Living Life as Art

Recently, in a Podcast interview with Carrie Rowan (Look for the Good), we discussed the power of creativity for healing, transformation, and even manifestation.

I spontaneously referenced a song I wrote back in 1996, Living Life as Art.

I was 26, living in Phoenix, Arizona, in a season that I can now see was quietly shaping so much of who I would become. I had just begun my healing arts practice, and my days were a blend of serving others, learning, exploring, and listening inward. I was hiking in the desert mountains, writing poetry late into the night, and letting music move through me in a way that felt both new and deeply familiar. 

Using a handful of cords, I found such simple pleasure in strumming my guitar and finding my voice. 

Around that same time, I was studying with a Jewish Rabbi, which opened another dimension of inquiry and reverence. Within his sacred community of spiritual aspirants, I studied mysticism and practiced meditation, which brought me into a more intimate relationship with the Divine.

I found magic and discovery in each moment. I was young, alive, and living life as a creative, inspired act of devotion. 

Quite naturally, I gained a growing awareness that life was not just something to manage or figure out, but something to participate in. Something to co-create.

I didn’t have the same language for it then that I do now. I wasn’t thinking in terms of “creative process” or “conscious creation.” I just knew that when I got still and playful, something real would meet me there. 

And from that place, words would come. Songs and art arrived. I touched an intuitive inner guidance that felt both personal and universal.

Below is one of the songs I wrote during those instrumental years:

Living Life As Art 

When I look into myself,
I feel love.
And to that, I do pray,
Please show me who I am.

In the stillness of my heart
Lives a song to be sung,
And poetry recited—
Living life as art.

I sing: be easy,
Relax, and simply breathe.
I sing: it’s time to trust,
And let my true self free.

So I ask of the True Artist,
Make me an instrument—
To fill this world
With the light that I am.

In the peace and the passion,
There are forms to be sculpted,
Gardens to be grown,
And a dance to be danced.

This life is a musical,
This world is my palette—
A stage for a play,
For my heart to express each day.

So beat with your own rhythm,
And color with your shades,
And write with any words
What it is that your heart would say.

Reading it now, I can feel the sincerity of that younger version of me. There’s a prayer woven through it, a desire to know who I am and to be in service to something greater. 

Life itself is creative, and we are not separate from that creative force.

There’s a message in the song, “be easy, relax, and simply breathe,” and I can feel how much that was something I was learning in real time. A way of relating to life that allowed inspiration to move, rather than trying to force direction or certainty.

In my pure innocence and wisdom, I knew that how I moved through my days, how I created, how I expressed, was part of something larger unfolding.

Looking back, I can see how foundational that time was. 

It was the beginning of understanding that we are creators—not just of projects, businesses, or relationships, but of the quality of our experience. 

That inspiration and expression are not reserved for certain moments or certain people, but are part of our nature.

Life as a musical.
Life as a palette.
Life as a stage.

Not something to get right, but something to engage with.

This song feels like a younger voice pointing toward something I’m living into now—the idea that we can partner with the Divine in how we live, create, and express.

That we can listen for what wants to come through us, and trust it enough to give it form.

And maybe that’s the invitation that still feels true all these years later. 

To consider that your life is not separate from creativity, but an expression of it. 

That the way you move, choose, speak, and build is part of a larger unfolding.

Not perfect. Not polished. Not finished.

Alive.