 Aloha and welcome back to The Creative Life from the American Creativity Association's Austin Global Chapter on Think Tech Hawaii, a streaming network series. I'm your host, Phyllis Blyse, and joining me today is our guest, Shaku Selvakumar, and she is talking about answering the call of the creative quest by using the alchemy of the heart. Shaku is a poet, an author, and a communications leader with multi-national and startup experience with Fortune 500 companies like IBM, Shell, Oil, and AI tech startup companies. So she's used her skills and her vision and her poetry in service to helping others become better leaders and more intuitive and more in touch with themselves. Shaku, I want to welcome you with a big aloha to be on the show. Aloha, Phyllis. Thank you so much for having me on this show. This is wonderful to be here. Well, it's wonderful to have you. You and I go quite a few years back now, and I am so thrilled that you're bringing us something that we've not talked about on the show before in terms of this answering the call of a creative quest. And in doing that, maybe we could open with your giving us your definition of creativity. So you know, whenever anyone has to define something that is so ancient, you always feel like you need to tread with a little bit of care and humility because creativity is the source of life. It is all light springs from it. It is the it's the way that we move forward. And and that that the the there are two there are two ways that are that we progress and one is one is the cyclical way of creativity. And the other is is that creativity that is purely tapping into inspiration, which is actually that place of divinity. And and when when we talk about creativity, we also sometimes tend to feel that one person is more creative than the other person or creativity is defined in a particular output, but that is not the case. Any time we pour our heart into any project, any undertaking, that is that is proof that our creativity is blooming within us. And when we don't recognize creativity in in in the East, I'm I'm from India. When we don't recognize creativity, we actually believe that we are. We are dishonoring the the the muse, the goddess herself. So that is that is why when we don't recognize, we don't understand, we don't honor. That's why we feel small. We we feel like we need to move into the external sphere of validation rather than understanding that this is absolutely the source itself. This is boundless. This is flowing. Saraswati, the goddess of creativity in India, she's the river. She is always flowing. So that is the that's how I see creativity. OK, OK. So, you know, I'd like to come back and touch on a few points. As you said, if you don't if you don't really come fully from the heart, you're not accessing creativity. And I want to put I want to put in that kind of in the in the waiting room. What it's like when people are drawing on creativity as the mother of invent the necessity being the mother of invention. And when they're desperate and the last thing they're thinking about is their heart call, but they're thinking about survival. And and and maybe that's something you're going to unpack for us because there might be different levels of answering the call or the quest to accessing our creativity. Maybe we're like, you know, why don't you speak to that? And before we get to the byline of what the alchemy of the heart or maybe we're ready for that. But not and so much. But but I do I do think that there's a spontaneity. There's a there could be crisis. There can be anything but feeling like you're accessing your heart when you're rising to a quest, but to the call for survival, those kinds of things. So talk to me a little bit about your statement to me at one point was that creativity is a quest to find proof that life exists beyond the obvious. So I don't want to hold you to that. But can you talk a little bit still about framing what creativity is and how we get it to being a quest? Yes, or not. Yeah. So what what happens is we we forget that our that life is cyclical, that we forget that we because we are used to the fact that time because we consider time as a linear as a linear force, we we seem to we actually look at everything in in chronology. But the the fact is that life itself is searching for for meaning, all life searches for meaning. And and when we when we embark on the creative quest, we are actually, we are actually reaffirming to ourselves that we matter that we exist, that we might be a speck of dust in the whole scheme of things. But that dust matters. So when you look at your life as proof of existence, and in even in its smallness, it encompasses expansion and magnitude and that and it creates a ripple effect. Every life impacts other lives, and there's no life that is inconsequential. When we understand that, that we are both when we understand the paradox and the polarity of our life that we can be small, but we're not insignificant. Me and and we understand that we that we are not also we we look into the hubris of believing that we're the center of all existence, we are not. So that whole understanding that each of us matter that each of us have come to this world to give something back to the world, then we understand that are we learn how to recognize what our creativity is, and we tap into our gifts. And the way we serve is we tap into that potential, the promise of our lives. And that's the gift we give back to the world. So in giving the gift back to the world, we're actually gifting ourselves. So that's the whole premise, my premise of creativity. It's not, it's not, it's not some beautiful word that you, you know, stick on a poster and put it on a wall. It is something that we live. We owe it to ourselves and to our world to live up to the promise that we bring to life. You know, we just haven't had this particular conversation on this show. And I am very drawn in to your view of creativity. It feels like a partner. It feels like, like you said, life calls on us. So you're, you're, you're personifying life apart from us and that it has its own presence. And are you saying we're, we presence it and you're in your experience and worldview through our heart. And