Creating a creativity tool box

 

A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2008 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

 
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A tool box (or a medicine bag in the case of a healer) contains all the tools used by an individual in their trade or profession. For, creativity, the creativity tool box contains the tools and/or symbols of our creative power as a creator. Creating a creativity tool box is where we collect and place symbols of the various aspects of our creative ability and creative power in some type of container, often a tool box. It is a useful way to focus our mind on the various aspects of our creative ability and creative power. Placing all the symbols and tools together in the tool box is a way to visualized consolidating our creative ability and creative power

In addition to using the tool box to store items that are used in our creative endeavors to remind us of our creative power, some have found find creating a tool box a useful exercise to access their creative power or call back their creative power from where they have given it away.

Background

Realizing creative power is found in feeling, our creativity tools are things that cause deep feelings to arise within us to catalyze us into action. Or, they are tools that allow us to move past the limits and barriers within our creative imagination  to explore all options in a creative endeavor. They remind us in some way that we are an infinitely creative being and we only limit our creative power for the purposes of having a particular experience of creation/Creation or of a creation.

For example, some of the symbols and items which have been used are as follows. A gyroscope was used by an individual to represent they will not lose balance. A compass has been used as to not loose direction in life. A candle and matches have been used so as to be able to always light the candle when it is necessary to bring light (enlightenment and wisdom) into the action to be performed. A copy of the individual’s life intention has been put into the box for it gives the individual creative power in life. Small vials of scented oils have been used to allow their fragrances to remind the individual of particular powerful states of being. A key has been used to symbolize the ability to figure out how to unlock any seemingly closed door. A small flashing light can represent the ability to shine light onto, or into, any subject. A blue stone has been used the represent the infinity of creation and a clear crystal the purity of one’s heart. Anything can be used if it inspires the individual to creatively act and/or reminds them of their creative power.

Creating a creativity tool box

Creating a creativity tool box is about collecting the symbols or tools of where we see our creative power lying and placing all the symbols and tools in some type of container representing the consolidation of our creative power. Most of us are pulled in many directions in life at one time. We become so focus in one direction we forget the powers we have in other direction or the ability to call other parts of our being into the problem we face. A creativity tool box allow us to remind ourselves how much power we really have.

Calling back our creative power

One key recommended action for calling back our creative power and creative ability is to create a "creativity tool box." The creativity tool box is symbolic way of our calling back our creative power. As we review all the areas identified as to how we may have given away our creative power and take action to call our power back we place a symbol in the tool box of that area of our creative power or the action we take.

What we place in the tool box may be the creative tools or symbols of where we have lost our ability to creatively play and call back what we have lost or given away. It is about recognizing how we denied our creative ability and creative power or gave our creative power away and how we need to call it back. Placing all the symbols together in the tool box is a way to visualize consolidating our creative ability and creative power as we call it or take it back. Also, we can create a little ritual or metatheater around the process of getting the symbol and placing it in the tool box to increase the emotional feeling about reconstituting our creative ability and creative power.

In many ways, creating a creativity tool box is about beginning to dismantle the cage of our own making which holds our creative spirit captive. The cage in which we put our creative spirit is much like a box or cage with six sides. Top of the cage/box is our concept of God, the unseen realms and the creative powers/Creative Powers of creation/Creation. The bottom of the cage/box is sexuality and the sides represent our ability to move laterally through life.

Relative to the top of the cage/box, the basic question here is do we learn where our creative power starts and that of Creation takes over such that we take responsibility. We need to take responsibility for what we need to do and leave to Creation what it responsible for doing. Creating a creativity tool box helps us to discern and distinguish between these two.

The bottom of the cage/box is sexuality. The basic question here is are we free to creatively use our sexuality as the creative tool that it is to create what we desire and/or a life worth living. The symbols here reflect how we use our sexuality and what we allow ourselves to explore at least in the privacy of our own creative imagination . The sides of the cage/box are what we think and believe about how we need to be in the world. Here the questions centers around whether or not we are able to act to live true to ourselves or do we try and please the external world compromising our truth along the way. Here the tools and symbols are what empower us to move as necessary in our life and environment in which we find ourselves

The creativity tool box and the soul retrieval

In many ways, creating a creativity tool box is about creating a self generated soul retrieval. The soul retrieval is an ancient shamanic practice that was used, and often still is used, to treat certain types and kinds of illnesses. The soul retrieval views illness and disease as being created as a result of the loss of our creative spirit. In essence, we lose the creative ability and creative power to create health. To regain it, someone must take a journey to find and retrieve what has been lost.

