Carolyn Elliott - Awaken Your Genius: A Seven-Step Path to Freeing Your Creativity and Manifesting Your Dreams

More praise for Awaken Your Genius

In a voice that might remind you of a spritely Jane Austen, Elliott guides her reader on a nimble journey in which she illuminates with insight, logic, and love the path toward awakening your genius. Its a spiritual quest aided in the romantic ideals of truth and beauty, where wisdom and whimsy merge as Elliot guides us on the path toward hearing our own hearts call, revealing in the process the reality of a wisdom-deficient world, while simultaneously leading us on the heros journey of creativity, innocence, and love.

Robin Gunkel, writer, regional coordinator for Evolver Baltimore, and graduate of the Jack Kerouc School of Disembodied Poetics

Also by Carolyn Elliott
The Arcana
The Poetical Remains of the Late
Mrs. Shivshakti Khattananda

Copyright 2013 by Carolyn Elliott. All rights reserved. No portion of this book, except for brief review, may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwisewithout written permission of the publisher. For information contact Evolver Editions c/o North Atlantic Books.

Published by Evolver Editions, an imprint of North Atlantic Books
P.O. Box 12327
Berkeley, California 94712

Art direction and cover design by michaelrobinsonnyc.com
Cover image: Natura Nihil Fit Frustra (mixed media, 16 x 20), by
Pierce Marratto,

Awaken Your Genius: A Seven-Step Path to Freeing Your Creativity and Manifesting Your Dreams is sponsored by the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a nonprofit educational corporation whose goals are to develop an educational and cross-cultural perspective linking various scientific, social, and artistic fields; to nurture a holistic view of arts, sciences, humanities, and healing; and to publish and distribute literature on the relationship of mind, body, and nature.

North Atlantic Books publications are available through most bookstores. For further information, visit our website at www.northatlanticbooks.com or call 800-733-3000.

The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows:

Elliott, Carolyn, 1984
Awaken your genius : a seven-step path to freeing your creativity and manifesting your dreams / Carolyn Elliott.
pages cm
eISBN: 978-1-58394-656-5
1. Self-actualization (Psychology) 2. Self-realization. 3. Inspiration. 4. Creative ability. I. Title.
BF637.S4.E44 2013
158.1dc23
2013004985

v3.1

To all the dear, crazy geniuses in the world.
Especially to my mother and father, Linda and
Carmon Elliott, who nurtured my genius with
their own. And to my brother, Damon Elliott,
whos smarter than he looks.

Deepest thanks to the Evolver Network and its cofounders, Daniel Pinchbeck and Jonathan-Talat Phillips, whose tireless efforts to bring together evolving hearts made this book and my own evolution possible. Rich gratitude goes also to Charles Eisenstein and Lewis Hyde, who helped me to think deeply about the nature of the gift world, and to Rupert Sheldrake, who taught us all about morphic resonance.

Most reverent thanks also to my intellectual, spiritual, and poetic predecessors whose work and example help me to live every day: Ralph Waldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, Johann Goethe, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Thomas De Quincey, William Blake, Sren Kierkegaard, William James, Walt Whitman, Emily Dickinson, Alice Bailey, Annie Besant, H. Emilie Cady, Madame Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner, Colette, Simone de Beauvoir, Jean-Paul Sartre, Martin Heidegger, Rainer Maria Rilke, Zora Neale Hurston, Joseph Campbell, Carl Jung, James Hillman, Thomas Moore, Ken Keyes Jr., Edward Hirsch, Robert Bly, Pablo Neruda, Allen Ginsberg, Julia Cameron, Marianne Williamson, Elizabeth Gilbert, Anne Carson, Martha Beck, Rob Brezsny, Brian Browne Walker, Jane Hirshfield, Robert Thurman, Chgyam Trungpa, Lama Thubten Yeshe, Reginald Ray, Acharya Adam Lobel, Stephen Mitchell, Pema Chodron, Byron Katie, and to all the dreamers in my Reading Poetry class at the University of Pittsburgh and the Facebook group that I facilitate, the Dreamers Tantra.

I also offer thanks to a whole vast stream of astounding geniuses who touched my heart profoundly with their friendship, wisdom, love, and madness throughout the idea-brewing, writing, and making of this book: Andy Lapin, Sophie Batchelor, Rebecca Wigginton, Frances Frasier, Bruce Elliott, Julie Moore, Robin Clarke, Joshua Zelesnick, Becca Mertz, Chris Miller, Carlos Antonio Delgado, Allison Delgado, Lucia Tedesco, Robin Gunkel, Adam Elenbaas, Magenta Imagination Healer, Meg Rivers, Jonathan-Talat Phillips, Remi Gurcak, Brian Duffy, Donna Greco, Elaine Holmes, Bill Holmes, Daniel Joseph Montano, Jessica Duval, Sara Wetmore, Noah Owens, Danielle Laubach, Susan Richter, Eric Venuto, Debadeepta Dey, Annie Derek, Aaron Fraser, Chad Mosseso, Sheryl Laffey, Danny Laffey, Gloria Viveros, Terry Boring, Conor Keelan, Brian Hussar, Christopher Comp, Jesse Scheck, Stephanie Pinsky, Levi Marcus, Tait McKenzie Johnson, Simon Zealot, Alex Baker, Josh Lee, Brittany Bankert, Allen Hart, Susan Richter, Phil Osophical, James Gyre, Laura Gyre, Matthu Stull, Christa Brashier, Mike Sablowsky, Poetry Pilgrim Crystal Hoffman, Michael Sneaky Mike Lbbert, Caroline Savery, Sigh V. Meltingstar, John Chriest, Eliza Bishop, Dean Cercone Jr., North Star, Susan Rose, T. Klinkhamer (YOU = LOVE!), Isaac Hill, Thomas Coleman, Cathy Rescher, Jane Bullard, Chase Connolly, Hannah Dubrow, Molly Greenfield, Michael Powers, Verity Grace, Julia Walker, Erin Dougherty, Josh Munsch, Aaron Gordon, Julia Johnson, Ketan Bakrania, Thomas Zimmer, Mikio Akagi, David Teot, Betsy Reiling, Matthew Keener, and Chad Whitacre.

And more endless thanks to the best and most challenging writing, reading, and thinking teachers a woman could ask for: Ruth Dines, Mara Creegan, Kristin Kovacic, Jane McCafferty, Hilary Masters, Terrance Hayes, Jim Daniels, Jon Klancher, Marian Aguiar, Paul Hopper, Barbara Johnstone, Alan Kennedy, Peggy Knapp, Kathy Newman, Don Bialostosky, Paul Kameen, Nancy Glazener, Susan Smith, Phil Smith, Paul Bov, Ben Lerner, Toi Derricotte, Mariolina Salvatori, Dawn Lundy-Martin, and Marianne Novy.

Im a dreamer who works with magic people (also known as dreamers) to help them awaken their genius and be more magic. Is that crystal clear? Probably not. Allow me to explain.

In ancient Rome a genius was the guiding, instructive spirit associated with a house or a place or a person. It was something that sprang up and showed you how to do things that were beyond your conscious knowledge. The philosopher Immanuel Kant, in his Critique of Judgement, said that out of this early definition arose the notion that genius was a talent for producing that for which no definite rule can be given. In other words, when weve produced something out of our genius, we dont know how to tell others how to create exactly the same result, because what weve produced is somehow essential to and indivisible from our own best self.

Genius is a generative energy that manifests creations that are original, alive, and individual