We Are Creators

I remember when I was a little girl, seeing my first fossilized trilobite, that my mom still keeps in ceramic pot. It was so old, so ancient, so foreign, gleaming at me from another world where creatures like this were alive and numbered in the millions. They were the kings of their world, flourishing and abundant and successful and diversifying and adapting and progressing. Trilobites were the first creatures to develop crude crystalline structures for ‘eyes,’ to tell the difference between light and dark, to ‘see’ is to know… Alas, trilobites were still a long, long way from having the sensing abilities to hunt and gather qualia and the ‘brain power’ to process ‘know-how’ like a human.

Even before we’re born, from our unique perspective of our experiences in our physical embodiment, we begin surveying this environment, breathing in ‘raw’ data, by way of our senses, of which we have way more than just 5 or 6. As the human species has evolved, we have gained (through much trial and error and a bit of ‘divine random intervention’) highly complex specialized sensory abilities (and the brains to process it all) to better perceive more from the world around us ~ through at least 20 different physically evolved modalities ~ from the formation of eyes and ears, to the nuances of taste and touch, like ‘wetness’ and ‘itchiness,’ to a plethora of feelings, including ‘hunger’ and ‘intuition,’ possibly even a type of remote sensing and/or extra-sensory perception.

These sensory perceptions provide humans with the ability to ‘read’ the ‘vibes’ within the context of our experience, to feel and experience the world we’re in, to live in the question, seeking information and taking inventory for a plan of action. So, as we discover and learn, the better we may recognize and respond to our environment with autonomy and choice (free will), so we may re-calibrate and improvise and take command of the appropriate actions. Thus, we build our working memory and develop new neural pathways in our brains, becoming creatively diverse and flexible in overcoming adversity, finding new ways to adapt and change course where necessary, knowing how to find our way to get what we need to live, to survive in our own organic, diverse ways, to feed our hungry bodies, growing minds and expansive spirits.

These perceptions become our truths that connect us to a greater wisdom. When we irrevocably and indubitably see what is, we move from away from randomness and chaos, into deliberate and attentive reflexes, the how to, making sense, reasoning. We move about, thinking with our hands, our bodies, our senses responding, embodying ideas into reality, into existence. We move about our patterned 3d world, with its mathematical, geometric and fractal systems of order, using experiences to sense our surroundings within each layer or space, taking in energy, and reforming it, releasing it back into our world.

I like to imagine our earliest ancestors, not yet speaking, just listening to the sounds of crickets, the patter of rain, the rush of flowing water, the footsteps of galloping herds of beasts, winds furiously whipping the leaves and branches of the trees, or their own heartbeat. Maybe they responded with their own rhythmic sounds, the tapping of sticks and rocks, or feet and hands, seeds rattling in a dried gourd, leftover bones to jingle, hollowed skulls that echo these familiar rhythmic patterns of our world. Everything is in constant fluid motion, crossing liminal boundaries; we aren’t any different. Nothing is wasted; only transformed, rearranged, different, in service to the process of creation. We are in an endless cycle of ever-expanding creation (re-creation, co-creation, re-co-creation?), changing the course of events, making something new or different, being creative. Evolution and natural selection, even destruction and chaos, are part of nature’s process of creation, albeit a very slow one. For sure, I am imaginatively curious as I ponder on what types of sensory abilities we may develop in the future.

These ways of observing, of knowing, of conversing back and forth with our environment, of inhaling and exhaling, of being engaged in our dance of experience, are where science meets spirit, balanced in a multiplicitous existential communion with that silent voice of the most divine eternal wellspring, poised, knocking at the door to the lexicon of collective universal cosmic consciousness ~ Enlightenment is not a place; it’s a state of being, in the flow of experience. The omnipresence of God, living in and present within the essence of all, would follow that in the ultimate, full experience in relation to all, as the experience of God, is rapture.

Swirl across my blue-heart sky … following memories of the tailwinds of birds… Yes, do fly too high, exalted on the whispers of creation. We have the will to bestow god upon the earth.

Using our sensing abilities, we hunt and gather data, we pay attention, we observe, recognizing patterns, connections, dualities, coincidence, and synchronicities. Measuring our external environment to our internal perceptions, we recognize ourselves in the objects we encounter; they mirror our inner experiences or reflect our internal world, evoking emotions, memories, perceptions and knowledge based on our unique accumulated perspective. We process these subjective observations, with our lovely exquisite brains — even below the radar of our conscious awareness and when we sleep or daydream – dynamically between our impulsive reptilian and limbic systems, and our logical executive prefrontal cortex, and we profoundly and poetically correlate these external patterns, these messages, with our internal concepts, as we begin to ‘connect the dots.’ We clarify, measure, organize, link, interpret, and process our private, ineffable ‘statistics’ and quantifiers, these qualia, into recognizable ideas, abstract mental concepts, ‘pictures in our minds,’ metaphors – where our minds accept a symbol, or some physical form or even action, as the same thing as the concept we formed about them in our mind.

