The Creative Clash of Yin & Yang

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Great creative expression often comes out of the clash of polar opposites – yin and yang, good and evil, darkness and light, birth and death, love and fear….

The goal this week is to intensify your creative awareness of these contrasting energies.Your exercise is to create two separate pieces that express, in essence, two sides of the same coin. You might write one piece that describes the life-giving quality of water and the other on it as the most destructive force in nature. Or you could do a drawing of a forest scene before and after a fire rages through. Or, you could work with an example of joy/sorrow; love/loss; etc. from your own life.

The important thing here is to be aware of the how differently you use words, rhythms, colors, shapes to create the imagery.

Have your pen and paper or art materials, etc. ready to use. Use the exercise “Inspiration Just a Breath Away” to get into a meditative state where you can draw on the cosmic creative force that exists within you. While still in that state open your eyes, reach for your materials and begin. (You can decide on the topic you are going to focus on before you begin or, if uncertain, see use an image that comes to you in your meditation.)

Note: For powerful examples of contrasting imagery in art and writing see below: William Blake’s painting of “The Good and Evil Angels” and Gerard Manley Hopkins poem God’s Grandeur.

The Good and Evil Angels by Blake owned by the Tate Museum

God’s Grandeur

The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil

Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?

Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;

And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;

And wears man’s smudge and shares man’s smell: the soil

Is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.

And for all this, nature is never spent;

There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;

And though the last lights off the black West went

Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —

Because the Holy Ghost over the bent

World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.