THE KEY TO CREATIVITY

“Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.”

– Albert Einstein

Do you know the key to creativity?

It rhymes with weed. It produces the oak tree. We often eat it or grind it up for flour. It can mean cause or origination. You guessed it. It is SEED.

Our minds love to associate one thing to another. But as we get stuck in very fixed patterns of thinking, we think of fewer and fewer connections. We are ruled by habits, associations and automatic responses. So we must stimulate our thinking with lots of different seeds to chart new paths in our brains.

“Just as our eyes need light in order to see, our minds need ideas in order to conceive.”

– Napoleon Hill

“Anyone can look for fashion in a boutique or history in a museum. The creative explorer looks for history in a hardware store and fashion in an airport.”

– Robert Wieder

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Do you love yourself?

“At the heart of personality is the need to feel a sense of being lovable without having to qualify for that acceptance.”

– Dr. Paul Tournier

How do you see yourself as unlovable?

Take a few minutes to write down why you perceive yourself to be unlovable. Look at the list and see if you can identify where those characterizations originated. Can you pinpoint old messages from parents, teachers, and friends that led you to negative conclusions about yourself? Are those messages valid today?

The beliefs we adopt as children usually don’t hold when we view them objectively as adults. Can you let them go? Can you begin to see yourself as a unique expression of life, a genuine gift to the world?

“You, yourself, as much as anybody in the entire universe, deserve your love and affection.”

– Buddha

“Limitless like the ocean are your excellent qualities.”

– Dalai Lama

Seek your limits and beyond

“If you’re proactive, you don’t have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.”

– Stephen Covey

Connect with the edge, the unknown, of your experience. Allow this pull towards unexplored territory to take you to new dimensions of yourself. Allow life to touch you in new ways. For this is how we truly live life. Become more alive as you grow through your consciousness barriers. Ask questions that seek answers beyond yourself. The depth of life is revealed as you go further into it.

Nothing is lost upon a man who is bent upon growth; nothing wasted on one who is always preparing for – life by keeping eyes, mind and heart open to nature, men, books, experience – and what he gathers serves him at unexpected moments in unforeseen ways.”

– Hamilton Wright Mabie

“Nurture great thoughts, for you will never go higher than your thoughts.”

–Benjamin Disraeli

“If you’re proactive, you don’t have to wait for circumstances or other people to create perspective expanding experiences. You can consciously create your own.”

– Stephen Covey

Connect with the edge, the unknown, of your experience. Allow this pull towards unexplored territory to take you to new dimensions of yourself. Allow life to touch you in new ways. For this is how we truly live life. Become more alive as you grow through your consciousness barriers. Ask questions that seek answers beyond yourself. The depth of life is revealed as you go further into it.

Nothing is lost upon a man who is bent upon growth; nothing wasted on one who is always preparing for – life by keeping eyes, mind and heart open to nature, men, books, experience – and what he gathers serves him at unexpected moments in unforeseen ways.”

– Hamilton Wright Mabie

“Nurture great thoughts, for you will never go higher than your thoughts.”

–Benjamin Disraeli

Ordinary can be awesome

“Everything in life can be nourishing. Everything can bless us, but we’ve got to be there for the blessing to occur. Being present with quality is a decision we are invited to make each day.”

– MacRina Wiederkehr

Spirit is not only found in holy places, prayer and meditation, yoga and retreats. It is everywhere — in your relationships, your work, your daily chores, in nature … if you are willing to connect deeply with your environment.

Open to connect with something and you open to its essence, its purpose and meaning. There are other dimensions of reality below what we normally see and hear. Open to the mystery.

“We live in a world of theophanies. Holiness comes wrapped in the ordinary. There are burning bushes all around you. Every tree is full of angels. Hidden beauty is waiting in every crumb. Life wants to lead you from crumbs to angels, but this can happen only if you are willing to unwrap the ordinary by staying with it long enough to harvest its treasure.”

– Macrina Wiederkehr

The face in the mirror

“Our inability to see beauty doesn’t suggest in the slightest that beauty is not there. Rather, it suggests that we are not looking carefully enough or with broad enough perspective to see the beauty.”

