study of Vajrayana Buddhist philosophy, specifically the five Buddha families or wisdom energies. It is designed as both a portfolio of images and an artwork in and of itself to engage the viewer in their own experience of perception.
Click here to prevew and purchase the book
