3:16 Being and Becoming: The Everyday Art of Creation

Being and Becoming: The Everyday Art of Creation: Shownotes

Welcome to another episode of the GoCreative! Podcast with novelist and poet Orna Ross. This week, Orna explores the ancient and immediate dance between being and becoming. Drawing on inspiration from Irish poet Eavan Boland, she explores what's now and what's next, the pause and the pulse of moment and momentum. And what the rhythm of this mystery, which underpins every act of conscious creation, means for you–here, now, today.

Episode Overview

00:00 – Welcome & Context
How a line from Eavan Boland sparked reflection on the creative dynamic of being and becoming.
03:04 – What is Being?
Being as the creative presence of now—fully inhabiting your body, mind, and spirit in the current moment.
06:18 – What is Becoming
Becoming as the movement of desire and growth—our yearning to grow into what we are not yet.
09:30 – Interconnection, Not Sequence
Why being and becoming aren’t linear stages—but live in constant, cyclical relationship.
17:11 – The Problem with Arrival
The cultural obsession with “finishing” and future-fixing—and how it cuts us off from creative aliveness.
21:42 – Practices for Being
Free writing, walking without destination, deep listening—practical tools to access the creative present.
25:20 – Exercises for Integration
A writing prompt to explore your being and becoming using the five senses and intuitive awareness.
29:01 – Poetic Closing: “The Egg and the Seed”
A reflective poem on the mysteries of the present moment and the creative urge.
31:45 – Final Thoughts
Creativity as the dance between presence and transformation—between the egg of now and the seed of next.

Practices to Explore Being & Becoming

1. Free Writing with the Five Senses
Set a timer for 15 minutes. Describe your current moment using sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Then ask: What am I becoming?

2. Walk Without Destination
Take a walk simply for the sake of movement and sensation—no goal, no productivity. Just presence.

3. Listen Without Opinion
In conversation, especially with differing views, practice noticing your thoughts while choosing to simply listen.

4. Inner Gaze Practice
Pause in a joyful moment and think: “Look at me, right now.” Turn your awareness inward and allow the fullness of the moment to register.

5. Intuition Check-In
After a creative session, ask: What wants to happen next? Let your inner knowing—not your task list—guide the next step.

6. Creative Presence Prompt
Try this journaling sequence:

“Right now, I am…” (Being)
“I am becoming…” (Becoming)

See what flows through.

Key Takeaways (Full Transcript Below)

Being is the full presence of now—inhabiting yourself completely in time, space, and sensation.
Becoming is the drive to grow, learn, and change—fuelled by desire and intention.
These forces are not separate stages but a creative rhythm to observe and nurture.
True creative flow requires noticing, not just doing—showing up fully, then allowing movement.
The resistance we meet in becoming shows us where we need to dare, not just dream.
Conscious creation is not about control—but about aligning with life’s unfolding.

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Transcript:

Orna Ross: Hello creatives and creativists, and welcome back to the show. Today I'd like to talk to you about the concepts of being and becoming key creative concepts. I came into this, this week. I was landed in by my own work. I was reading a book by the great Irish poet, Eavan Boland, A Journey With Two Maps: Becoming A Woman Poet. It's a book of essays. My kind of thing, maybe yours, maybe not. If you do like that kind of book about writing, about, you know, the heart and soul, the depth of writing and exploring memory and tradition and all that kind of thing, Boland is absolutely brilliant at, these sort of critical and personal analysis.

And I was enjoying it very much. Then I hit upon this sentence about, this is a book of being and becoming, close to the start. I was arrested by that for a second and realized. That was one of the major themes of the book I'm writing at the moment

crowd of Stars, it was a real revelation. One of those things that comes along and kind of opens everything up and sends you back through the book you're writing slightly shifting and. Changing sentences to ensure that theme comes more into awareness because I'm in the deepening stage with that book.

So it was one of those kinds of things that happens in writer's life where the right book comes into your hand at the right time and gives you what you need. But then I started thinking about it, more broadly, for the Go Create a podcast and the whole idea of, you know, as creativists we're not just, focusing on creative work as I do as a writer. You may not be doing anything like that at all in your work, but as creativists, we are applying the same creative process and the same creative principles to life itself. And of course it's a really deep and useful, way to look at, who we are and where we are in our lives, what we're doing as we are making and creating in a conscious way. So, yeah, I thought I'd talk it through here to see exactly what I think, which is what often happens on the Go Create podcast. So let me first of all define what. I mean by these two terms, which could be very wooly, and could incorporate all sorts of things.

