Don’t Let Ego Keep You Silent: Finding Voice and Daring to Create!

What does voice have to do with creativity? For me, quite a bit, but that’s because of the way I am using Voice. In my novel, one of the protagonists is currently consumed with his vision of giving Voice to the voiceless. Because of the theme of the book and my philosophy of life, I apply this concept of giving voice to the voiceless to self-awakening, coming to the point where we finally hear the words of Heart and in essence, give voice to our true self, that self who has been whispering, urging, tapping, rapping, maybe even sometimes raging to be heard.

And Ego does its best to keep it quiet, rationalizing, offering all sorts of alternatives in order to keep us from doing anything that will upset the status quo, make us look stupid, threaten us with ridicule, or leave us lacking in the eyes of others. In other words, ego wants us to conform. Having a unique, defining Voice obviously creates instant nonconformity.

It also creates opportunity for new or renewed creativity. How? When core Self is discovered, we also seek to discover life Purpose. Life Purpose will lead us to a vision of how to express core Self to this whole creation, and it takes creativity to do that — not the creativity, necessarily, of an artist-type person but rather the creativity of innovators who find a way to get it done.

If we listen to Heart, we will find a way to live our Purpose. Those who move through the motive force of Heart yearn to be connected to this amazing creation, to find the place in it all where they can experience all of those qualities, emotions, and effects we, at our deepest level, long for: meaning, significance, peace, love. Yes, this is giving Voice to core Self who has screamed a prolonged silent scream for years.

This morning as I worked on my novel, my thoughts kept taking me to the work of William Blake. I wrote about him the other day in direct reference to giving voice to the voiceless in matters of social injustice. I did a bit of analysis of “The Chimney Sweeper” poems in Songs of Innocence and Experience. Blake’s poems present the contraries of human nature as co-existing and necessary for engagement in the creative process and in growth of understanding. His Songs of Innocence and Experience reveal these contrary aspects that are both a part of us, similar to my concepts of ego and heart. He also holds that we can arrive at a a state of Higher Innocence, which is something like my idea of the fellowship of the Heart.

This process of living with these contrary states produces continuing development of us as individuals and as a species. And today I thought about his poem, “The Tyger,” which is found in the Experience poems, the ones dealing with a state beyond the iconic state of naive children who quickly learn to live in conformity. (There is another side to this, but I’m not teaching a class here!)

In Experience poems, that unique, daring, expressive voice of creativity makes itself heard in the midst of a less than ideal world. The creation of the tiger — “tyger” as he spelled it — fills the narrator with awe and fright. How could anyone, who could it be that could craft such a powerful, perfect animal? The analogy is to a blacksmith, who visualizes a concept and works hard to bring it to fruition, to make his vision a real, workable thing. The whole poem consists of a series of questions — questions only. Let me quote the last stanza.

“Tyger Tyger burning bright, / In the forests of the night: / What immortal hand or eye, / Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?” This is the last stanza, exactly like the first with the exception of one word: “dare.” Who could create such a creature? One who had a vision because that one saw a need and dared to fill it, one who could work from the depths of the creativity of the Universe bound in the heart. Giving voice to that creativity means giving form, shape, and reality to a vision.

​And that’s what I’m talking about!