Being a creator is something that comes from inside of us.
“If you want to work on your art, work on your life”
-Anton Chekov
Our aim is to bring out that light and diamond that we all have within us.
The time has come for you to develop an unshakable bond with your inner compass and learn how to trust it completely, because until you do, you won’t be able to access the power to navigate your way to your destiny.
Creating with an Inside-Out System Vs. Outside-In System
The foundational key idea I want to share with you about the things that we’re yearning to create that might be; being able to step into visibility and confidence and presence, being able to create value-aligned prosperity, discover our unique gifts and talents to create growth oriented relationships, and higher spirituality. I’ll call these emergent potentials, and the idea is that in order to create things inside of this category we need to be creating from the an inside-out.
For many of us, in our prevailing culture it’s been very much an outside-in way of creating with a masculine system of power. I say this without judgment. It has been an absolutely brilliant system to build the infrastructure of our civilisation, where you see that the most important focus for thousands of years had been moving boulders from point A to point B. In this outside-in way of creating, you’re setting a goal, you’re breaking it down into steps, you’re creating a strategy, you’re bringing together resources in a sequence, and then you have an execution plan. There’s a category of things that are predictable and that are controllable. Engineering, science, technology, infrastructure, civilisation, lots of things in our lives and our work and our business are created with this outside-in system, things that have been critical to our success. It’s just learning to use the right system for the right outcome. In the area of creativity, and creating a vision for your life you don’t necessarily have a reference point for it, and you don’t necessarily know what it looks like to bring it forward, so what does that look like if we can’t set goals and if we can’t go into strategy?
Exercise: Wants vs. Desires
I’d love to invite you into an exercise to not just understand it conceptually, but see how this shows up in your own lived experience of things.
With a paper and a pen draw a line down the middle of the paper from top to bottom, and put the title “I want” on the left-hand side, and I invite you to be completely in your mind, and ask the question what is it that you want? Think about something in your life that you want to feel more powerful to create.
Look at this list of your wants, and notice how you feel as you look at them. Notice what starts to happen to your attention as you look at this list of wants. What probably happens is you start to see images in the future of yourself having those things. Your mind has been wondering how to move from where you are to that future where you have those things, and starts moving into strategy. It’s out there in the future. It’s a possibility. It’s an object in my mind that’s outside of me. And I’m going to create a plan to be able to get there. Notice how you feel when your attention is on the object that’s outside of you that you don’t yet have. Notice where your attention goes, notice what that experience is.
I want to shift gears completely now, and invite you into a different experience and ask you a different set of questions, I invite you to move everything to one side, and step into this deeper awareness, bringing your awareness all the way into your hips, and your legs, down to the soles of your feet, breathing inside of yourself, expanding your awareness outward to the edges of the room. I invite you to step into a time when you had a really powerful experience, where you felt deeply connected to a higher power, or an experience of nature where you were connected to an energy and intelligence in the universe that’s so bigger than you. With each breath, just letting go of any need to know any of the answers to any of the questions with your mind.
I invite you to explore a different question from this different place of awareness, and that is what is it that you most deeply desire to experience in this area of your life? Just breathe into the feelings, and breathe into the desire. Let yourself feel the desire. What is it that you most deeply desire to experience? It could be a real connection with your genius, a real awareness of what you’re here to contribute. What is it that you most deeply desire to express to others? instead of thinking about these answers, just listen to yourself, and then write down this second list of desires in the right-hand column on your piece of paper under the heading “I deeply desire.” What is it that you most deeply desire to experience, express, create, contribute?
Notice how you feel, and notice where your attention is when you connect to the deeper desires, your awareness of these potentials is within you, and they are seeking to come out through you. When we’re creating from the inside-out, these potentials are inside of us, and you feel the energy, it’s like it’s moving from the inside to come out into the world through you in what you’re creating. What matters is that we’re receptive to deeper sources of wisdom and open to new opportunities. What enables us to begin to cultivate these powerful capacities we need as co-creators is a shift in our awareness that opens up access to a deeper knowing from within ourselves.
It it’s interesting that the Latin root of the word “want” means “to lack,” and the Latin root of the word “desire” means “to await what the stars shall bring.” There’s this idea that the deeper desires somehow don’t belong to us, but the deeper desires come from a deeper blueprint. The word “desire” and “destiny” share the same Latin root. Our desires are the seeds of our destiny. These are the possibilities that we are yearning to bring forth, and creating them from the inside-out is absolutely the key.