when we're, so I'm drawing some broad conclusions. When we're disconnected from our heart, then we're disconnected from, we can be disconnected from our, the most vital source of our creativity, not exigent creativity, but the well of creativity. I guess, I guess there could be differences, you know, creativity in the moment, not to fall off a cliff is a kind of creativity that's exigent. Whereas I, what I'm getting from you is there's a wellspring here that you're going to help us tap into that is life giving. Not just, not just an emergency, you know, like our emergency life vest, you're talking about a life giving well that's an endless and boundless and timeless when I talk about pyros instead of chronos. Yes. So talk to us about this wellspring. What does he mean by alchemy of the heart? What does the heart have to do with it? And how do we interact? You know, Phyllis, when I was, you know, this whole journey with my poetry has been a journey of my heart because what I discovered was that the heart is such a magnificent generator. But if you look at the language along the heart, you know, look at all the illnesses that we come up in common language, you know, you have heart attacks, you have heart strokes, you have angina, you have so many blockages. And what are these, what are these in relation to their action in relation to our heart harboring guilt and shame and regret and blame? And these these emotions, they hold our heart from from actually accessing our life force. And when the heart is not open to access that life force, creativity is stifled. And and you will see that there are different forms of creativity. There there there is actually darker creativity, which which exists in in the in the enriched heart, in the suppressed heart, in the small heart. And then there is this magnificent channel that opens as you open your heart, the channel that opens up to you is boundless. It's expansive. It is that is when you understand that this this the seat of the heart is is the seat of Atma is the seat is the lotus when the lotus glows in the heart. That's when the golden heart awakens. And when the golden heart awakens awakens in us, you will see it in that person. They are no longer triggered by every little thing. I'm not saying that suddenly we wake up and we're not bothered by anything. And then we're just, you know, someone, someone cuts into the lane or or, you know, hurts us in any way that we don't react. We will that those things will happen. But you'll find that you're able to heal faster and faster and faster and you're not going to be hoarding. You're not going to be hoarding all that negativity in you and because any any time we hold that anything we at any time we hold anything heavy, those are literally the analogy of putting rocks into our heart. Which which is why we we start finding our we start finding that heaviness. And in a heartbreak, it's real. Heartbreak is real. So much of our grief has to be worked through. Otherwise that heart is never, you know, that beautiful analogy, kinsuki, which is which is mending all of life's failures and lessons and pain and everything with the gold. And that's the alchemy, the gold that we use to mend our heart, to heal our heart is the alchemy because what then emerges from that is another piece of ecstatic heart that is a work of art. So that's so we can actually create from our own brokenness. Okay. I want to hold, I want to hold a minute because you've come, you've taken this through a bit of a journey, different heart journeys where we're afraid where and you is the poet that you are, we have a slide on this. You've used the alchemy of language to bring out this aha for me. When you talked about you talked about the golden heart, you've also talked about sacred art, which is a very huge symbol in the Christian tradition and and you shifted the word moving from the scared heart to the sacred heart. And yet, so you're, now we still need to tell the audience how we do this. So we're talking about, don't do it, but talk a little bit about what's here and what we're seeing and why we, why you put that slide in. So we right now with the kind of chaos that we're facing in the world, the predominant emotion is fear and that fear is constantly at our door and that fear is real. There's no way we can go to someone who is actually facing financial problems, who's impacted by climate, climate disorders at their doorstep. Who's in the middle of a relationship problem. There's no way we can go and say, don't be afraid. You know, fear is as, fear is actually hardwired in our genetic makeup. So you cannot act and fear is also important for survival, but when you're constantly only operating from being scared, then what happens is you are afraid to even step out of the house. You're afraid that you're, you're afraid of death. And that death comes in different guises, that death could be the death of your identity, that death could be the death of a physical death. That could be, that could be the death of someone you love very much or the loss. So that place of fear, it rests so heavily within us that we are unable to understand that there is something that is bigger in store for us. That is the sacred. When you understand, when you move, when you shift from scared to sacred, you're actually allowing yourself to co-create with the divine. Okay. You're then walking in faith and trust. Okay. You need both. So let's look at the next slide and talk us through a little bit this alchemy of the heart that you have developed a process and an understanding about to get moved. What are we seeing here? So this, the alchemy of the heart, this particular piece was inspired by the elements. And one of my favorite all-time animated shows is Avatar, The Airbender. I just love the way they take this wisdom right to its essence. And when you look at fire, you look at the energy of fire, if it is then, if we're operating from the scared vision of fire, then we are constantly in reactive mode. We are reacting to everything because that's what fire does. It just goes up in flames, it burns everything down. But if looking at, if we're balanced, then you're working at fire from the sacred fire. We need sacred fire