For me, being is who and what you are now. The person you have become, but inhabited. Being for me has an awareness in it where you are. Right now and the time you are in. So it is of this moment. It incorporates your physiology right now, your psychology and your spirituality, your full mind, body, spirit being in presence to sort of enter being, to be, to really be, to fully be as a creative human requires that creative presence that moment of awareness. I am who I am here in this moment, in this room, surrounded by the things I'm surrounded by, externally, feeling the things that I'm feeling inside internally. And that is this moment, and that is being.

Becoming then is the growth and the yearning and the learning that is happening in this moment.

So becoming is almost part of being, but then of course being is part of becoming. They are deeply attached, but becoming is desire, our wanting, that propels us forward. That, leads us to explore and to learn and to grow and to process. So the act of becoming is, action whereas being is about stillness and awareness.

And Boland when she talks about, being and becoming, she names them in that order and questions that. She questions it and, says that. Perhaps it would be more natural to think of becoming and then being, I'll go into that a little bit more in a moment.

But what the way she puts it is the disorder is part of the subject. In other words, the way in which being and becoming relate to each other is not linear. It's not, I become, I become, I become, and then I am. That's not how creativity works. Being is something we achieve in each moment.

Becoming is what we are doing towards the next moment. Being is like the egg of now, and it is opened by the seed of next. That's the great mystery of creation product you could call it and process if you want to get more kind of scientific about it.

Going creative embodies both all the time. Why we build into go create a planning and awareness of our accomplishments as well as our intentions feeds into this notion of being and becoming. Our review of the previous quarter, the previous month or week or yesterday, that's our kind of stopping and looking at the being of this moment where we are now, what we have actually, accomplished.

In that time period, that's a built in, factor in planning in order to plan the next quarter, the next month, the next week, or today or tomorrow.

So yeah, it's important I think it's really important, actually. The more I thought about it, the more I realized that because we live in a world that's outta balance completely, we're all about, and particularly creatives in creative communities, everybody's talking about goals, purpose, driving forward, aiming for…. we're always looking at the goal and that's future based and, you know, there are dangers in that because if we're thinking always that we must arrive at either, you know, a finished book or some other finished version of our work, or indeed ourselves, you know, this self-improvement thing, that someday we'll be fixed and then we can be happy, then we can feel valid.

There's a real danger in that because, it's not how it actually is. It's only one half of things. If we lean too heavily into that half, as many of us do, and as our culture trains us to do, then we're never really going creative. So the point about conscious creation is that it's never finished

maybe at the moment of death, maybe not even then. So we need to let go of the idea of some sort of future arrival, that we'll be happy when the book is done, or when the kids are raised, or when the house is finished, we've got to move into our current arrival.

Noticing, waking up. These are challenges for us in each unfolding moment. It isn't about dropping our goals, it isn't about not having creative intentions, but it is the rhythm of showing up and letting go both together. Getting a little bit more practical now and about how we apply this in our daily.

As we go about our work, as we go about our living we need to pause in order to fully be, we need moments of. Stillness and presence and attention. That's not a new thing here on the Go Creative podcast. We're often talking about that, uh, being in flow, coming into our breath, getting into alignment with the moment.

There are lots of meditative practices, receptive practices, and I often share such practices here on the podcast. Free writing, writing without a goal, one of the most useful one that's embedded completely into my, creative work and creative practice is, is a fantastic, resource for me and I believe for everybody,

without a particular outcome in mind. Similarly, walking without a destination, just walking to walk, the pleasure of walking. Another practice is listening. Without an opinion. So allowing what is to be without bringing in the opinionating mind, listening to another person, particularly if they're saying something you don't really agree with.

Observing the opinionating mind, but not allowing that to be your full response, containing it within a much broader and deeper listening. So being is. Anything but passive. It's not just about, sitting around, it's about showing up. And when we show up for one moment, the magic is that we become aware in some kind of way of everything, everything that's happened, everything that's within us and beyond us, and everything that's, brought us to here.

Yeah, everything that's contained in us here now, and that whole idea of our past. So there's a sort of a womb of memory here that we enter when we hold the moment, when we allow ourselves to just be. So, another exercise you can do is detach slightly from yourself and say to yourself, look at me.

