Your Inherent Creativity and What That Means in Your Life

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Reverend John Riley talks about your inherent creativity and how it affects your life.

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Transcript of Your Inherent Creativity and What That Means in Your Life

Yes, we’re on this journey of life. And sometimes we feel, sometimes we get into that space where we feel like we need to be rescued, yes? Sometimes. Not always, but sometimes.

It’s interesting that over the last few weeks, what we’ve been doing is looking at ways in which we can move through life more gracefully, move through life with a greater sense of joy and ease and freedom, feeling free within us.

We began by learning how to overcome obstacles, learning how to pause in the midst of that storm, to presence ourselves with Spirit, be poised in that energy and to pivot towards God. We learned how to look within and with courage, with a small act of courage lift ourselves out, overcome those feelings, that BSG — the blame, shame and guilt — the BSG spiral that we get in that starts with pride and ends with shame – and just a little, how a little act of courage can lift us up out of that.

Then we learned how to become resolute in the mind of God and ardent in the heart of God and resilient in the expression of that which is ours to express, that light that Margo sang about, that light that’s within us. As we are moving through this, we might have this — after we are moving around and navigating through all of those challenges in life, the question comes up of, “okay, now what?” Anybody have that experience of that “now what?” experience, of that “I’m stuck” experience, that “Okay, here I am but what do I do next? How do I continue to move forward? I’ve gotten past that obstacle but now it’s kind of like I am feeling stuck. I’m feeling like I’ve got a brain block”. You ever had that brain block?

Anybody here who are creative artists? Yes, there are several of us in here who have some sort of creativity. Catherine is not sure but let me assure you that you are very creative. Just look at the office, you can tell. I think each of us has some streak of creativity, even those number crunchers. You know, those number crunchers, those who are really strong with spreadsheets or with coding or with math. I don’t know, I am not that much of a number cruncher, I guess. But each of us has within us some sort of creative streak. And as we are moving through life and trying to achieve our goals in life, trying to get that next job, trying to get a promotion, trying to finish that project on time, looking for that next activity on this job called retirement, looking for that next step and how can I be and experience more joy in my life, what is mine to do in life.

You Are a Master Creator

As we move towards that sometimes we feel a little stuck. And so tonight, today, what we are going to talk about is how we can learn to become unstuck by realizing that we are all creative. In fact, not only that, we are all master creators. You are such a powerful creator that you just don’t even know it. Anybody know it? Okay, the same. A bunch of people know it. You are all master creators, and you are creating your life experience one moment at a time every step of the way. You are creating it.

So, as I am going through my creative process of, what is my talk going to be like, how am I going to show up in life, how am I going to solve this problem, how am I going to move forward, how am I going to solve this logistics problem? We now have two cars so that makes my logistics a lot easier with two kids and two sets of activities and now we have two Ubers in the house. That’s exciting.

So, what happens, though, is that sometimes we get along the path and it just like, I just don’t — I feel stuck. I feel like I just don’t know which way to go. What we don’t realize is that even though it feels like we can’t create that next step, that we can’t keep going and we are not reaching our goals yet, and we are not there yet, “I am not a creative person”. How many people think — I asked earlier how many think they are creative — how many think they are not very creative? Yeah, there’s some of us.

But the challenge here is that we put creativity on such a high bar that we say, well that person was clearly creative. Right, Leonardo DaVinci — I almost said DiCaprio; he is pretty creative too — Albert Einstein, all of these creative people that did incredible things. Steve Jobs — our life would be so much different if he hadn’t created that little device — all of these creative geniuses that are in the world, that’s the bar which we set. But, the reality is that we are all that creative. We are just creating in a different way.

Creating Your Life

So, a lot of times what happens is when we are feeling stuck, we are creating stuckness. When we are feeling lost, we are creating a sense of loss in our lives. Whatever it is that we are putting our attention to or that is coming up for us, that is the creative energy that we are using to live life. We create our life one moment at a time. We create our experience of life from that state of consciousness. We are always creating.

And so, the question isn’t so much, “Okay, okay John I’ve got to change my thoughts. I get it. Think positive thoughts”. One of my brothers-in-law says Unity is that “happy, happy” church. Everyone is “happy, happy” all the time. And if you follow the principles, you begin to experience that more and more. And I almost made this talk, you know experiencing or always creating with joy, but the reality is there isn’t always joy in our lives. But we are always creating.

We are always creating in our lives. It’s the law of mind action, it’s that law that Rusty talked about earlier today, that thoughts in mind produce after their kind. Not only do they produce after their kind, but they establish our lives. Our thoughts, our consciousness is how we live our life. And that’s why it is so important to practice those principles of being “happy, happy”, even in times of challenge.

So, we may not call it happiness, but we may call it grounding ourselves in Spirit. We may anchor ourselves in faith. We may see ourselves and have a different experience of it, but it is our consciousness through which we are creating our life.

