Saturday, December 18, 2010

Spontaneity!


If I was asked to sum up in one word, what is the key to being more creative, that word would be 'spontaneity'. We are made to be creative... to grow, to learn, to experiment, to try new things, and to make the world a better place. We have been given everything we need to be highly creative! We just need to release who we are from our constructed box of who we appear to be.

Why do we become someone other than our free and joyful creative self? The answers are legion, but the common thread is fear. Fear of not being accepted, not being liked, being perceived as strange or different, fear of failure, etc. etc. etc. So how do we get rid of fear? The Book of Life says, "There is no fear in love. Perfect love casts out fear". In Hebrew, the root of the word "love" is "I give". When our attitude is one of wanting to do good, to give, to better the world around us, when we do that fully we lose our consciousness of self. All we care about is increasing the amount of joy and decreasing the amount of suffering in the world we can affect, then the self no longer matters. When we know that we are loved infinitely by the only one who can love us infinitely, we can give without reservation, without fear. That is the core of the saying, "You shall know the truth and the truth will make you free". When we are no longer self focused, we are no longer self conscious. When we are no longer self conscious, we don't care if others judge us, because we know in our heart we are innocent of all charges, so we give anyway, fearlessly.

Living fearlessly, we are free to be ourselves, our child-like self. Spontaneity is just the free expression of who we are. Nobody to impress... Nobody to fear. Just be free.

Challenge yourself. Find a stubborn problem. Find something wrong, something that needs fixing. Next, love. Love the people that are hurt by this problem (that could include yourself, but ideally, it's not all about you). Then, go at it. Explore the elements that affect it. What makes it worse? What if you do the opposite? What makes it better? What if you do that 10 times as much? If you could magically achieve the perfect solution, what would it look like? If you were the problem, what would you 'be afraid of' that would threaten your existence? Jump around, in and out, turn the problem on its head, shake it up, and see what comes out. There is a solution. There is a way to make it better. Ask God. Pray and anticipate results. Ask a child. Listen. Look at nature... the brilliance of the creation leads scientists to new innovations on a daily basis. The answer will come.

When the answer comes, the next level of courage is to act. You could revel in the joy that comes from realizing the solution, and then go back to being a couch potato. Not good. The real joy comes from doing it. Start small if you need to. Make a prototype. Do a test run. Make a 'proof of concept model'. Test out the theory and see what happens. Did it solve the problem? Awesome! Did it fail to solve it? Great! Learn, adjust, and try again. The answer exists... the challenge of the explorer is to find that uncharted territory and make a map. Drive the world around you to a better place and enjoy the ride! Life can be a wondrous experience! Choose wonder!