Last week, at the conference of the Writers’ Union of Canada, I was a member of a panel discussing the topic of creativity (as “All in Your Head”). Here are the notes from which I spoke:

I’d like to talk about the creative process as a psychological journey. And I’d like to begin with the title of our conversation today: It’s All in Your Head. In a sense, I agree that it’s all in your head. The entire universe is in our heads — at least, it is if you believe in quantum physics, or if you subscribe to ideas from various philosophical traditions.

But consciousness and creativity are about more than the head. To my way of thinking, the psyche is the whole body. All out stories live there, and the themes and narratives to which we are drawn have as much to do with deep bodily instincts as they do with artistic or intellectual impulses.

The roller coaster (as the description of our panel discussion calls the creative process) might be the convolutions of the digestive system, the labyrinths of veins and arteries spiraling to and from the heart, the tracks of our bones.

In my view, the creative process is an inward journey that is also a mode of healing, or of philosophical inquiry, or of self-awareness. And the reliable guide of this journey, perhaps the only guide we have, is the body.

In my own work, I often sense my body as a map stories: tales of my childhood lie along my back, my travels occupy the spaces between my ribs, my dreams and visions are gathered up inside the bones of my arms. I think of these maps as geographies of the sacred.

I have written about illness and injury and the spiritualities to be found in those experiences. I have written about my hands, my joints, my belly, my skin, my bones. I try not to conclude that this is simple narcissism. Instead, I imagine that I am like those ancient Taoists who perceived the universe to be within themselves. For them, the body was a replica, in miniature, of all of creation.

I like this view. It’s an old view, and unfashionable in these days of external influences and global forces. But I don’t believe, really, in external forces. Instead I believe that we are the world, each of us, and to understand ourselves is to understand that world. In turn, to heal ourselves is to heal the world also.

For me, one of the troubling aspects of the arts cultures today involves the tendency to dismiss, or to be cynical about, self-awareness and personal development. The idea persists, among many artists and writers, that the creative edge derives from psychological turbulence — that a chaotic mind and fractured heart are resources instead of impediments. Personal growth, so goes this argument, will dull the intensity of creative expression.

My work as a writer is almost entirely devoted to the themes of self-awareness, so I am naturally biased toward a view that endorses the usefulness of psychological health. I do not believe that a troubled mind sees clearly; and for me, clarity of vision is the essence of creative work.

But the corrosive mythology of the unstable artist persists, and it has wrought more damage to the arts of our time than any other single force. The arts have always been instruments of the healing impulses in human society. To divorce the creative process from imperatives of personal and social healing is to break the covenant that society offers in trust to the arts.

We could be doing more, I think, to encourage values of self-awareness and self-inquiry among artists of all stripes — and particularly for writers, who historically have been strong advocates of the psychological quest: Shakespeare, Hildegard of Bingen, William Blake, Friedrich Nietzsche, Joseph Conrad, Ursula LeGuin, Jorge Luis Borges, Chinua Achebe, and many others.

The inward journey is archetypal, and is the home territory of the writer. Until recently, we claimed this territory more than we do so now. And especially now, in a world increasingly terrified of introspection, the contributions of writers — of a particular character of writing, what might be called the mode of the artist/philosopher — is more relevant than ever.

As practitioners of that high art, one thing only is required of us: to look inward, to listen to the bodymind with its many messages. And I suspect that for most of us the messages are of an urgent nature. They compel us to recognize that we are the world, that it’s all inside of us, that our inner life is a map of the cosmos. This correspondence — between the personal and the universal — is the reason that authentic writers and artists speak with a particular kind of authority. We have tried to recognize ourselves in everything.

Mostly we fail at this task. But once in a while, when we get out of our own way, when we circumvent both our insecurities and our arrogance, we get it right: the bodymind speaks through the veil of our scattered consciousness, the words flow onto the page, and we approach something akin to truthfulness.