Practical Metaphysics

So, I want to tell you what Eric Butterworth has to say about this. In his book, Practical Meta-Physics — this is under the chapter of — not manifestation; it starts with a D — anyway, you guys, come on, you can’t read my mind? Clearly, I can’t read my mind. Anyway. But it’s about manifesting. It’s about bringing — oh, it’s on the tip of my tongue. He says, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. This is a fundamental concept in the teaching of Jesus and it’s the basic premise of what we have been calling practical metaphysics, the study of being, the study of consciousness. This is the key to scientific prayer and here is the nugget: “What you experience will always depend on where you are in thought, in consciousness, in feeling and self-awareness. It is so fundamental that the focus of your thoughts — if the focus of your thought is negative, the experience will tend toward limitation”.

Lifting Yourself Up

This is a basic principle that we talk about, but the question is, how do we really lift ourselves up in those times when we are feeling that stuckness? How do we lift ourselves up out of that? Yes, we can do our affirmations but if we don’t really believe it or if we don’t have a sense of it in our feelings and heart, they are just words coming out of our mouth. So how do we engrain it into our sense of wellbeing? What I started to do is look at it from the perspective of our values, look at my creation in life from the point of view of my values.

Now, my values are how I want to show up in life. What does it mean for me when I am expressing that divine essence? What does it mean for you when you look at yourself and think of yourself as your higher self, as that Christ consciousness, as that divine spark? How do you break that down? What does it look like? What ideas do you use to bring that forward, when you are acting from your highest self? For me, this is what I call my values and every year the Board goes through an exercise where we discern our values and how we show up in life. We discern our own personal mission and how we are going to show up as a Board, how we are going to show up in life.

And this is how that divine spark flows through me. My mission is to claim, energize and celebrate the love and power of the divine in all. That is my mission in life, to claim and celebrate the love and the power and the joy of the divine in all of you, in me, in all of creation. And I do that through my values of love and faith, humble and empowered, fun and courage, authentic and agile.

Now I brought these up not because I forgot them but because my brain tends to go blank when I start to pontificate. But when I looked at this idea of when I am stuck, the question is, what am I creating by being stuck? What am I creating? Well, I realized I was creating boredom. I was creating a sense of low energy that was being generated within me. I was creating a sense of despondency. I was creating commerce. It’s true because I would get online and play the Xbox. I would get on my IPad and start playing on my games to distract myself. So, I was creating some sense of commerce there, some sense of energy that is flowing through there.

See, I was creating even when I was stuck. I just wasn’t creating in a way that I wanted to create. So, if you look at it, what’s the payoff for being stuck, because I’m getting something, right? I am getting some sort of juice. I am getting something because I do it, because it comes up. So, what is the payoff for it? Well, it is feeding into those beliefs that I am not good enough. It’s feeding into those fears that I don’t have what it takes and when I then looked at it from the perspective of let’s say love and faith, that pair. Love and faith is the value of creating harmony and kindness and compassion. In my experience it is an energy from the heart. So how can I put more love in this situation that I am feeling stuck in? How can I put more faith, that energy of the mind that says I know it’s already done? I just have to take the next step. How can I take that power of faith and put it into action when I am feeling stuck?

How about fun and courage? Fun is a value for me. I want to have fun. How about you? Maybe a little? Not every religion wants you to have fun. I think Unity can say that you should have fun, or you could if you’d like. At the same time of having fun, I want to have courage to do the things that ought to be done by me. How can I add this element of fun in the things where I feel stuck and not wanting to touch? How can I add this element of courage in that little step of taking one small step forward?

So, this week I was practicing that. I was like, oh I’m feeling a little down. Maybe I will just take a little brain break. I got on the Xbox and was like, you know, this isn’t really what I want. This isn’t what I am needing. Let me take a walk around the block. I took one walk around the block and I was back at it. So just the courage to step forward and say, “You know what? this really isn’t what I want”, the love, the harmony to bring forth that love for myself that is saying it’s okay that you want to take a break.

Authenticity and agile. Authenticity for me is being transparent to myself. “This is really not what I want. What do I really want?” And being agile, being able to move quickly, without trying to dive into the details too much. We are always creating in our life.

When You Are at Your Best

So, think about for you, what does it look like for you when you are at your best? What is the feeling that you have for yourself? Anybody have a feeling of what they feel when they feel they are at their best? You can say it out loud. It’s okay. Lighthearted. Joy. Focused. Acceleration. In your lane. Powerful. Valuable. Growing. Thriving. Can you get a sense of that? Can you get a sense of how that feels when you are living your best self? Now what lies behind that, behind those feelings? Let’s just take “thriving”. Maybe you believe that “I am good enough. I am worthy. I am a great expresser.” Demonstration — that is the D word that I was looking for twenty minutes ago. Thank you, yeah, thank you. The synapse finally fired. Woo hoo.

