Weekly MMM - Creativity -ing

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CREATIVITY - ing 

Our free choice is perhaps the most precious gift that we have from Hashem in our lives. We can choose to feel or speak or say or think anything we want, but I don’t think most people recognize how precious the gift of free choice is, and how to use it, and how to be creative in expressing it. We learn in Kabbalah that the world was created in a state of constriction. G-d, so to speak, constricted it.

That reality of constriction demands from us to exercise our ability to find creative ways to overcome constriction. So, constriction is part and parcel of nature, as is the creativity of overcoming it. 

Once I saw a well-known book called The Artist’s Way about how to develop creativity, and it basically stressed the idea: Create, Create and then Create some more. Force yourself to take an hour a day and create, whatever type of creative expression you’re doing, because, just like everything else in the spiritual and the physical world, the more you do something, the better you get. 

The same is true of creativity. You open up creativity, and that creativity perpetuates creativity. Basically, my entire life history is one long story of creative choices that I have made. I think the life history of anybody is like that. When you study human history, what you’re studying on a deeper level, is the creative choices that people have made. 

Now I’d like to share a few of my own creativity expressions in my own life. I’m a creative communicator. I’m a person who is trying my best at all times to communicate in different ways, creative ways. I try to speak from my heart, in music, in poetry, to try to communicate in ways that are a full expression of myself, eliciting the full expression of the person I’m talking to. 

I'm a person who is a searcher for the essential point as part and parcel of the creative process, and the more you tap in to the essential point, the less effort is required in order to manifest whatever it is that you are creating, less vessels are required to contain and convey the message that you are creating. I create a life that I love. My entire being is dedicated to making my life a life that I love, and then, subsequently, loving my life. I create a transcendent way of doing things. 

That, as I’ve shared earlier, is also part of my essence, part of my own personal legacy to constantly find the transcendent way, the way that’s beyond, and that demands creativity on my part as well. All of the highlights of my life, when I look back at them, and even when I’m doing them, are all creative solutions to challenges, to problems that are on my plate. 

I create or manifest reality. I understand that we have a big impact in causing our lives to be in a certain way, creating and causing reality. That is maybe one of the most profound expressions of creativity. I see people and ideas of my life as being one big, huge, lavish cafeteria. And therefore, the creativity is being able to choose, the creativity to choose those dishes that are tasty, that are right, that fit into the entire meal of life. 

I see life as an opportunity to gather the tools. It’s a treasure chest of tools made to understand what life is, what Torah is, and to inform myself and inform others about it, turning Torah and life into tools, and collecting those tools and using those tools in all kinds of situations. I try to teach in a creative way. I’m constantly searching for creative ways to get my teaching across, whether it be through the venue of music or poetry or questions and answers, or what I’m doing right now, which is teaching in a monologue as opposed to a dialogue fashion. 

My learning is an all-encompassing, creative experience as well. I have lists, and I take what I learn and I try to see how what I’m learning and anything and everything that is related to it, can be summarized in an accessible, fathomable way. I know that the great Sages of the Torah, when they dealt with any topic, any subject, they were able to see the entire spectrum, the entire scope of all related subjects. That is how they came up with all their unique insights, their unique way of looking at things. They saw the big picture and that is what opened up their creativity.

I am constantly challenged to know what I know, not to lose a drop. I’ve collected so much over time, but if I could somehow get to it, somehow access it, there’s a wealth of creativity that’s untapped, that’s right there inside of myself. I love brainstorming, I love taking a challenge and thinking in an out-of-the-box way of how to deal with the challenge at hand. I’ve created many online booklets, and all of them are different creative ways of dealing with life, all with tools and guidance. 

I love to do questions and answers research. I always ask myself questions because I know there is a creative force inside myself that will produce the answers. I love to look at what’s happening, the highlights of my life, and understand what it is that I am becoming, what type of birth process is going on inside of myself. That is a fantastic source of creative expression, creative living. 

These are things that I am doing already in the area of creativity, in the consciousness of creativity. But, truth be told, in the area of creativity, there are things that I’d like to do that are beyond the level of my creativity at this point. I believe that creativity can propel us into being more high-tech than the highest tech computer mass communication systems that are up and running now, and even will be up and running in the future. I believe that all that technology is just a reflection of the creativity that’s already inside our minds and our own consciousness. 

I yearn for that state of being. I yearn to see all wisdom as Torah, as an expression of divine wisdom, whether it’s direct Torah or fallen Torah that needs to be gathered in its exilic state and brought back to its home state. I yearn to use creativity to emulate the Creator, to emulate how the Creator creates, to understand and use his master template and create what I create according to that. I yearn to use creativity to see life through Sefirotic glasses, seeing the essence of things in a Sefirotic way. I’ve begun to tap into that and would like to tap into a higher level. 

I yearn to use creativity to do everything effortlessly. I believe if we go deep enough in the creative process we don’t have to exert any effort at all. I yearn to use creativity to fuse myself with Hashem – the ultimate fusion, my will with Hashem’s, my thoughts, my emotion, expressions, my actions with Hashem’s. I yearn to use creativity to master all the different types of creating methodologies that G-d himself uses to create, such as the different universes’ type of creating, the emanation type of Creation, the out-of-the-box type of Creation, the emulation type of Creation, and the type of Creation where you are closing on something that is already there.

I long to master the art of interinclusion. As a long-time student of Kabbalah I understand that one of Kabbalah’s deepest teachings is that everything is interincluded in everything else, and that is how you get to unity, to a Tikkun of the world, and that’s another expression of creativity, to see how everything fits, and how everything has its representative aspect in everything else, reproducing and birthing whole new insights and perspectives. 

I yearn to see the wholeness of everything and thereby understand how whole new creative dimensions can be harnessed. I yearn to be a spiritual wisdom gunslinger and be able to instantly pull a pistol of instant creative answers and solutions out of my pocket when I need to, just as the great gunslingers from the Old West used to do, only my intention is one of creative solutions. These are few of my yearnings that can be potentially accessed with the proper creative mindset.