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Who are we?

Our Purpose

Unleashing our Authentic, Creative Nature

by John Huffaker

According to the psychologist who wrote this article, our continuing efforts to tame the wildness of Nature reflect our endeavors to tame, or better repress, our own inner "wildness", i.e. our creative self. But there are ways to rediscover this hidden part of ourselves. Doctor Huffaker suggests some easy and practical ones.

This fall, my wife, Charlene, and I visited a young couple who are living in a rural area of Southwestern Wisconsin. They recently dropped out of the corporate world and are operating their various businesses from an old farmhouse. During a conversation on the state of the world and environment, one of our hosts remarked that we are removing the wildness from the landscape of country life. Agribusiness, in its quest to maximize the bottom line, is destroying the woods and forests the wild animals need for food and shelter. He said, the animals are left with just a tiny corridor of land between farm fields.

The Taming Process

Reflecting on his comments, I noted how this rural tragedy reflects the disappearance of our human internal wilderness.

We are in the business of taming our world and ourselves. We clear cut the dwindling rainforests and virgin forests for building supplies and pasture lands for cattle. We educate our naturally wild, creative children into "productive citizens" to chase empty, materialistic American dreams. We mass produce deliriously dulling goods and services from faceless, bottom-line driven corporate mega-institutions. We are pasteurizing, homogenizing and ultimately sterilizing our lives.

Trying to be safe, secure and vainly holding to our illusions of control, we avoid, deny and systematically destroy our wildness.

Fear of Creativity

Our fear is killing our beautiful, wild soul. We are scared of what makes us unique and human: our essence--our mysterious creative center. From the beginning of our lives, many powers have been at work training us to deny, avoid and censor those qualities of thought, feeling and idea that express who we are. We are conditioned to be uniformly the same, to follow prescribed guidelines of normalcy and to conform to societal roles and others' expectations.

Conquered by fear, our wildness, our authentic creative nature, goes underground. Much like a wild endangered animal, our essential Self is given little space to live or breathe. We are choked off and forced to hide out. We forget who we are. The wild, magnificent creations we are become forgotten and lost, until one day, maybe through too much loss and suffering, we re-awaken to our own buried treasure.

My own caged wildness has put out warnings from time to time throughout my life. "Let me out or I'll make your life miserable. I'll come at you as anxiety, depression, or maybe just low-level melancholy, a malaise that you will try to ignore or cover up. Whatever it is, it will be a suffering from not living your true Self." Largely divorced from my wild self, I reluctantly, ambivalently strode for a life of material comfort and social acceptability. My American dream!

Carl Jung, the renowned Swiss psychologist, called our wildness the Shadow, the buried vault that contains our unwanted, disowned feelings, desires and dreams that flee underground to avoid the intolerance, jealousy and punishment of childhood caregivers and authorities. Left unacknowledged, these neglected aspects can wreak havoc on our lives.Like the raw beauty of the natural environment, our wildness needs protection and resuscitation.

Discover your Inner Artist

In her popular book, The Artist's Way, Julia Cameron describes our creativity as our linkage to the divine, to our true nature. Stirrings of unhappiness, lethargy and discontent may be pointing us in the direction of our caged wildness needing release. Given no creative outlets, we often act these impulses out in adolescence. This pattern can continue into adulthood, often leading to deteriorating physical and emotional health, isolation, despair and a life unlived.

There is hope for our wildness. It is never too late to excavate, to revive the wonder, creativity and vast wilderness of life that lies within. A few simple tools and our steadfast commitment can give us access to our hidden inner world.

Some supportive tools for accessing your wildness:

• Invite your wildness out by writing it a letter of invitation. Ask it to actively join you in your life however it needs to. While writing, be sure to acknowledge your doubts and fears. Write these down in the margins of your letter or on a separate sheet. Having intent is a powerful way to create what you want. You may be surprised!
  
• Get a copy of the creativity workbook, The Artist's Way, by Julia Cameron and do the 12-week program (being part of a support group may help you do the work). The book contains great information about unblocking creativity and is most useful being used experientially. Great way to uncover wildness.
  
• Develop a meditation practice. One method is to sit quietly with eyes closed for about 20 minutes a day, paying attention to the breath. When attention shifts to thinking, which it will many times, gently and compassionately return to the breath. This practice supports living in present time, making room for our wild truth to come forth.
  
• Take a solo 20-minute walk daily. Notice the quality of living in your body and being part of all that is around you. This gives wild imagination a chance to have room to surface if it wishes.
  
• If you enjoy expressing yourself creatively, make time and space to do this weekly. Wildness often shows up in creative expression. If you don't presently have some creative outlet, consider taking a class or reading a book about a creative area you consider interesting.
  
• Visit nature as often as possible, and notice how being in it can deeply connect you with your wild spirit.
  
• Write a meditative journal daily. Some people (such as Julia Cameron, above) recommend doing three page of longhand writing each morning. Allow whatever is inside your mind, heart or soul to spill out on the page without censorship. This writing captures essential aspects of your wildness in words--it may be mundane, profound and everything in between--most importantly, it's yours and yours alone.
  
• Find supportive people. There are many people who, through their fear and jealousy, will rain on your parade. Review who is presently in your life to see who truly supports vs. wet blankets your unique wildness. One emerging avenue of support for this kind of personal journey is Personal Coaching.

Copyright © 1999 John Huffaker