Creativity and our Connection with the Universal Mind

Creativity is an interesting thing because nobody can really tell another person how to be creative. Many people have told me that they are not creative at all, but I don’t believe them. Some people express their creativity more than others, while many people prefer to think of themselves as analytical thinkers. But all of us have creative imagination as well as the ability to think logically. I think that creativity is intrinsically a part of every human being as much as the capacity to love.

Many people don’t develop their creative faculty, or they lose touch with it because they are not encouraged to use it. Although I have always written poetry and/or kept a journal, I put less effort into it in the time when my office job consumed most of my time and energy. The most useful advice I got to help me actually start writing fiction, something I had dreamed of doing for 14 years before I started, was from reading interviews with established authors like Neil Gaiman and Paulo Coelho. I learned that an author doesn’t need to have everything exactly worked out before starting to write, and that the unconscious is a valuable tool. Having gathered enough courage and filled to the brim with frustration with my circumstances, I started writing without really knowing what I was doing. What emerged was at times unexpected, and it intrigued me.

The creative process is fluid, and reflecting on it I cannot say that I truly know what the relationship between me, the story and the characters is. I used to think that an author invented a story, and for me the idea was a barrier as I felt that it was too difficult to think of something as brilliant as some of the stories I have read. Things changed when I asked for a story, and met the characters in another realm, and asked them to tell me their story. In that way, something sincere started to unfold. Rather than achieving something, I felt that my first novel, In Search of the Golden City, was a journey through which I learned a lot about myself and my personal path. The creative process is all the more spell-binding when I work with it even though I don’t understand it.

Through creativity I feel a connection with the universe, and this brings to mind the mysterious Source of everything we know. The idea of the universe as a creation has been in dispute by mainstream religion and mainstream science, as if our human minds could know the answers to something as profound and impenetrable as universal origins. I have at times felt that talking about “creation” is heretical in the eyes of supporters of the science paradigm, because it presupposes the idea of an intelligent force behind everything. To some people it smacks of religious dogma, and to combat it, they would rather embrace the idea of an accident without purpose. Religious and scientific dogma aside, I do feel that there is a Creative Source that I am sometimes more in touch with than others, and that magic and healing start happening through communion with this Source.

As an artist, when I create something, it doesn’t always come out as planned. What I create has a will of its own, and the process is most powerful when I allow that will to come through me. In that sense, I don’t feel like a creator at all, rather an instrument. Although my characters are sometimes in conflict with one another, they are part of the same story, and they learn from one another since each expresses an aspect of something that is buried within me.

Suppose then, we wove our own stories through the universe as a work of art, what would our relationship with the Creator be? I think that question is as open for interpretation as the one of what my relationship with the characters in the stories I write is. In my opinion, the conventional idea of intelligent design falls short when it advocates a creator that made the universe a long time ago but is essentially separate from it. The idea of accident without purpose doesn’t ring true either. Without pretending to know anything, I could imagine that we are all part of the same dream, and that each person or thing is an aspect of the dream. As we live, we could strive towards creating bright, powerful stories with the full magic of being a facet of a glorious and unfathomable dream. Or we could play a part in a dull story directed by those who deny the spectacular life force, if we believe in their power rather than our own.

Faith as a Choice

Much of what we learn in any system is based on a reasonable amount of certainty. In life we value security, which depends on certainty. We do certain jobs because we are fairly sure we will be able to survive in that way. We act around people in a way that we know they would find acceptable. We can take for granted that we would need to pay the rent every month, and if we have enough money we will be able to get by. From this perspective, our world is constructed through faith in something, and often the agent that determines our reality is far removed. We can trust that economists, scientists or successful people know how everything works, but when it comes to the everyday experience, most of us have little control over the demands of our modern lifestyle. The effort involved in keeping going serves as a welcome distraction from the need to find answers as to why things are the way they are.

Faith is a central theme in religious and spiritual frameworks. Through these practices, the gaze moves inward and salvation is sought through cultivating a strong and positive character. This can then serve as a counter-agent to those outside forces that affect our well-being in a negative way. In these traditions, doubt is often portrayed as the crippling agent that causes the seeker to deviate from their path. Certainty in what one believes in in this context is an important precursor to personal freedom. In science, faith in what cannot be determined empirically has a bad reputation as it is not conducive to factual knowledge. Probability and argument provide the framework, but certainty and objectivity are still the ideals that are strived for in a quest to gain knowledge. Where there is doubt, it is only considered useful to the extent that it indicates lack of certainty. Even scientists have faith in their methodology, which is intertwined with subjective judgement of whether the knowledge gained is valuable or not.