Connecting with creativity
You are an organism environment, symbiotic with fields of life both within and without that are larger, deeper, and more potent than anything you may be aware of. We tend to live out of a very limited notion of ourselves. Ego, for example, is only one image among the multiple images of the psyche. You have within you so many different selves, and with these selves, so many different capacities and skills.When you’re in the process of creating something in your life you want to be in the most powerful part of yourself, not the weakest part. You can connect with creator consciousness by shifting to a place of curiosity, openness, and wonder, because it is impossible to be curious and in lack at the same time. Asking yourself, if I absolutely believe in myself, I have access to resources, and I believe I’m living in a life-positive universe in a field of limitless possibility, what’s my next step? Instead of thinking about the answer, just listen to yourself from a place of curiosity, receptivity. What do you notice?
We want to source our knowing from this deeper source of wisdom within us. Then we want to activate our deeper desires, listen to our deeper desires, and then from that place, connect with our next steps. We know that beneath the surface crust of consciousness, creativity is going on all the time. It is just that we generally do not inhabit enough of ourselves to become aware of this creativity. Part of the secret of creativity is learning to look at things in different ways. Children are very good at this.
Creatives are thinking in many different frames of mind. They don’t just ponder a problem, they sift it through images as well as in words, they think about it in visions, they think about it in touch and taste and smell and hearing. They feel it playing upon their bodies, as well as in their minds. They marinate themselves in the problem until it seems that the thing they are working on has almost acquired a personality of its own.
Then one day, something emerges as a full-fledged possibility that demands to be tried, written, told, sung about, and created. Much the same process can be applied to anything you wish to accomplish, so begin by giving yourself an intention, something you really want to do or discover. See this intention as an image, see it, feel it, hear it, touch it, and even taste it.
Creativity doesn’t have to lead to something. It doesn’t have to result in a song, a dance, or a novel. The greatest form of creativity is the recreation of yourself, preparing yourself for a greater purpose. Moreover, the creative work you do on yourself will heighten your capacity for creativity in other things, the whole spectrum of human possibilities.
From this awareness ask yourself, what actually is the state of your imagination? How does it currently function in your problem solving and decision-making? How does it affect the fulfilment of your creative potential?
I’m going to suggest that you start to carry around a small notebook and jot down all the ideas and perceptions that grab you throughout the day.
Take a challenge or concern—not an earth-shaking one, just a fairly ordinary one— and begin by fact-finding. Visualise everything you know about it. Watch to see who or what is involved, and when and where and how it is happening. Let the pictures just flow through your mind. That is fact-finding, deep fact-finding.
The second part, problem-finding. Now actively daydream a scenario as to how you would like the situation to look. If you could wave a magic wand and alter it in any way, how would you imagine it?
The third part is idea-finding. Change some of the details of the picture as it currently is to more of what you would like your daydream to actually look like. Change the original picture a bit at a time, magnifying some parts, minimising others, rearranging parts.
The next part, solution-finding. Live in it, see how you feel in it, jump into the skins of others involved, and see how they react.
Finally, acceptance-finding, keeping all these reactions in mind, see what you would do to make it more, to make it work better, to make it beautiful. Piece together the best image of yourself dealing effectively with the original challenge or concern. Try for as much detail as you can. Then, make notes of the plan, put it up on the wall, showing its stages of development. Live out its stages of development; internalise it, even make a timetable of the plan. What you think you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it. A vivid image held, touched, tasted, smelled, felt, danced, incarnated, and acted out helps give you the energy and focus to stick with it until your intention becomes a reality.
Playing with our imagination - Remembering Joy
I am going to ask you to remember a time from your life that gave you considerable joy. Use all your senses, all your imaginative faculties, and live in that place of remembered joy as if you were still there.
Rehearsing joy is a great way to build a sense of appreciation, and I find that when I am really down the practice of Remembering Joy gives me a much richer, truer, more realistic perspective on my life. Because what do we do? Because of the nature of the old reptilian, amphibian brain that’s there for survival and still a very large piece of our psychological and neurological equipment, we tend to fall into patterns of remembering sorrows or painful memories. We focus on negativity, and what does this do? It just increases our sensitivity to pain; it fixates us much more intensely on whatever difficulty comes up in our way. That’s all we look for. Keep the pattern up, and we move from chronic hurt to cynicism to paranoia and to thinking, “This world has it in for me.” As you rehearse joy it has the opposite effect. You apply Mindfulness to your thoughts. When the unhappy memory or the toxic thoughts begin to cross your mind you say, “Stop.” Refrain that thought and Remember Joy.
Be aware of all the things you’re grateful for. Commit yourself to practicing gratitude, and you’ll begin to sense the dimensions of things more clearly, you’ll empower people more readily, and you’ll find yourself in a more enthusiastic way of being in this extraordinary world. And your memory and your creativity will also improve, because you will attend to things more closely when you are in a state of gratitude. Why? Because you appreciate them.
