Creativity Law #25

...the Great Creator bestows all gifts of insight, genius, artistic ability and truly elegant solutions. Problems can be solved and ideas can flow through inexhaustibly if we honor our Creativity… Share your creation stories.

Cynthia F. Davidson, excerpt from the Wisdom Wheel Creativity card 

  (cards, stones, posters & more available via www.thewisdomwheel.com)

How creative are your ideas about 'Creator'? If you still have the same image you were given as a child, you might want to jump start your Creativity by getting more imaginative about 'God', the Great Spirit, the Great Mystery to begin with.  

After the Law of Enlightenment last week, it is time for Creativity, Courage and Commitment this month. These three line up beside the Law of Right Action. This implies that Right Action is unlikely without Creativity. Likewise, creative ideas never come to fruition unless we have the Courage and Commitment to see them through.

    

When have you felt the most creative? 

Who around you has kept their creative spark alive? How? 

And who has succumbed to cynicism and sarcasm? 

What has inhibited your Creativity? 

What can you do about this right now?

What are you afraid of?  

During the coming ten days, have some fun with this Law. Loosen up. Laugh with others and at yourself. Have creative toys, tools and games around to involve others. Wear a red clown nose, put on a funny hat, make people smile.   

Creativity includes giving yourself permission to play when it's called for, and many studies have proven it enhances our productivity. 

Make a list of the most creative people you can think of and why you've chosen them as examples of this Law in action. In our capitalist society, the individuals 'rewarded' with the most pay per day are actually the people who do make believe for a living, such as actors, like Tom Hanks, who customarily get $20 million per movie, for about 6 weeks worth of work. 

Creativity is contagious. It inspires the rest of us, so be as creative as you dare, for the next ten days. Maybe you'll like it and never go backwards. Here are some insights to feed your Creativity.  

Some people think of creativity as something that artists possess. It might be more helpful to think of it as Jung did, as an instinct. We can bring creativity to almost every life activity. Moreover, we can use certain imaginative forms of creative expression through the arts to explore personal, spiritual, and psychological development.

Marion Woodman and artist Jill Mellick in Coming Home to Myself: Reflections for Nurturing a Woman's Body and Soul

The creative process, so far as we are able to follow it at all, consists in the unconscious activation of an archetypal image and elaborating and shaping the image into the finished work. By giving it shape, the artist translates it into the language of the present and so makes it possible for us to find our way back to the deepest springs of life.

Carl Jung

Creativity is intelligence having fun.

Albert Einstein

Don't think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It's self-conscious and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can't "try" to do things. You simply "must" do things."

Ray Bradbury

Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.

George Bernard Shaw (Irish literary Critic, Playwright and Essayist. 1925 Nobel Prize for Literature, 1856-1950)

Creative minds always have been known to survive any kind of bad training.

Anna Freud

No amount of skillful invention can replace the essential element of imagination.

Edward Hopper

True creativity quite simply starts with balancing your emotions and activating the power of the heart. Through practicing emotional management from the heart, you tap into the highest form of creativity possible--recreating your perceptions of reality.

Doc Childre

Everybody dreams, wishes and imagines but one needs to understand how this works in order to be creative. The imagination can be described as a screen that lies between the visible and the invisible worlds, and images and entities are projected on this screen that we are normally unaware of in our field of consciousness. Those who have a developed imagination are able to use this faculty of imagination, to receive and to record these impressions, which they then try to express or describe or realize on the physical plane.

Margo Kirtikar, PhD.

If I create from the heart, nearly everything works; if from the head, almost nothing.

Marc Chagall

Man is creative only when he is neither apologetic nor propagandistic.

Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-72)

Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. 

Scott Adams

Without continuous creation, the Universe must evolve toward a dead state in which all the matter is condensed into a vast number of dead stars.

Fred Hoyle in The Nature of the Universe (1950)

By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.

Nikos Kazantzakis

Creativity is harnessing universality and making it flow through your eyes.

Peter Koestenbaum

Creation does not take place where there is a scattering and a dissipation of energies.  Creation requires a gathering together and a focusing of your power within a circle of commitment – like a seed, an egg, in a womb, or a marriage. 

Ken Carey in Return of the Bird Tribes from White Buffalo Calf Woman

Losing touch with spirit does nothing to the field of creativity, which is beyond harm; but it can do much to damage a person's chance in life.

Deepak Chopra

For a cultural transformation to occur, it must be imagined first.  All reform movements are fed by those who are good at writing songs and telling us a new kind of story and teaching us to believe in ourselves.

Carol Lee Flinders books include Rebalancing the World

Creativity, when all is said and done, may be the best thing our species has going for it. It is also the most dangerous….When we consider creativity we are considering the most elemental and innermost and deeply spiritual aspect of our beings. Imagination brings about not just intimacy but a big intimacy, a sense of union with the cosmos, a sense of belonging and being at home, of our knowing we have not only a right to be here but a task to do as well while we are here.

Matthew Fox former Catholic priest dismissed by the Dominican Order for being too radical, is now an Episcopal priest

The more creative you are, the more creative you are. This law is simple - creativity breeds creativity. Being creative is all about flow, and as soon as you hit your stride in creating, it becomes so effortless you forget you're even doing it. But, like rolling a giant snowball, it seems incredibly difficult to get that momentum started, especially if you haven't created regularly for a while.

Dan Goodwin

In ten days we'll take up the Law of Courage. Till then enjoy your Creativity.