A lot of motivational speakers I have encountered have highlighted the importance of believing in oneself as a necessary precursor to success. I think it’s true; I have found that if I don’t believe in myself I have almost zero chance of achieving something. But the human psyche is more complex than that. Often belief in oneself is lost through some kind of pain or rejection, or even psychological domination by another. I think a good illustration of the principle is the black consciousness movement in apartheid South Africa, where leaders such as Steve Biko have shown how mass oppression was possible through psychological control. Where self-confidence is lost, it often indicates a wound that needs slow and gradual recovery for an integrated, empowered psyche to emerge.

In all these frameworks, certainty and faith are the cornerstones for building something of value. The question of what the value of doubt is, if there is any value at all, remains. I have often been lost in doubts, and felt worse for it when people who felt very strongly about their spiritual views have reprimanded me for it. I think doubt is necessary as it creates space for enhanced perspective. Where there is blind faith, one can be disillusioned, and where there is absolute belief in anything, it is easy for someone to take advantage of one’s consciousness. History has shown the destructive power of belief in an ideology where people can be led to commit evil deeds without questioning their own actions.

Doubt is not easy to handle, especially in a world where those who are most certain of themselves often emerge as winners regardless of whether or not they are actually right. I think that every seeker of life and its mysteries comes to a point where they feel deeply uncertain about themselves and their understanding of reality. But I think that doubt is as necessary for growth as faith. Doubt provides the opportunity to review our priorities. In that way, we can consciously choose where to apply our efforts according to our own values and principles. The power of faith is illustrated through the placebo effect, and there is a reason why every single therapeutic treatment or medicine has to be tested against a placebo. In medicine, faith in one’s own ability to recover is the one thing that has consistently been proven to be effective.

In a universe where little can be known with absolute certainty, and even then only a small segment of reality, the power of faith to me shows the importance of taking charge of one’s own psyche. When faced with the unknown that is at the heart of important questions such as which path is the right one to choose for one’s life, the creative potential of faith is enormous. In a sea of possibilities, faith is the tool to bring into being the things we love most, and to transcend darkness in our deepest moments of despair. Doubt encourages humility, and also serves as a reminder to investigate different points of view before deciding our stance. Where we cannot be right or certain of everything, faith is the best chance we have of creating the world according to our vision.

The Doorway to the Universe

Science tells us that the universe started 13.8 billion years ago with a Big Bang and is in a state of continuous expansion. Nowadays there is also the Multiverse theory, which states that different universes are possible. The former tries to understand our place in the universe by looking at the past, supposing that the process of creation (or the beginning of everything) is complete. Interestingly, both science (as with the Big Bang theory) and religion (as in the Biblical creation myth), often vehemently opposed to one another, adopt this point of view. The Multiverse theory to me offers a view that I can relate to. In the mystery of life I can be open to the idea that all is created and destroyed unremittingly. We are part of the universe and through our choices we participate in the creation of our own worlds.

In the hassles of daily life I often feel disconnected from the Source that connects everything. In special moments the universe comes alive and I can commune with the Centre where parallel worlds meet. In that place, Creation is contained in every moment and everything. When theory and instruction fail to open the doorway to the universe, I find that sincerity is the most useful tool. Through genuine intent, the individual heart opens to the Heart of everything and potential comes to light. Sincerity entails communicating with the truth of one’s being, whether it is desirable or not. Through embracing all aspects of the self, we come closest to our own known universe. In that honest space, the external universe does not hide from our eyes either.

Sincerity takes us to a place outside of time and space where experience matters. In this way, memories of our common origins with all known things are activated.

Ancestral Healing and the Sins of the Fathers

My journey on the path of healing started with mental illness. In my teenage years, I believed myself to be depressed because I was not as happy as I thought I was supposed to be. My energy levels were low when I tried to reduce my natural rhythms to fit into a container – something I felt I had to do in order to survive. I was told that I was genetically predisposed to mental illness and I believed it. Yet something in me could not accept that I had to live as someone with a broken brain. Whereas coping seemed to be the goal of therapy, I wanted to actually heal. At the time I thought healing meant feeling alright as a normal person, but true healing turned out to be something entirely different: owning the right to take charge of my life. In this article I will look at how ancestral patterns can be changed through energy healing as an alternative to believing in mental illness.

