How to Overcome a Creative Crisis and Regain Inspiration for Self-Development

AVAlexander Volchek

Circumstances in life really can be terrible, very difficult, beyond what you can imagine: people dying around you, something horrific happening. But what, if not love for yourself, can preserve those extraordinary feelings within your life? There lies an incredible opportunity for your life to grow and expand, to the point where a crisis is nothing, just a word. How do you overcome a creative crisis and regain inspiration? In today's video, we'll look at the steps to take, not so the crisis disappears for a month and then returns, as it usually does. We'll explore how, year by year, to approach this crisis as an observer, so inspiration keeps arising and becomes an integral part of our lives. First, you need to understand that a crisis can last your entire life. That's the first point you need to acknowledge and calmly accept. Many people don't live with an awareness that they really will die. Any completely healthy person understands that people die, but puts that thought off when it comes to themselves. They don't live with a clear sense that they will die. Here, you need to develop a clear sense that the crisis may always be there.

This sounds very strange, but it's the key to an incredible movement forward. You need to calmly enter a state of accepting that there will be no more inspiration in your life, no more creativity. Those impulses you used to have will not come again, and the crisis will keep getting worse. I'm certainly not urging you to live in that state. I said at the very beginning, for a reason, that our task over the years is to reach a state where inspiration is constant. What I'm asking you to do is develop a very clear understanding that the crisis may always be there, may be an integral part of your life. At the same time, you need to be very clearly aware that the course of your life can change, and can change radically. It's remarkable: someone finds themselves in a crisis, doesn't love themselves, has no confidence in themselves, doubts themselves, and keeps saying, “No, this crisis won't last forever,” yet doesn't allow for the possibility that the course of their life could change radically. It's a trap, an egotistical trap. Just as the crisis may be endless, the course of your life may also change, turn around completely. You may find yourself in a different country, with a different family.

You didn't have a family, and now you do. You had a large business, and it disappeared completely. Or you worked at a job somewhere and became the owner of a company with fifty thousand employees, which you run. The course of your life can change completely. You may never have painted, then start painting; never have sung, then start singing. You may have perceived life very narrowly, then become an incredibly different person. Something entirely different may awaken within you. Remember again that your current crisis may be paradise compared with what lies ahead. I recently led a session in my V100 group. When we were discussing observation and this state of not rushing, someone wrote in a comment, “Alexander, not rushing and observing is so easy. You don't have to do anything. How do I avoid slipping into idleness in that state?” Again, when we say “don't rush,” when we talk about being in a state of observation, it's an incredible amount of work. It's very difficult. Simply learning to do it takes an enormous, an incredibly large amount of energy, because people today in our social environment don't know how. Never equate the words “don't rush” or “observe” with a state of idleness.

As in lying on the couch, drinking beer, playing cards, watching a movie. Or being idle by lying on that couch for a whole year. A state of observation, of accepting that I'm not rushing, that I trust time even while different events are happening, is an enormous amount of work. But it's what leads to true, incredible growth and expansion in absolutely anyone's life. Then, standing on these two points of support, you need to keep observing yourself to make sure you aren't rushing. When we want to move beyond a crisis, into creativity, into true growth and expansion, the first thing we need to do is stop rushing. There's a very good passage in Rudolf Steiner's spiritual writings. It says that, as a human being, you should act as rightly as you can and uphold the right values in your life. The spiritual forces in the world will find the right moment for that point of growth and expansion to come about for you. That's what's so important when we say you mustn't rush. Not rushing is fundamental. It's remarkable: someone is living now and wants a particular event to happen urgently, in three or four months.

You say, “But you still have twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years of life ahead. Ten years—it doesn't matter.” They say, “Yes, but I want things to change and happen right now.” It's a trap of the mind, a trap of that inner state of egotism. So remember: your current crisis may be your future paradise. To stop rushing, you need to pay enormous attention to loving yourself, begin loving yourself. Please don't confuse true love for yourself with the euphoria of changing your state for the better and moving toward a better life. It's so wonderful to love yourself, not rush, and remain in a state of acceptance when everything is only getting worse. “Everything is getting worse” is a description we've invented. Although circumstances in life really can be terrible, very difficult, beyond what you can imagine: people dying around you, something horrific happening. But what, if not love for yourself, can preserve those extraordinary feelings within your life? Of course, love for other people is how you personally treat them: what you feel about them and what you do at every moment when you interact with any person. Remarkably, your attitude toward others, compassion for them, love for them, a desire to help them, and having no expectations of them lead not merely to a change in the crisis, but to bursting through it, to your growth and expansion, to reaching a new point where there's so much inspiration you don't know what to do with it.

You need a natural process of work: daily work, daily work and daily actions, steady, repetitive daily actions. This love for other people should become steady and routine, a habit. It shouldn't be something special or exalted. It should become natural and real. Natural, steady work means we aren't looking for—

Steady work means we aren't looking for rest. I'm certainly not talking about the rest your physical body needs. If you've spent all day digging, walking somewhere, standing at a cash register, or talking a great deal, your physical body needs rest. I'm talking about a different kind of rest: the break people seek from themselves, from others around them, from their current surroundings, their current state, their current life. They want to escape reality, go on vacation somewhere in Turkey, lie on the beach. Do you think that will change anything? How can we make the ocean, the sea, nature, and hiking something that's always within us, an integral part of our lives? It's very important here to reach a state where you stop dividing your day and your activities into interesting ones that offer inspiration and uninteresting ones that are routine. Very often, a creative crisis and the search for inspiration are entirely the ego living within us, the ego shouting, “You're doing the wrong thing! You deserve so much more! Back in the old days...” It devours the whole system from within. At that moment, you need to love yourself and press that ego down. Notice it. Where you don't have a strong enough fist to press it down, simply observe it, know it's there, and never let it into your interactions with other people.

Because it is through love for others, through helping others, that an incredible opening for your life's growth and expansion lies. Growth and expansion that make a crisis nothing, just a word. Inspiration arises every second of our lives and existence. It's always there. How much are you willing to give and pay for that?