Becoming A Creator

I’d like to ask you a simple question.

But first, I’d like you to shift your focus to a notion of God with a mind, heart, soul, and spirit, who cares deeply about your welfare and well-being as a person.

I’m not asking that you believe in this notion of God (if you don’t already). Nor am I making a play to have you not believe. I’m merely asking that you shift your focus to this notion of God.

And then to entertain the possibility that the will of God is active in your life – and that if you follow this will of God, all will be well with you and your loved ones.

Now, here’s my question: whose will would it be to do the will of God?

Take a moment to think about this.

Whose will would it be? Would it be yours? Or someone else’s?

Let us suppose that it would be your will to do the will of God.

Could you ever fully trust that your will is an expression of the will of God?

Think about this. You can’t have the will of God if you’re not God.

And you can’t rely solely on your own will because then you would not be doing the will of God, which, presumably, is wiser, more intelligent, and more powerful than your will ever could be.

Is there a way out of this conundrum – short of going your own way or giving up your will to live?

Dangerous Suppositions?

Suppose, for a moment, that you are both the creator and the creation of your own experience of life – the creator and the creation of your own experience of reality.

Suppose, too, that you represent a choice to experience existence, and that your only limits are (a) the beliefs you harbour about yourself, and (b) the extent of your imagination.

Suppose, also, that you chose to be born into this reality to enter a shared illusion that gives you complete freedom of will to create your own unique experience of reality.

Within this shared illusion, you believe that you’re looking at a separate, objective world, where you experience Self and other, but beneath the apparent separation, you also see that we are one.

In light of these suppositions, you might say of yourself …

“I am my own creation. I am the creator of my own experience of life. I create my own experience of reality from the depths of Self, for my own fulfillment, with or without the participation of others.”

In essence, this is your creatorship.

But an interesting question arises: could your creatorship be fully conscious?

Conscious Creatorship

Creatorship. You probably haven’t heard this word before, or if you have, you probably haven’t given it much thought.

This isn’t surprising, considering I couldn’t find a definition of it in a mainstream dictionary.

Nevertheless, I did find some online definitions that hold some promise (and I took the liberty of elaborating on them):

Creatorship, n.: the state, condition, or quality of a creator; the art or skill of a creator; that which embodies the state, condition, quality, art, or skill of a creator.

These definitions lead me to make this assumption:

To recognize yourself as a creator is to be conscious of your creatorship, even before you can embody or embrace an identity as a creator and be conscious in your creatorship.

And so, there are at least two steps in this process of discovery:

1. to be conscious of your creatorship by recognizing yourself as a creator, and
2. to be conscious in your creatorship by embracing an identity as a creator

Let me illustrate with a personal example:

I’m writing this post on a moment to moment basis. That is to say, I have absolutely no idea where my writing is taking me. I’m following my intuition and my inspiration moment by moment by moment.

Sometimes, I write (type) slowly or quickly, without thinking, as if guided by invisible fingers. Other times, I feel called (or compelled) to access an online resource to guide me in my next step.

I consciously perform these acts without thinking about what I’m going to do next.

Now, the first two paragraphs of this example indicate that I am conscious of my creatorship. The italicized statement that follows indicates that I am conscious in my creatorship.

These paragraphs and this statement of emphasis provide me with some clues on how to become, and then be, a creator.

Be Aware, Be Willing

As you might have guessed, I’m not talking about becoming or being a creator of things – of objects, processes, or systems.

I’m talking about becoming and being a creator of your experience – of yourself, of life, of reality.

To become, and then be, a creator, requires a broad perspective.

It requires insights about yourself in a world full of people who, unfortunately, and through no fault of their own, are steeped in ignorance about who they really are and what they’re truly capable of.

On the path to becoming a creator, you need a willingness to be aware of your perceived problems, inadequacies, and difficulties; you need a willingness to be aware of your beliefs, your choices, your intentions, your expectations, and (eventually) the quality of your perceptions (this last one is key).

Let us first talk about becoming a creator of your experience of reality.

And then, in my next post, we’ll take a look at how to be a creator.

On Becoming A Creator

To be conscious of your creatorship (in reality, as well as your imagination) requires that you recognize yourself as a creator of your experience – of yourself, of your life, of your reality.

Please understand that you do not create yourself, or your life, or your reality; you create an experience of yourself, your life, and your reality. This is a subtle but important difference.

You, your life, your reality: this is your living canvas, alive with meaning – composed of things that come up unexpectedly, that arise without warning, and they’re there whether you like them or not.

Your tools, your paints, your paintbrushes? These are the means by which you generate and create your experiences; these are your capacities to believe, to choose, to intend, to expect, to perceive.

Your experiences? These are your brushstrokes, your works in progress, your finished paintings – some of them, true enough, are blander than bland, but others can be quite vivid.

