Personal practice 

A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2009 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

Being a human being in Physical Creation causes us to live within sets of rules which limit our creative ability and creative power and an infinitely creative being. Being in Creation, the creative process requires us to give up some of our creative ability and creative power to have the experience of Creation. As a human being within Physical Creation, we are committed to following the rules of Physical Creation. Additionally there are aspects of the human collective consciousness to which we are committed as a human being and then there are the rules of the society in which we live.

It does need to be noted here is it is said aspects of the human collective. There are things within the collective that address manifesting a human physical body that function much like the rules of Physical Creation. But there are many things in the human collective which humans believe about being a human being that are not necessarily true. For example, the ability of humans to use the nonlocalized aspects of our being to see through time and space is not a commonly held belief in the human collective. Then there are the beliefs we hold as a result of the society in which we were born and live our life. Although there are many things we cannot change, there are more that can be changed that we first expect.

The concept of the personal practice as used in the creativity perspective is what we do personally to hold our creativity sacred and that allows it to grow and unfold into the infinity of our being. A conscious creator has their own practice and know what gives them power and what takes it away. They take responsibility for the events in their lives and work to create the reality that they choose It is about a way of being and acting in the world that either prevents us from giving away our creative power and/or allows us to readily call back our creative power if we give it away for one reason or another. Our personal practice is about developing our strength of will. It is about developing the ability to focus the energy which we need to discipline ourselves to eliminate whatever it is that is not carrying us towards our goal.

It is about learning to place our attention where we consciously desire it to be placed and hold it there, no matter what the cost and no matter what the obstacle. This is why so many spiritual traditions use a "warrior" tradition or have overtones of being a spiritual warrior. In fact, it is. The discipline of the traditional warrior is probably the closest analogy to the kind of discipline we need to develop in our creative life to have the kinds and levels of personal power that allows us to consciously co-create our reality. It is the discipline-of-the-warrior practices that allows us to focus and mobilize our energy. The warrior tradition allow us to clear what is no longer needed and to focus our energy in the direction of the desired practice. It why we must learn to develop and hone our own personal practice and we can’t use someone else’s practice unless it has been demonstrated to work for us.

Uniqueness of our personal practice

We are unique and have unique needs in all areas. Only we can develop the practices that deal with our unique needs. We may have one or more coaches who help us with one or more aspects of our practice, but only we can decide what is really effective for us.

Personal power is about understanding what strengthens us and weakens us. Our personal practice is what helps us sustain the passion for our life and in what every way possible channel our emotional energy into that which will create the world to sustain our vision and dreams. All of this is unique to each individual. It is personal because what we need to do may not look like anything another must do. What we must do is unique to us and the life we live in the world. There may be many common attributes in what we do as compared to another but we will find we need to develop our own personal practice and no one can do the for us. We will have to be free to do our own experiments to see what works and is effective for us and what we desire to create in, and/or with, our life. Although we can listen to others, observe what others do and use the lessons learned of other, we each need to eat and digest what another gives to us and take what is useful and effective to meet our true needs and discard the remainder.

Another way to see the need for a personal practice is that we can see ourselves as a creativity machine and we cannot not create. In the same way machines need to have maintenance if they are going to run properly, our body and our beings also need maintenance. We have a spiritual, mental, emotional and physical aspect to our being. Our body is the result of a flow of energy expressing itself within Physical Creation. As such our body is the manifestation of the feminine. In this regard, we should care for our body as we would care for the feminine aspect of creation. She needs to be given a safe and secure space in which to nurture her creation. Simply we need a safe and secure space to allow the body to express itself and what it feels for the creation sustained by the body are the experiences it has in life.

As discussed in the topic, "The human being as a four stringed instrument," there are four aspects to our being and each need to be tuned and cared for much the way we need to tune the strings of a stringed instrument. Analogously as a machine each of these aspects needs maintenance. The question is what type and kind of maintenance does each aspect need.