In my late teens and early twenties, I saw spiritualists who more or less consistently told me that I was a healer. I did not understand it, because I thought that one had to be sorted out before one could help others, and I wasn’t. Only when I learned about shamanism did I come across the concept of the initiatory crisis, which is the start of a healer’s path. Across many cultures, the healer is called through an experience of physical or mental illness. When they accept their destiny, the symptoms subside and the healer starts working with the spiritual realms to bring healing to others. My path started making sense, but still it took time to undo the ingrained notion of broken genes as an unfortunate aspect of one’s physical package. The wise teachers I had knew better than to accept a scientific framework that the average person cannot verify.

In my honours year in psychology at university, my lecturer of ecopsychology seemed to lean towards spirituality, which was surprising in the academic environment. Our prescribed text book was Ecological Intelligence by Ian McCallum. The book also touches on how closely our genes are shared with animals such as lions and primates. During one of the lectures, our lecturer did a guided meditation into the subconscious, symbolised by the ocean. The assignment was for each student to identify and change a belief that no longer served them. The principle was that beliefs are projected on the world around us, which creates our experience. Someone asked about the influence of genes, and he said that once a belief is changed in the subconscious, it is not transferred genetically. At the time I did not find the meditation effective, but from my current perspective I can see that in a way he was right. I also understand why it was not helpful at the time: the healing power of the subconscious is strongest when it is listened to rather than commandeered.

A few years later I saw another healer who works in a shamanic way. She also told me that once healing is done, the issue does not return because a change has been made in the akashic records, which can be understood as an astral plane where information about everything that has ever happened is held. I was sceptical because I found my own problems to be recurrent and consequently was wary of quick fixes. Again, I see that she was right in a way. I think the subconscious works slowly, like the ocean.  A deep-seated issue may take some time to come to the surface. When there is a lot of water, it’s best dealt with a little bit at a time, and only when a person is truly ready will conscious action be taken.. The surrounding water then has to adapt to the flow; a person cannot change one issue and expect all other aspects of their life to remain intact. But when a problem is changed, it does not need to recur unless by choice. The process of healing is, however, continuous and often disruptive.

When I learned more about practical shamanism in 2010, we did a journeying exercise to change an ancestral issue. The principle was that energy is passed on through generations. An ancestral problem may still affect us, but when it is changed on an energetic level, the trouble can leave our lives. The journey was different from the guided meditation I did in the psychology class because we looked to find the cause of the issue rather than impose our will on the subconscious. It also involved talking to the ancestors to find out what it was that had troubled them and how it could be healed. In this way we showed love to the ancestors, which was also a way of loving the broken aspect of ourselves. Where the ancestor asked for a follow up ritual as part of the healing, the action taken showed commitment to change in the present physical world. The issue I wanted to address had to do with violence, because two of my family members had died violent deaths and at the time I thought that there was a karmic connection with another family member’s service to an arms company. What I found in the journey surprised me. About three or four generations before me there was an issue with rejected love. It seemed to be far removed from the problem I had wanted to address, but nevertheless I gave love to the woman I did not know and completed the letting go ritual. Almost five years later I can see the difference it made, mostly in terms of improved relationships. The healing happened in ripples, affecting areas of my life that I did not at the time see as connected to the problem. Change also required conscious action and the more one changes something, the more there is to deal with. It may sound overwhelming, but in truth it is empowering, because unconscious influences are easier recognised and less likely to rule one’s decisions.

In 2013-2014 I did a master’s degree in classics, which basically means ancient Greek and Latin. The main focus was ancient civilisations, slavery and mythology. I did it for different reasons, most of which I thought had little to do with my healing path. But looking at the myths and history of the Mediterranean 2000 to 4000 years ago, I found many elements that I could connect with the present world reality, largely in terms of the abuse of power enabled by false semblances of authority. Strangely, the mythology that I dealt with also had direct connections with the start of my healer’s path and the ancestral issue I looked at. My dissertation focused on the myth of the Golden Age, which originated as a variant of the concept of the fall from paradise but acquired a political significance in Augustan Rome. The most meaningful concept I learned from the myth is that of legal regulation being absent in a just society. The phenomenon of a just father-figure that regulates the order to prevent societal decay produces injustice and warfare. The control of the female sexuality, which to me symbolises our connection with nature and the will to emotional freedom, goes hand in hand with exploitation of others in the construction of a hierarchical society that best serves a few patriarchs.

