Creativity

​CREATIVITY
Your personal creativity is fueled by your imagination. We would define your imagination as the ability to conjure up images, ideas, methods, interpretations and appearances that are unexpected and original. You are able imagine many things that you have not seen or heard of previously; you can innovate because you can imagine.
Imagination is one of the great gifts of being human. It can bridge non-physical realms with physical realms by inspiring you to create. When you really investigate the nature of imagination it becomes clear that imagining something is a magical display of the mind’s ability to organize phenomena that may or may not have any substantiality, into something that appears to be substantial or appears to be able to achieve some state of substantiality.
We suggest that the imagination blossoms when it is given the opportunity to take some form. That means, when you imagine something and you make it, build it, write it, compose it in some way—create it--then the imagination “muscle” gets strengthened. If the imagination never fuels something creative into manifestation, it can languish and find itself diminishing.
We would say that creativity is the outward expression of the usually more seemingly inward energy of the imagination. Imagination renders everything internally, while creativity renders externally. The information used by the imagination comes from perceptions stored in memory most often. No sensations are necessary as input for the imagination to work, in other words it is not necessary to have a flower in front of you to imagine a flower. You can invoke the imagined flower image at any time and in any place.
Creativity flourishes with an experimental attitude, unconditional self-acceptance, self- confidence, and focus which we identify as the four main obscurations of One Life Awareness. By noticing if any of these obscurations are at play, and perhaps hiding your deeper view, letting go of any aspect of these obscurations may result in an expanded sense of your creativity. That is to say, creative expression can cultivate awareness, and can dissolve what might seem to obscure your most natural state of awareness. Creativity often prepares the ground for One Life Awareness to flourish. One Life Awareness is indeed the ground of everything, and may actually be noticed through imagining and creating consciously. It is in this manner, that conscious creation of any sort serves you in your ever-unfolding relaxing into One Life Awareness.
Having an experimental attitude as an outlook beneficial for a creative endeavor might seem obvious. However, many of you approach your creative process with a fixed notion of what must transpire to be successful. We suggest that you eliminate an inflexible fixation on either the process or the outcome in order to experience your presence in the process. Approach your creativity with the idea that it is all an experiment, that whatever you are going to do, you can shift and change and adapt to whatever unfolds as the creation. Try a few things out—don’t be afraid of mistakes and just experiment. This is true for life as well as for any creative project. Make choices in every moment to allow the unfolding as well as to spontaneously incorporate whatever you believe is your plan.
Unconditional self-acceptance is the most important condition to develop for all creative activities. Lack of self-acceptance, feeling full of self-doubt, will cause you to be hesitant and unavailable to your natural state of awareness. For example, you cannot create anything of value if you begin with thoughts of your own lack of value. We are especially speaking to how you handle what might appear to be at first a mistake. If you are self-accepting, this does not unleash a barrage of self-criticism. What seems at first to be a mistake can become the foundation for something new to arise in the process. How you work with your “mistakes” in a creative activity is good practice for how you can work with whatever you might perceive as “mistakes” in your life.
Self-confidence—not arrogance or a lack of responsiveness to what comes up—flows from unconditional self-acceptance. Self-confidence cannot be rigid or fixed, but must underwrite your actions while you also maintain humility. Self-confidence is what allows one action to flow to the next. From this sense of flow a sense of freedom arises. It is easier to fully immerse yourself in your presence and the flow of actions if you are also able to trust and have confidence in yourself. Connect with your presence, your being, and your imagination, and the active part of creating will naturally flow.
Focus is an important piece of creating. Not a narrowing of the aperture kind of focus, but the sense that you have some direction and some ability to “stay on task” and complete in whatever fashion you complete, something that you set out to do. This kind of focus is akin to intention. Focus cannot be contrived or efforted. The focus we refer to will allow completion to feel like a spontaneous result manifests out of enthusiasm rather than out of an intense push to achieve an end.
Now you are always creating. Creativity extends to all aspects of living life. You create based on thoughts, ideas and perceptions, and many of these creations inform the nature of your relative experience in your world all the time. Let yourself imagine something, then consciously create it by bringing it into some kind of form as a practice of Awareness and Presence. Creativity has more to do with your state of being, your Awareness, than really anything else. This is why it is a good practice. If you find yourself feeling un-creative in any moment, stop to see if you are lacking in any of the attributes described. A lack of any of them can be at the center of your feeling stuck or blocked creatively. Look within, dive deep and then just breathe and know you are loved! It is always that simple!

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