We have immense powers to create, yet use only a small fraction of this ability. Why do we limit ourselves and how can we liberate and more fully express our creativity?
A familiar New Age statement is “You create your own reality.” If true, it is empowering and suggests that we are not victims of life even if we have real disadvantages.
If we can create what we want, why don’t we? What if what we experience is in fact fully our creation?
The Pathwork says: “The sum total of all your conscious, semi-conscious, unconscious, explicit and implicit thoughts, beliefs, assumptions, intentions, feelings, emotions and will directions -- conflicting as they may be -- creates a definitive result. This result is your present experience and the way your life is unfolding for you. Your present life expresses exactly, like a faultless mathematical equation, what your inner state is.” [1]
Our thoughts, feelings and attitudes, conscious and unconscious are powerful energies which mold our lives.
Relationships
For example, if we have a conscious desire to have a good relationship, but also have an unconscious or semi-conscious belief that relationships are painful or limiting, what do you think will result from the inner conflict of these creative forces? We probably will not be successful in forming the relationship we consciously say we want. We might develop a flawed relationship which is painful or limiting or we might avoid getting into a significant relationship. Our unconscious or semi-conscious belief which fears relationship will win over our conscious desire. The unconscious is more powerful. [2] As you know, there are many variations on this theme.
“Our lives and our behaviors are much more profoundly affected by the beliefs we hold unconsciously than by the beliefs we hold consciously.” [3]
Faced with our experience of not being successful in creating a good relationship, we have two fundamental choices. We either can blame fate or life for our misfortune and believe we are helpless victims or we can take responsibility for what has happened and explore, find and change what inside of us has created our lack of success. If we choose blame, we will continue to recreate failure in this arena of life and we will be victims of our failing to be responsible. However, if we take responsibility and go deeply into the discovery of our own inner causes of failed relationships, we then create an opportunity to make the inner changes which can lead to success.
Caught in Cross Currents
We complex beings are subject to multiple inner desires and will currents as well as outer influences. Many of the interior directives are unconscious or semi conscious, and often they are contrary to our conscious thoughts and wants. Stress is created when these inner forces pull us in different directions.
An image is a fixed belief that we perpetuate and will not question until we consciously choose to examine it to see if it is true. Usually these beliefs are formed in childhood from an experience or series of experiences from which the child generalizes a rigid belief. The image then may be valued and defended because it provides the illusion of understanding some aspect of life, perhaps making the child feel more safe. The child’s perception of the event might have been accurate, but the generalization is not and the defense of the image prevents new experiences from being accurately seen which would modify the fixed belief, making it more realistic. [4]
“One way we choose unconsciously is to protect ourselves by blocking from our awareness information or experience that contradicts our unconscious belief system.” [5]
Messages from the Deep
Children often supress unpleasant experiences intending to avoid them, but instead they are driven underground into the unconscious. A careless or insensitive remark made to a child by a parent, teacher, sibling or peer may make a deep impression on the child: “That’s stupid!” “When are you ever going to learn?!?” “Everybody knows that!” It is easy to understand how the child can interpret these statements to mean that he or she is stupid, a slow learner, not original or creative. Then, in the future, to avoid further pain, the child may internalize the limiting belief and avoid risking behavior which could result in further criticism. If these limiting beliefs are not discovered and eliminated they can have the tragic result of supressing the innate greatness of this being, their godlikeness.
“We fear to know the fearsome and unsavory aspects of ourselves (what Jung aptly named ‘the shadow’) but we fear even more to know ‘the godlike in ourselves.’” [6]
Another way images are formed is by observation. A young child initially idealizes their parents, believing they are perfect. As the child grows, they are shocked to learn that their parents are imperfect and have an imperfect relationship. At this point, the child might conclude that all relationships are bad or very difficult and an image is formed. When the child grows up and wants a relationship, this childhood image will conflict with the adult longing.
Sometimes images are even on the surface as background mental chatter to which we do not pay attention. Learn to listen to this chatter. Make the background noise into foreground words and then identify the beliefs which are embedded in these words.
“Every situation you experience is the product of a word you
have spoken, and are perhaps still speaking constantly within ..
on one level of awareness or another.”[7]
have spoken, and are perhaps still speaking constantly within ..
on one level of awareness or another.”[7]
An important aspect of the work of opening our creativity is the process of bringing these unconscious or semi conscious beliefs or images into consciousness where they can be examined and dissolved.
Outside the Box
What is the Box? The box is your creation, formed by all the limitations you maintain. Parents and others may have given you these limiting beliefs long ago, but you are the one who keeps them in operation. You keep yourself small, a miniature of your godlike self.
That is both the good news and the bad. The bad or unfortunate is your unconscious willingness to perpetuate these destructive limitations on your being. The good news is that there is no one other than yourself who can stop you from dismantling your box and becoming free to live fully and express your godlike self. Then you will allow your creativity to flow as it wants to move, perhaps in ways you have not yet imagined.
A Blessing
Reading this article or listening to a lecture is perhaps like looking at a map. It suggests where you can go on your journey. I hope you will challenge your personal box -- your unquestioned assumptions about your illusory limitations -- and expand further into your creative godself. Blessings on this journey!
“The only way to reach this freedom that you strive for is to delve into yourself.
In that way you will go through a tunnel of darkness and emerge on the
other side to encounter the light of true independence.” [8]
Pathwork Lecture References:
PL # 41 - “Images - the Damage They Do”
PL # 45 - “The Conflict Between Conscious and Unconscious Desires”
PL # 98 - “Wishful Daydreams”
PL #131 - “Interaction Between Expression and Impression”
PL #196 - “Commitment, Cause and Effect”
PL #203 - “Interpenetration of the Divine Spark into the Outer Regions”
PL #208 - “The Innate Capacity to Create”
PL #212 - “Claiming the Total Capacity for Greatness”
PL #233 - “Power of the Word”
Harman, Willis and Howard Rheingold, (1984) Higher Creativity, Los Angeles, Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc.
[1] PL #208
[2] PL#45
[3] Harmon, 62
[4] PL#41
[5] Harmon, 64
[6] Harmon, 65, quoting Maslow
[7] PL#233
[8] PL#41
Gene Humphrey, PhD and MBA, is a senior Pathwork helper. He spends time climbing into and out of his own box and exploring in the deep where, despite his fear that he is limited and less than, he discovers that his godself is a live and well.