Look at me writing my book or look at me holding my grandchild. Look at me, lost in the woods, whatever it might be. This isn't narcissism, what it is, is about engaging that bigger you that connects you to everything else.

So just to turn your gaze upon yourself and the moment that you're in during the good times. Because, you know, this happens naturally in the bad times. When something awful happens. Look at me. I'm not, well, look at me. I don't feel good today. Look at me and what so and so just did to me and, I'm so angry.

Or look at me grieving my, lost loved one or whatever it might be, when the bad times come and they will. We naturally. Observe ourselves, but when the good times are here, they go unnoticed. And so that's what we're doing as we consciously, move into being. And the thing is that, you know, if people are imprisoned or moved away from their

usual situation, displaced, any sort of enforced removal from what was your day-to-day life leads you to look back at that day-to-day life and to notice all those small things. They always say it's the small, everyday, daily things that they miss. So being is about turning up for them when they're not missing and, being aware.

Becoming, we're much more used to, you know, here in, in the Go Creative! Podcast also in creative worlds generally for, you know, in the creative entrepreneurial space, or anywhere where creatives gather, we talk a lot about the urge to grow, to reach to refined process. To make something or be part of making something, that's bigger than ourselves.

That's something we're very used to. But that doesn't mean just because we're used to talking about it and thinking about it, that we have, ease with. Becoming by definition will bring with it, some kind of resistance. If we want to become something else, then we are inviting in change.

Once we invite in change, you know, the next want that wells up insides us. And leads us forward, but also asks us to do something that we're not used to doing if we were used to doing it, we would be that thing already. So we're not that thing yet. We are becoming it. And there is some part of us and maybe numerous parts of us that are going to resist.

And in that resistance, we learn the difference between dreaming and daring to actually do.

So being aware, of the attachment between being and becoming how fundamentally attached they are, that there is no fight, nothing to fix or resolve between them we just need to notice. It's a simple act. It's very easy. We slip into noticing, that attachment between being and becoming: that is the creative way, when we are observant of both.

And if we locate ourselves within that attachment that stops us being from being overly attached to an outcome, overly certain too early in the process of what the outcome should be the drive of the ego, that push can take over and become unbalanced and is not the most creative way to achieve anything.

Keeps us out of flow sometimes, and brings in the critical mind sometimes, leads to such a level of resistance in our parts that don't want to change, such a level of resistance that we self-sabotage. So going back into that moment each time of where we are, is the key to the creative way.

One possible prompt for you this week.

One possible prompt is to turn your gaze into this moment, with your free writing notebook, open before you and use your five senses. This will ground you in the moment that you are in. So do a session of free writing, 15 minutes, set your clock and use your five senses to describe just what's around you.

First of all, what you're seeing, what you're feeling also on the inside, the outer sense of hearing. And again, you know what's rising within you. So an inner and outer exploration, the five outer senses and the inner senses also of imagination and intuition. Bringing all of that into your free writing.

Once you've. Written where you are right now, the being bit, what you're feeling internally, what you're feeling externally, then ask yourself the question, what am I becoming? What wants to be received? What wants to be risked in this moment? You can just begin the sentence in your free writing with: right now I am. And just state a summary of your being and then write I am becoming, and then off you go and see what is actually coming for you. Because doing this freewriting often refines what we feel we are making, and again, brings more consciousness to the process, which is what it's all about.

And so I'll finish, with a poem about being and becoming.

And I've called it for now. It's a work in progress. Not quite finished, but finished enough to share with you, and I've called it The Egg and the Seed,

The little cafe window is raining on the inside. Condensation condensing through the hiss and burble of the coffee machine. Morning is marked with a hundred cups. On the way here a black bird in a tree opened its throat to the rising light. Memory is a womb. A moment cannot explain itself. It arrives, the smell of bread at the edge of hunger, then it's lost to the taste of being eaten.

I sit now. My pen is waiting fire in its blade, an idea aching to leap over the scent of coffee, before it is imbibed. Inhaled.

Digestion occurs beneath the ribs. Belly fills with hunger as it is emptied up food. Sword and Saint, idea and incense, man and woman circle my table. In my seated body, saliva stirs. The egg of now. The seed of next. My being and my becoming. I put down my coffee cup. I pick up my pen.

Thanks so much for listening. Until next time, don't forget to go creative. Bye-bye.

ORNA ROSS