– Rabbi Harold Kushner

Who are you? You can gaze at your reflection in a mirror but you’re not likely to see your true likeness. You are beautiful, unique, perfect. Do you see that?

The world needs you to see how whole and complete you are — now. Can you begin to own your divinity? The world needs you to know who you really are so you can be the mirror for others.

“The sun shines not on us but in us. The rivers flow not past, but through us, thrilling, tingling, vibrating every fiber and cell of the substance of our bodies, making them glide and sing.”

– John Muir

Follow your own path

“Life is complex. Each one of us must make his own path through life. There are no self-help manuals, no formulas, no easy answers. The right road for one is the wrong road for another … The journey of life is not paved in blacktop; it is not brightly lit, and it has no road signs. It is a rocky path through the wilderness.”

– M. Scott Peck

We each have our own pathways to develop both personally and spiritually. They are based on our character and past experiences. No one else can identify our paths for us. Tune in to your inner guidance system and follow its direction.

“What every man needs, regardless of his job or the kind of work he is doing, is a vision of what his place is and may be. He needs an objective and a purpose. He needs a feeling and a belief that he has some worthwhile thing to do. What this is no one can tell him. It must be his own creation.”

– Joseph M. Dodge

You know the way

“Woe to the man whose heart has not learned while young to hope, to love … and to put its trust in life.”

– Joseph Conrad

How deeply do you trust your own guidance?

Always trust that you know what’s best for you. To move forward in your life, gather information from the “experts,” consider how their advice relates to your situation and then act only on what feels right for you. You are the only expert for your own life.

“I trust so much in the power of the heart and the soul; I know that the answer to what we need to do next is in our own hearts. All we have to do is listen, then take that one step further and trust what we hear. We will be taught what we need to learn.”

– Melody Beattie

“I never know what the next lesson is going to be, because we’re not supposed to know; we’re supposed to trust ourselves to discover it.”

– Melody Beattie

How are you sabotaging yourself?

“If you play it safe in life you’ve decided that you don’t want to grow any more.”

– Shirley Hufstedler

How are you sabotaging your potential for change?

We unconsciously use defence mechanisms to shield us from situations we perceive to be scary or painful. A part of you may want to grow and change, but another part may be resisting because change always moves you into new territory in your thinking and emotions.

If you find you are getting anxious, fearful, angry, frustrated, dismissive or unmotivated, then defence mechanisms are at work. Watch for them and know them to be signs of fear that wants to hold you back. Then courageously move through them.

“I have never been contained except I made the prison.”

– Mary Evans

Life comes with problems

 

“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin — real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time still to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”

– Fr. Alfred D’Souza

Life always brings problems. We really can’t live without them.

And so it helps to shift our perspective. We can stop trying to avoid the problems. We can stop feeling victimized by what’s happening. Instead, we can consciously work with the challenge of the moment to learn more about ourselves and the world. When we make this shift in attitude, we discover ourselves to be strong and powerful.

“Every lesson is a widening and deepening of consciousness. It is a stretching of the mind beyond its conceptual limits and a stretching of the heart beyond its emotional boundaries. It is a bringing of unconscious material into consciousness, a healing of past wounds, and a discovery of new faith and trust.”

– Paul Ferrini

Three levels of prosperity

“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.”

– Woody Allen

To become more prosperous, we need to change on at least two levels. First, we must ensure our financial affairs are in order. We need an income that at least covers our expenses. And we need a foundation of habits, tools and skills so we achieve some financial stability in our day-to-day experience.

Second, we must become aware of the beliefs we hold around money and prosperity. If we unconsciously believe we are lacking in some way, then no matter what we do, we will unconsciously sabotage our own efforts to improve our finances.

And third, it’s helpful to understand the spiritual principles that govern our level of abundance. Once we know those principles, we can work effectively within them to attract abundance to us.

“If you’re prosperous in soul, you’ll be prosperous in whole.”

– Mark Victor Hansen