So, when you are in that state of stuckness, realize you are creating something in your life. You are creating an experience of how you are going to show up and you are sending that energy out into the world. So, no wonder when somebody walks into the room — have you ever experienced this? — somebody walks into the room and they are just a curmudgeon. You know the curmudgeons in our lives. We’ve seen them. As soon as they walk into the room it’s like this powerful energy just hitting us. It’s because that is what they are generating, that is what they are creating. And then what do we create in response to that? Right, that is not the cause, the cause is our response right in here. My trigger, my trigger is now creating defensiveness, it’s now creating my guards up, it’s now creating “Uh, here we go again. Better not say anything. Everybody quiet down.”

Always Creating

We are always creating so we are creating a field of defensiveness. We are creating a field of animosity, a field of struggle. Instead of somebody coming in, how can I respond more with love and that idea of love and maybe it will show up. I won’t get up and give the curmudgeon a hug maybe, but maybe it’s showing up and showing a little kindness, a smile, maybe a little compassion. Instead of the story of “this guy is always a beep-beep-beep”, the story of “I wonder what happened this morning to make him feel this way”, the story of “I wonder if I could do something to brighten his day or her day. How can I bring a little bit more faith in?” Regardless of what is happening here in the moment, that mental energy I continue to ground myself in the faith of knowing that I have this divine essence, this power that is going to stream forth from me. I have no idea how it’s going to happen. I am just going to let it happen.

What are your values? What is really meaningful to you? And if you don’t know, take a moment to think about all of the things that you do that really bring you that sense that we talked about earlier, that feeling of power, that feeling of “in your zone”, of just really thriving. What are you doing? What is the belief that is behind it? Really start to pull out and tease out what some of these values are. Some of the values for me have kind of morphed into this idea of well, “why am I here”. Well, what I really value is to be a teacher, to show people, to help people discover that light that is within them. As Margo sang earlier, you are light. I am light. We can all shine brightly with each other. It will allow that to shine.

One of my favourite quotes comes from around creativity and around doing the things that we love to do and around doing the things that we don’t love to do but with a sense of spirit, with a sense of inner joy, with a sense of inner power, all of those things that we do in life. Every moment of the day, we are creating our experiences. So how can we do it a little bit more?

I love this quote. This is from Miles Davis. He is one of the great jazz legends of the 20th century. “I am always thinking about creating. My future starts when I wake up in the morning and see the light.” I wake up in the morning and see the light. That is all it takes. Now, I don’t know if he had a little night light by the side of the bed and that helped him get up early in the morning, but what I think he meant is that see the light that’s within himself, to see that brilliance as he creates, that brilliance as it comes out of his trumpet, that brilliance as he is writing this new jazz piece. He sees the light. He sees the potential that is within him and he allows that potential to shine. He just lets it and out of that comes creativity.

What Is Sin?

The quote at the beginning of that Butterworth, that quote, you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free. That is from the gospel according to John, chapter 8, verses 31-38 in which Jesus continued to tell his disciples “Very truly I tell you, everyone who commits sin is a slave to sin”. So how true is that when we look at it from that idea that sin is an error thought? Sin is that idea that we are not good enough. Sin is us believing in our separation from God, from Spirit, from isness. Sin is not believing in that light that is within us. And when we commit that error thought, we are subject to it. We are no longer free, as Rusty talked about in the Daily Word. We are now slaves to it. Just that thought, that thought is creative and it’s creating within us a sense of lack and limitation, of separation, of not good enough.

Charles Filmore says, the power is in the mind, is in our consciousness. The power comes from our consciousness. And when we align our consciousness with that power, with that inner light then we will shine brightly. He says “Turn the great energy of your thinking upon the ideas of plenty and you will have plenty regardless of what people about you are doing or saying.” Don’t get caught up in all of the dramas. Don’t get caught up in all of the naysaying. For that is created as well but you don’t have to be in that creative energy, you can create your own field of creativity, your own field of value. Yes? Put the great energy of your thinking upon ideas of plenty and you will find the next step.

When you find yourself going back into your behavior patterns, those old automatic behaviors, playing the game, taking a drink, calling up your friend and gossiping for three hours, whatever those patterns become in our lives to distract us, realize that they are creative. You are always creating.

What Are You Creating in Life?

So, what are you creating in life? How can you draw in some of your values that explain and show that you are shining your light, so that you are sure that if I add a little bit more fun into this experience I will be living more from that higher consciousness? If I add a little bit more kindness to an interaction today, I’m living more from that state of being, one with God and expressing Spirit in the flow of life, love and wisdom.

Our affirmation for today is on the screen. I will read it once and then invite you to affirm it with me.

I AM a creative being and a powerful creator. Centered in God, I consciously co-create my life experience.

Did I misspell “consciously”? I misspelled “consciously” down there. Sorry, internet. I am going to read that again because I got caught up in my need to be perfect. So I am going to apply that value of love to have a little self-love for myself, to allow a little bit of authenticity to call it out but not be so strung up by it. Thank you. Okay, let’s go back to the affirmation. I will read it one more time and then invite you to affirm it with me.

I AM a creative being and a powerful creator. Centered in God, I consciously co-create my life experience.

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