These metaphors are more than mere meaning-making because one actually denotes the other. And as they are communicated and externalized, they become inextricably linked within the deepest recesses of our psyches, where one truly equals the other, they are interchangeably the same thing. Eloquently explained by poet/author Judy Grahn, these are metaforms: “cultural practices or objects that embody those metaphors,” “a physical embodiment of metaphor…an idea that translates into physical form, and conversely, it is also the physical form that embodies or ‘holds’ an idea.” (p.20 “Blood, Bread, and Roses: How Menstruation Created the World” 1993 Beacon Press Boston) These metaforms have a long history, woven deep into our existing order of patterns, perspectives, and structures. These metaforms decorate our homes and furnishings, our architecture, our public spaces, our tools and technology, our pets, our landscapes, our cultures, our art, our imaginations, ourselves, even our skin, with layers of symbolic meaning. Just think how deeply embedded are the metaforms of our words and alphabets, our own bodies, or the stars and moon and Milky Way.   They have a tremendous impact upon our outlooks and behaviors, affecting the direction of our lives; they guide our internal compass, seeking feedback, hungry for more experience, more data, more meaning, creating our minds externally through metaphor. Paying attention and being observant and focused on a semi-challenging task, as we weigh the pros and cons, the commonalities and differences, keenly aware to all we are experiencing, present in our bodies and our actions, these are qualities of the creative process.

Creativity encapsulates an ever-evolving infinite process, a continuous chain where innovation builds upon innovation, in a constant state of flux, moving between experience, meaning-making, trial and error, learning, integration, action, and manifestation, layered with metaforms and semiology to experience and reassign and realign and respond. We are energized, organic, sensing, and dynamically-processing ‘machines’ touched with spirit – ‘separating the light from the dark.’ We place meanings upon the external world, ‘crossing the great abyss’ — meaning-making ‘a sense of order from a diverse pool of random chaos.’ (Judy Grahn) From a quantum wave to a particle, as we are observing, meaning-making, and responding, turning potential into matter, from an idea into a thing or expression. Undeniably, every day, in our thoughts and actions, we are already quite enmeshed in the creative process. We are creators… co-creating.

I’m a huge fan of Carl Sagan’s work; it’s not only scientific and philosophical. It’s deeply poetic. It’s a nicely balanced perspective between science and spirit/nature, order and chaos, curious and wise, historically and experientially enmeshed within its time, yet expansive in its visionary concepts about the universe and our place in it. I believe he was a scientist that understood the importance of creativity, the enormous impact and potential it holds for us here on earth and for the entire web of the cosmos, especially in the face of looming concerns of utter annihilation from nuclear war.

His book (and televised series) titled “Cosmos” speaks of his curiosity, awe, wonder, and imagination; his ideas and work themselves are very creative indeed, and his work creating the golden record sent on Voyager reveals his visionary qualities and creative insight. Like artists, scientists are explorers, experiencing our world, the cosmos. They are the first ‘to see’, to know from their unique perspective, and thus, pieces of themselves are always in there somewhere in the mix. As scientists, they own the responsibility to communicate their perspective in the most objective way possible, which really can’t ever be truly objective. Their manifested perspective, no matter how factual, will bestow great works of art upon the minds of today and the futures of tomorrow. Yet the message must be sent; every experience matters.

In the current cultural explosion of our new millennial age of universal mind expansion, awareness and enlightenment, I am not surprised at the resurgence of the importance of creativity, nor that coloring is making a comeback as a popular pastime. In today’s demanding, frenzied multitasking world of managing careers and home life, the pressures of busy schedules and technology-overload, strained budgets, lack of sleep, skipped meals, illness, loss… emotions, stress, sometimes even misplaced dreams, can pile up and complicate our lives. In the early 1900s, Carl Jung’s discoveries regarding creativity and art, and the simple creative act of coloring in geometrically-patterned designs and mandalas, revealed much about the individual and that coloring was an enlightening, cathartic art-therapy technique, with results comparable to meditation in its ability to reduce stress. Jung additionally identified different emotional states with their respective color symbolism, which is in itself a fascinating and ever-expanding realm of study as well.

Creativity is an integral part of finding our true inner joy, compassion, insight, innovation, adaptation, at the crux of development, possibly even the enlightenment, evolution and well-being of the planet. What’s more on the pulse of the ultimate divine (god/source energy) than the act of creation? How everything in the universe was created, seems to be a question on many minds. After all, we are artists working on our ultimate masterpiece: ourselves.

Are YOU ready to hug YOUR inner artist? Come and explore your own innate creative abilities with these unique coloring pages designed to get you in the zone!