Long before you can get a handle on your facility for perception (pun not intended), you must come to terms with your beliefs in relation to your perceived problems, inadequacies, and difficulties.

When you’ve learned to come to terms with your beliefs, through your capacity for choice, you’re ready to step up into being a creator, and to be conscious in your creatorship.

So let’s start here: you are creation itself exploring itself in a mirror composed of space and time.

In choosing what to believe, you create your experience of reality, and by changing your beliefs about yourself and your experience, you change your experience of reality.

But, you might ask, what should I believe? And how do I change my beliefs?

Good questions.

I’m willing to believe that whole books have been written on these topics. Why? Because knowing, choosing, and changing your beliefs are essential to being happy, healthy, wealthy, and wise.

An Exercise in Four Steps

Here are four steps to help you get started:

1. Cultivate transparency. Take a moment (or two) to become aware of your perceived problems, inadequacies, and difficulties (don’t skip this step and don’t downplay its importance, either).

After you read my suggestions for doing this exercise (see below), complete the following sentence stems as many times as you feel is necessary, preferably without censorship:

• I don’t like it when …
• I can’t seem to …
• I can’t (or won’t) accept …

Here are some examples, tied together by a common theme:

a) a perceived problem:

I don’t like it when … I wake up feeling less than my best.

b) a perceived inadequacy:

I can’t seem to … make it through the day without feeling tired at least once.

c) a perceived difficulty:

I can’t (or won’t) accept … going to bed at night feeling exhausted.

Here’s what I would suggest you do to get you going (and keep you going):

First, do this exercise at a time when you expect to feel your best (if this is an issue for you).

Second, find a quiet space to follow your breath until you feel relaxed (if necessary).

And third, approach this exercise honestly, with equanimity, in an exploratory way, but be relentlessly gentle (gently relentless?) in your probing.

2. Inquire into your responses. Okay, now that you’ve (bravely) taken the time to flush out your perceived problems, inadequacies, and difficulties, now what?

Review your responses. Read them aloud as you review them. Let their meaning sink deep into the heart of your soul. Get in touch with your feelings about them.

If you need to cry, cry. If you need to pound your pillow, pound your pillow. If you need to go for a walk, go for a walk. But if you can, sit with your feelings from a witness perspective, allowing their full intensity to arise in awareness, for as long as they need to be there before they lose their charge.

3. Stand on neutral ground. Now ask yourself this question: how might I go neutral with respect to these perceived problems, inadequacies, and difficulties?

In spiritual circles, this is called divine neutrality. With all of these perceived problems, inadequacies, and difficulties, your prime objective is to reach a state of divine neutrality.

This is not a prescription to suppress or repress your feelings.

A fun way to find neutrality is to flip your responses on their head.

1) flip the stems: “I don’t like it when …” becomes “I like it when …”; “I can’t seem to …” becomes “I know I can …”; and “I can’t (or won’t) accept …” becomes “I can accept …”.

2) tweak your responses into positive expressions (sometimes this isn’t even necessary).

Using previous examples …

I like it when … I wake up feeling relaxed and refreshed (rather than: I don’t like it when … I wake up feeling less than my best).

I know I can … make it through the day without feeling tired at least once (rather than: I can’t seem to … make it through the day without feeling tired at least once).

I can accept … going to bed at night feeling pleasantly tired (rather than: I can’t (or won’t) accept … going to bed at night feeling exhausted).

Having gained some neutral ground on your perceived problems, inadequacies, and difficulties, you’re ready for the next step.

4. Now do something different. The thing to do here is to take fresh action – in any part of your life – so that any stale patterns of feeling or behaviour that you have begin to fall away on their own.

For example, I quite like it when I wake up feeling relaxed and refreshed, and so I’ll take a look at what might be affecting my sleep if I should ever feel the need to do so (e.g., eating or exercising too close to bedtime, too much stress during the day, an erratic sleeping pattern, a noisy environment, a bedroom that is too hot or too cold).

I could tweak these variables to better suit my purpose. Or, I might simply make an unrelated change and find to my surprise that I start feeling better when I wake up in the morning (perhaps all I needed was an extended break from my work, a mini-vacation on the weekend or a week-long hiatus). Follow your intuition and inspiration on this one.

A Brief Summation

To sum up, there is comfort in knowing that you can flexibly perceive your problems, inadequacies, and difficulties rather than feel them as intractably real. Give yourself some time and space to give voice to them, to give them space for expression (or better yet, for release), and then take fresh action, letting habitual patterns of behavior or feeling fade or drift away on their own.

To change your experience of reality, you would do well to accept it. As long as you reject it, you deny your creatorship, which invariably leaves you feeling stuck. Release attachments to any preconception of how your life should be, and be okay with what is, so that you can position yourself to embrace the freedom to consciously choose and create your own experience of reality.

Next up: On Being A Creator.

Tagged as: Creativity, Freedom, Responsibility