It is not an uncommon notion that globally we are undergoing a shift in consciousness. Many people find that the old way of doing things are no longer working. Many others feel traumatised as they need to deal with old baggage. Looking at the issues I had to deal with in my family and the problems humanity have faced for millennia, I now understand that we carry many generations of ancestral baggage in our genes, but it can be changed if we deal with it consciously and with love. It is not a natural programming out of our control that should determine who we are, but the result of conditioned fear that has become a pattern. Scientific experiments have also confirmed that acquired responses can be transferred genetically (see for instance this article). When a person in present day and age starts to experience psychological discomfort, it is an indication that they are waking up to the idea that a better reality is possible. If it feels difficult, we can know that we are not alone, because globally more healers are owning their natural capacity to restore balance and harmony. If we feel that the ocean is too much water to handle, we can change those drops around us knowing that there are others who are doing the same. If the small currents change, the large ones will follow. I could go with a new interpretation of the Biblical notion that the sins of the fathers are transferred through to the third and fourth generation, but for those who love (God), the blessings will have effect for a thousand generations.

On Big Pharma, Science and Healing

This week I picked up a business and careers newspaper for students and the topic Big Pharma on the cover caught my eye. I’m not sure what I expected seeing that the article would hardly reflect my mindset. Yet when I read it it was all about the issues the industry faces and how they can recover to protect their profits. The article was also quite blatant about the fact that the pharmaceutical industry is one of the biggest industries in the world. I’m not sure why I was surprised at the approach but I thought it was pretty shameless in the way in which the profit driven aspect was depicted as something positive and desirable. I couldn’t help feeling a bit indignant though, let me explain why.

I have long since learned to shut up about my beliefs about healing. I have had too many conversations which go more or less like this:

“Why do you work in marketing if you studied psychology?”

“I wanted to be a psychologist but after having studied it I don’t really believe that the traditional approach to psychology is helpful. Which led me to turn to alternative forms of healing.”

“Oh, what does that entail?”

“Well…” (I usually just get vague at this point in order to avoid any reference to shamanic techniques or energy healing. I’ll continue as if I did in fact express my healing interests.)

“That’s nice. I have heard of such and such a person who was exploited very much by someone parading as a psychic or a spiritualist. They were never quite the same after that.”

Or: “This person got into trouble because he was actually a physiotherapist but then he tried to do ‘energy healing’ on his patient, which didn’t work. One has to be very careful of these unscientific things.”

So I shut up for fear of being ridiculed or labelled as a hippie or unscientific. I know it’s a bit lame but after reading the Big Pharma article I think maybe I could be more shameless about my “beliefs” and appeal to people’s common sense a bit more.

Let’s start with science, which is supposed to be about knowledge and rationality. Somehow I’m not convinced. In the mind of the average person it has become synonymous with authority. If “science” says so then so it is and most people will consider that the end of the matter. In that case their responsibility to make their own assessment of the situation is relieved because someone who knows better has decided for them. It is also interesting to see that in the mind of the average person “unscientific” means it’s nonsense. To these people I would like to point out that deciding on the merit of something without bothering to look into it, all based on what “authority” has told you, makes no sense whatsoever.

Can we really trust authority if we look at who is in control? The greatest destruction in the history of mankind has been caused by those in power and those with knowledge. We complain and rage that it’s time for someone else to take over but we continue to entrust ourselves to authority. Maybe it’s time to ask ourselves what is in our best interest, and to consider that it might be in the interest of some people to have us believe that we cannot trust ourselves, much less other people, and that we therefore need the protection of someone in power.

Continuing on the topic of science: it’s supposed to be about the methodology and the reliability of the results. Yet I think that money plays an important role: only those who have enough to be endorsed by the right authorities can have the status. I’m not speaking against science and I will not deny that great breakthroughs have been made. Yet knowledge is only useful if it serves us. It is how we use knowledge that will determine whether we heal or harm. If science makes man god over creation, as so many seem to believe, then that is all the more reason for us to act responsibly. Although science can provide us with some of the answers to the whats and the hows, it can never answer the question “why” in the context of our lives. That is something that we have to answer for ourselves. We have to own up to the consequences of our actions following the answer. Not many are willing to do this, which is perhaps why we are so quick to look up to authority to tell us what we should believe and how we should live.

Returning to Big Pharma, I have decided not to judge too quickly. The only way that any business can make a lot of money is if they supply something that is in demand. If people want quick fixes to manage symptoms so they can continue their lives as “normal” then who am I to say that what pharmaceutical companies are doing is bad?

A final thought about science: as helpful as knowledge can be, it doesn’t help much knowing anything if we don’t live better as a result. I’ll venture to say that if we can learn to cooperate, love and live in peace then we’ll be a thousand times better off not knowing anything even if we think the earth is flat. Potential often lies not in what is known, because what is known has already been created. Potential is in the vast sea of unknown possibilities. How we act today will determine which possibility we bring into the reality of tomorrow.