Weekly Inspiration ~ 2.18.23

Author Spotlight: Rick Ruben

“Taking a wrong turn allows you to see landscapes you wouldn’t have otherwise seen.”

The past few weeks I’ve been slowly making my way through the book The Creative Act: A Way of Being by Rick Ruben. I’ve mentioned this book before on social and felt compelled to write a bit more in-depth about it, as I’ve had a few weeks to sit with the wisdom he shares.

The way he writes makes the book feel like a source of insight and wisdom you can keep coming back to again and again. I’ve found I often just flip to a random page and am met with words that nudge me closer to understanding my authentic nature as a soul embodied, having a human experience. The way he seamlessly weaves elements of spirituality, meditation, and mindfulness into his framework of understanding creativity and the artist’s practice resonates so deeply.

Back in 2019, I fell in love with yoga and meditation. I went to classes regularly for a few months and on a whim, right around my birthday, decided to gift myself a 200-hour teacher training. Diving into this practice from the lens of being both a student and teacher helped me cultivate my personal voice and opened up space for free-form thought in a way I hadn’t experienced in years. Both yoga and meditation are practices I continually return to, to explore my internal landscape, and have led to immense amounts of personal healing and revelation.

I absolutely believe spirituality, creativity, art-making, and the human experience are intrinsically linked, and love the way Rick frames this in his book. Anyways… if it isn’t clear by now, I could not more highly recommend this book!