CREATIVITY AND IMAGINATION

Dear friends,

Imagination and creativity generates our reality and fuels our very being. Its emphasis is critical to our earth, our way of life and well being. Feng Shui was designed with this in mind. This issue covers the big picture.


We come from the creator - are we not creators?! This is why the earth looks like it does today – we are creators and destroyers through the stone, industrial and information age and all ages in-between. From the seed to the egg. From crayon to fine art, simple rhyme to Shakespeare, music box to Mozart. We are the creators from the creator God. Creating is that innate driving force within us. When we are not creating we are not living up to our potential. I’m not necessarily talking about creating art, writing a poem, putting ingredients together or designing a building. I am talking about creating our own reality as well, with our thoughts and feelings through a divine creative medium or energy. Both art and creating ones own reality is essentially done the same way through the imagination.

There is a unique creative energy inside us all. The tired old self critic has seen its day. Much of our educational baggage, societal and cultural dysfunction has got us thinking we are not creative. This implies self doubt and denial of a single grain of creativity inside us and it’s simply not true. This has been beaten into so many to become a rationalization not to challenge oneself in a creative endeavor. I personally didn’t make it as a guitarist, but I enjoyed its period in my life, I do feel accomplished as a poet, and I’m getting closer to my personal standard as a painter. I came from an upbringing and school system that did not care about creativity, I had a career that didn’t care about creativity, but yet I broke the paradigm mold by imagination. The reason I bother to assert the validity and value of creativity in all of us is because of the energy and joy it brings. The opening up of other worlds, of perception, knowledge and wisdom – not to mention heart, spirit and feeling of being immensely engaged, or meeting new and interesting people. People who spend their lives creating find it hard to imagine a life without it. The world would look flat. This is not about hobbies this is about the art of life, and creating a better world.

Creativity and imagination are primary tools in self discovery and self cultivation. Whether working on your life or in the process of any art, craft or writing. It is experimental and experiential in nature. It’s a mirror back to the self; of ones own nature, growth and possibility. Artists and writers often speak of channeling their work, owing their talent or craft to a higher source or energy or God. For me, this too means channeling the higher self - that spark of the divine within us.

American culture and society still, in general, keeps writers and artists at arms length with stigma and innuendo. We’re a little off our game, we need to find a real job, we’re wasting our time, eccentric, light weights etc. Historically this is not a unique view from around the globe, but due to our current state of affairs it has a tenacious grip here. Our Art is boxed up neatly to fit our capital and commodity interests. We are subject to the Art World or Literary World’s industry and interests bent towards money and power rather than the art itself being a priority. The gatekeepers and power holders are oriented towards business. The artist has to pedal his/her wares, market themselves with well established industry criteria etc. This goes against the very grain of most artists. Is it any wonder that the beginning artist does not feel intimidated? Prone to beating themselves up at the least hint of failure in their growing pains and stages. Not living up to gallery and museum standards of what the business owners deem acceptable - quality, and the book publishing standards of what will sell as a safe bet. Often burgeoning creators will think in terms of immediate success or be subject to ridicule. It becomes such a sensitive endeavor that the initial spark becomes diluted in the grays of the paradigm.
The industry then promotes the artist on a scale that looks for eccentricity to market drama and status quo. It looks for the pretentious for elevated worth. We feed the dismal cycle by succumbing to the industry and not being true to ourselves. Our bios and blurbs are tailored to keep the show rolling of passing trends and who’s in the know.
This has spurned a new industry (history repeats itself) of self publication, outsider art and business owners to help these people.

Throughout different eras and cultures artist and writers were revered. Given diplomatic and government positions, hosted by kings, courts and religious institutions, given commissions by all of them. Elevated to hero’s in dynasties and sought after for news and culture among the general populace. They were on par with the cream of the crop in their country.

The good news for the creator is that the momentum of change is here, the tide seems to be slowly shifting in a favorable direction. Creators change things for the better, they help keep the world in balance through beauty, remembrance, symbol, and progressive social and environmental message. Imagination and Creativity are one in the same – without it we will flatten the earth in fragments, deconstruct and ruin the holistic world view. Our jaded, agitated and listless response to each other and our supposed leaders will be fearful, calculated, measured, and robotic - fearing challenge to change. Here are some quotes from giants that helped pave the way. Anna Freud: “Creative minds have always been known to survive any bad training.” Einstein: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Carl Jung: “The debt we owe to the play of imagination is incalculable.” Napoleon: “Imagination rules the world.” Unknown: “Imagination is the cinema of things to come.” George Benard Shaw: “Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine, and at last you create what you will.” Einstein “Imagination is the preview of life’s coming attraction”. Yeats: ” People who lean on logic and philosophy and rational exposition end by starving the best part of the mind.” Emerson: “Imagination is not a talent of some men, but is the health of every man.” Roosevelt: “Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort.” Emmet Fox: “Love is always creative, fear is always destructive.” Einstein: “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and a rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.” Forgotten source: “Creativity is the central source of meaning in our lives, and when we are involved with it, we feel we are living more fully than during the rest of our life.”