because sacred fire is a source of vitality. That is agni, right? And it's the same with earth. If you're too rigid in its rigid state, you will not change your mind. You will not open up to anything that is beyond the normal. You're fixated, you want, you have control issues. You cannot let go because control is maintaining some sort of order, at least you think you are. But positive earth is groundedness. It gives you that stability. It gives you the ability to make decisions knowing that you have the ground, right? You may walk in that. The same with water. If water is moody, it's emotional. It is, it can just plunge you to the depths. But water, like I said earlier, is the flow of the goddess. It is, it is actually connectivity. It is you and me talking here. It's that having that ability to connect and maintain those essential relationships. And then finally, if you look at air, air, disordered air is actually where we are, where in social media, where there's so much going on, we're just, we're not even thinking through, we're distracted. But air is actually inspiration. It's prana. It is, it is holy air, which, if you look at the quality of air, we are all breathing the same air. And we're all drinking that same water. It's coming from, and we all, so this connection is what we have to understand that the element of sacred versus scared. All right, so I'm gonna ask you, we have a, we can show the slide. I know it was too soon, I'm skipping something. I wanted to talk about your book of poetry. It is the next slide. So that's gonna be the quest on how we become our own avatars, our air bender, so our own air bender, water bender, fire bender. I mean, the kids are gonna love that you're using this as a model, but walk us through this quest. How do we enter into this circle? So like we started, the quest is to find proof of life. The quest is to re-energize us. And we have to understand that a lot of times there are, there is a part of us that is dormant, that goes dormant because we actually follow the seasons of life, right? You, when it's fall, you have to harvest. You cannot plant certain things in fall because that's the time to harvest. When it's winter, you have to retreat. The reason we have to retreat is so that we can be, we can, you know, right now it's, I can see spring starting to enlarge and it's because it's timing. The quest is actually in line with our own divine timing, right? And for a student heading off to college, someone getting married, you know, being an empty nester in the Hindu philosophy has the four stages of life. When you're a student, you have certain responsibilities. When you are a householder, you have certain responsibilities. In fact, a lot of times they say when you're a householder, do not, you cannot just abandon your home and go off to the mountains because there are certain commitments. And the same, when you are in this, an empty nester, then you start, you move into your second period of creativity because now you're actually operating from a different sense of sacred. What has been emptied from the nest can now be filled with different kinds of eggs. Those are the eggs that you're birthing into the second half of life. And then finally towards the end, you have to slow down. You cannot operate at that same manic pace and the quest actually takes you through the questions of who am I? What is my timing? What do I believe? The what do I believe is very important because if we do not understand what we believe intrinsically, every share, every viral post, every meme is going to just knock us off and take us into a different direction. And I just wanna say that this is, I was reading this article by Mark Lee Robinson and he talks about the four areas, right? One is personal, my physical presence. Who am I personally, my personality? The next one is interpersonal. What is my relationship with others? How do I show up with others? The third is intrapersonal. Intrapersonal is what is my inner life? How do I define my inner life? The fourth is the transpersonal. What is my belief about the cosmos, about the world? And we need to understand where we are in resonance and where we are in dissonance in these four areas. Okay, I should ask our request. And hold that thought. If we've just got a few minutes left, I was wondering if we wanna, I wanna show the next slide of the book of poetry. Be still in my heart that you have written and that you've drawn all the illustrations for. I love it. I have it next to where I read every morning. And do my meditation. I have thoroughly enjoyed it. I don't know if there is any poem in there that illustrates any one of these points or not because you've only got 30 seconds. I think not, right? There isn't like a haiku in there or something. I think this would be done, which is just basically it's, the best is not yet to come. It is not a place in the future or a memory languishing in the past. It is not a trade with the present or born in fair weather or a dream in fetters. It is not waiting for planets to align, deffered for an unpospicious time when your ship can finally sail. It is anytime, anyhow, every day, any place, anywhere, everywhere, always. The best is the old constant bet on yourself. Oh, I'm so glad you read that. It gives the audience a chance to see how delightful you help us show up. And I love your language. And there is a, you dance with words, Shaku. It's a real joy to read and be with you. I want the audience to know that we'll have to leave it there and you have a website and you coach and you craft and you dream and you help others through this journey of the alchemy of the heart. So I really want to let people know to take a moment at the end here and stop the video and take your contact information. But for now we'll have to leave it there. I want to let the audience know that you've been watching The Creative Life on Think Tech Hawaii. Today I have been discussing how to answer the call of the creative quest through the alchemy of your heart with our guest Shaku Selvakumar and Mahalo Shaku for joining us. And Mahalo to you our viewers for tuning in. Find your host Phyllis Bleece and we will be back soon with another edition of The Creative Life. Aloha.