From the creativity perspective to understand the concept of soul retrieval, we can replace the concept of the soul as used in the term soul retrieval with the term creative spirit. Although the concept of soul and creative spirit are different, we can view them the same when discussing the concept of the soul retrieval. The concept of the soul as used in soul retrieval is more akin to the concept of spirit as used in spiritual and religious traditions. The relationship of the spirit of spiritual and religious traditions and the our creative spirit is discussed in the topic, "The Creative Spirit and the Spirit of Spirituality and Religion."

The approach used in soul retrieval is that it views the origins of lifelessness, lack enthusiasm for life or illness and disease from the perspective that we lose a part of our soul as a result of traumatic or other similar kind of event or events in our life. The loss of that part of our soul then denies our ability to create a condition of health.

Denial of an aspect of our creative spirit or having our creative spirit thwarted is, in essence, the same as losing a part of our soul and there is the need to someone to go back and retrieve it. The individual can do it themselves or, it can be done with the help of another. For example the use of a shaman, another who understanding and can use the interconnectedness and oneness of all Creation such as a rainmaker. In the soul retrieval the shaman uses their view of Creation and the incorporation of symbols and rituals to achieve the soul retrieval. Similarly, an individual can use the interconnectedness and oneness of Creation, much as that used in the Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity understanding and material. It is to create the safe and secure space and use symbols, rituals, metatheater, and the like to explore the creative imagination . Then use the and the process of complex integration to retrieve what has been lost, suppressed, given away or otherwise inaccessible.

In even attempting to do a soul retrieval, there is the awareness that any traumatic event will cause a part or aspect of our creative spirit to withdrawal. Simply having our creative play thwarted as a child in some way is traumatic enough to cause a withdrawal of an aspect of our creative spirit. But here is also the awareness that if we do suffer a traumatic event, if we have the necessary support from another to feel and process our fear and/or pain when we initially had the experience, soul loss will not occur or be significantly minimized. What needs to be understood is that if we have that "mommy," that nurturing feminine creative energy that is able to give unconditionally to what the wounded spirit needs to whom we an go to be held while we process our pain, we will not suffer a soul loss and our creative spirit will not withdrawal. Similarly, if we have a safe and secure space to process our pain and fear of the past we can regain that part of our being and creativity being held captive by the past experience.

What needs to be understood is this nurturing feminine creative energy which is needed to regain that which has been lost can be created either internally or externally. The traditional soul retrieval is creating this safe and secure space with the nurturing feminine creative energy externally. The nurturing feminine creative spirit can be found in either a man or a woman or even through a collection or composite of individuals such as, a community. In cases where neither mommy or daddy could not be available, or worse, could not be trusted, in the way the wounded creative spirit within a child needed to be held, a community of individuals can provide a composite nurturing feminine creative energy. In any case, if some individual and/or some type of community support is not available which can supply this nurturing feminine creative energy as it is needed in the way it is needed (not the way the mind of individual or community wants to give it), it is likely some soul loss will occur and/or those lost fragments will remain lost.

But we can also create this nurturing feminine energy internally. That is, the individual can create the safe and secure space internally for their creative spirit to get what it needs. If we access and begin to live our truth we create that safe and secure space for our creative spirit to unfold true to itself. The inner feminine is able to nurture and heal the wounds which cause us to deny our truth and/or robbed us of our creative power. In living our truth, we access a tremendous creative passion which allows us to move past our pain. But creation is not done alone. If there is not an individual or community of individuals who can create a safe and secure space and provide that nurturing feminine creative energy, one will not be able to retrieve the all parts of their creative spirit that were lost. Quite simply there are part of our being for which we need another to experience.

In regards to a part of our creative power and creative ability being lost or denied, that loss or denial creates a void within our being. What many do not realizes is that we can sense these voids in our life about an issue, a place or a person. This is why it is so important to become aware of what we feel. It is in what we feel about a person, place or situation that will tell us where our creative spirit is, or is not, being denied, supported or otherwise available to us. We can use these voids to help regains fragments of our creative spirit which we have denied or to prevent their loss when we are creatively wounded. In using creative tools and symbols, we can explore where we feel these voids to see what lies at their root and how we may need to change our life and address bringing life into a particular void.

Related topic
Creating a creativity tool box exercise
Calling back our creative power
Reconstituting the whole - calling back our creative power
Void within our being
Soul retrieval

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