Accessing your inner intelligence
Each one of us has many different selves within that also have different capacities. It is a wonderful thing to have so many willing inner helpers, so many masters of various skills and attitudes, the artist, the cook, the psychologist, the healer, musician, mechanic, accountant, inventor, poet, relationship expert, parent, child, orator, lover, student, teacher, theologian, traveler, meditator, comedian, animal companion, writer, singer, group organiser, time manager, compassionate one - the list is endless. Anything with which you have familiarity and practice, however small or large, has an inner expert who is always available to support, consult, and inspire your outer efforts. Write down who are some of these different helpers that you have.
What is interesting is that as you develop these different personae and bring them to the front, you can then bring this personae upon something, some problem, some issue that you need to explore, for example, when working through a creative problem, I become a cook. I literally become a cook. I cook the ideas. I add the spices of a new association, mix the energies of another idea and out comes a whole new way of seeing things.
With the help of our different personae, we can cultivate and grow ourselves into the person that we need to be to be in order to realise our higher possibilities.
Who would I be in the centre of that destiny where I was making an impact on a larger scale?
How would I be showing up?
What would my level of commitment be?
What would my level of care be?
What are the kind of skills that I would have?
The reason that there’s a gap currently in your life between what’s showing up and between what’s possible is because you haven’t yet embodied the possibilities and the potentials that would enable you to meet those greater opportunities.
The opportunities will open up for you, and, as you transform, and become, and step into your beingness, and grow, your circumstances change to match the frequency of your consciousness, the capacities and what it is that you’re creating.
Creating Your Future
Step One: Expand Your Vision
The first step is to expand your vision. I’d like to invite you to bring in the energy of being able to feel and sense the energy of the Creator.
Step Two: Feel and Sense your Future Self
And I want to invite you to reach higher and sense into a very specific and tangible thing that you would like to create in your life, that represents personal thriving. What could you manifest or create that would have you most be on track for your destiny, and who you came here to be? It might be a livelihood. It might be clarity around finding the work that you’re here to do. It might be your soulmate. It might be to transform your relationship.
What’s one thing you can focus on to manifest and to catalyse you into thriving personally in your life?
Step Three: Meet the Creator & Align with Your North Star
You’re supported energetically in this space, in this field by the energy, and intelligence, and life-giving love. And holding your hands up together in front of you, rubbing them together and feeling the energy in your hands of a golden ball that represents the energy of this potential that you’re manifesting. Rubbing your hands together, feeling the energy. Open your hands up. Hold the energy in your hands, like a golden ball. And then, I want to invite you to imagine you’re throwing it forward into the future. You feel an energetic cord connecting you into the future where this is fully manifested. This golden cord of energy is connecting you to that future and you feel yourself in that future, fully embodied and fully having manifest, and having created this possibility in very concrete, tangible ways.
Step Four: Align with Your Future Self
And then, I want to invite you to imagine that you are now traveling forward to the future, through the golden cord, all the way into the future, inside your own body, in the future, you’re there now. And, you’re standing inside your Future Self, having fully manifested this potential in your life. So, standing fully and completely in the havingness and the beingness of being who you would be in the fulfilment of this intention, this area, the specific thing that you’re manifesting. And, I want to invite you to place one hand on your belly, your solar plexus. And, as you’re standing fully grounded in your Future Self, I want to invite you to name the sense of identity, the sense of who you are in the fulfilment of this vision.
Step Five: Anchor a New Way of Being
What’s the “I am” statement that anchors this awareness of who you are in the fulfilment of what it is that you are creating? What is the sense of who you are, and the fulfilment of your vision? What are the new ways that you relate to yourself and to others?
Step Six: Cultivate New Skills & Capacities
What are the new skills and capacities that you have cultivated? What are you no longer willing to tolerate? How have your expectations been raised? What are the ways in which you have grown?
What’s the deepest sense of who you are?
What’s the new way of being that you’re showing up in?
What are the skills?
How is your life structured differently in the fulfilment of your vision?
I want to invite you to imagine now you’re coming back from the future, following the golden cord, back into the field, bringing the beingness, and the awareness, and the energy, and the inspiration, the sense of having this…of these possibilities from your future, bringing them back via the golden cord, and stepping back into your life right now.
Taking some time to reflect:
What are the biggest gaps in your current reality and your current identity, your current level of skills, and structures, and habits, and routines? What are the biggest gaps between who you would be in the future in the fulfilment of your vision and your current reality?
Bloom Where Planted
When you shift into this growth orientation, the structures of your life are perhaps exactly everything that you need right now to grow yourself, to expand, to be in training, to be in preparing, to be in developing, to be in growing yourself into the person that you would become, and the fulfilment of your vision. The biggest mistake to make is to feel a vision, to set an intention, and then to wait for it to happen. Instead make a commitment each day to show up, and stretch and expand, to be and become the greater vision in your life without worrying or figuring out how things are going to change.
What are three ways that you can show up that are aligned with this sense of yourself from the future, to be on your destiny path?
What’s the new skill that you can cultivate, even just one you can practice?
What might be a new structure, a new habit you can begin to cultivate that’s aligned with the future?