The maintenance of our creativity machine involves two primary aspects. One is do we have and embrace beliefs which allow for the free expression of our creative spirit spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically in the way it needs to express itself to unfold true to itself. The second aspect is do we have memories and/or attachments which bind our creative life energy spiritually, mentally, emotionally and physically. In the same way maintenance of a machine such as an automobile is an ongoing effort for as long as we expect the car to run, so to the maintenance of our being.

If we wish to have the creative ability and creative power to create what we desire when we desire to create it, we will need to maintain our creative being. This is why the recommendation is made in the creativity perspective to hold our creativity sacred. In holding our creativity sacred and look to call back our creative power wherever and however we may have giving it aware, we can maintain our creativity in a optimum fashion.

Our practice is unique to us and only we know what is best for us. Whether an action we take is a foolish action, or it is an urge within our being is of our creative spirit, or simply a demand of the ego, only we can be the judge. But if our mind judges our action as foolish, the action is probably of our creative spirit since the ways of the spirit are often not the ways of the enculturated mind nor the ways of the world.

What is missed by many is the fact that we needed to develop our personal practice unique to us and our creative spirit to sustain the flame of our passion. The universe honors the creative spirit by requiring a unique practice for that creative spirit to live strongly in the world. If the creative spirit tries to follow the practice of another or of some tribal tradition it will die. This unique individual creative spirit can incorporate facets and parts of the practice of others and of tribal traditions and it can share with others but it must use what works for itself. There must be a practice defined unique to the individual creative spirit that is released. There is no other way. A unique flame will require a unique vessel to hold and sustain it.

In the same way our physical forms are unique and require different physical exercises, foods, nutrients, entertainment, education, experiences for the life style we are to live, the creative spirit needs the similar subtle and not so subtle differences to sustain itself. We need a unique personal practice to sustain our flame - we must be different if our flame is to burn brightly. However, that does not mean we will be so different as to be unacceptable. Although, that may be the case, it is not necessarily so. Only our heart will tell us what our personal practice will look like.

The true priest or priestess of any tradition or non-tradition as the case may be, is capable of helping and guiding us to let that unique creative spirit out to live what is desired in our heart. However, even with the mentorship, love, caring and protection of that priest or priestess, it is up to our creative spirit itself to learn to sustain itself. We have to move into our fears and obstacles to develop the personal power that we will need to sustain our flame in any environment.

Variation and change in our personal practice

It should be noted, that as we grow and develop and becomes someone new, what was effective yesterday may no longer be effective tomorrow. We can and should expect our personal practice to change. We need to keep looking and paying attention to what is working and not working in our lives. Nothing is static and everything changes, so too that which is effective for us - it will change.

The personal practice should not just be something like a daily meditation or prayer ritual. It should representative of our whole being and being in the world. On this point, our being is routinely asked to change in the world. Some consistence is good and necessary as the sun rises and sets each day. But, it should be noted, the time the sun shines varies from day to day depends on the time of year. Similarly there should be aspects of our practice that are routine as the sun rising and setting but there needs to be a variation even in that. Anything that becomes the same all the time causes ones awareness to go to sleep. If one does not routinely break their personal practice it becomes a habit that controls and actually takes us away from what we are seeking.

It is essential that there is some type of break in our way of being. It is why there are season in nature to break the pattern, to break the habit to allow new vegetation to spring forth in the spring. But man has become too capable. We try and control the fruits that come into our life. It is not unlike how we are not longer dependent on the inconvenience of the seasons of the year. We plant in many different parts of the country with different climates so we do not depend on any one part. Similarly, we live in houses that allows us to maintain our routine and vary the personal climate to our liking rather than experience the climate based on the seasons. It is essential to break the routine. Even Napoleon recognized this when he is claimed to have said "the real job is to keep men fresh." The same is true of our personal practice and our lives. We need to keep them fresh like the freshness in a small child’s world where they daily discover new experiences each day.

Rituals and the personal practice

One ultimate goal is to develop as much as possible a private practice to sustain and maintain as close as we can we own unique relationship with Divine and that world of the unmanifested and unseen which allows us to be in the spontaneity of the moment. One way to help achieve this is to develop a personal rituals as part of our personal practice which foster and sustain living our heart and what gives us passion for life and to engage life. In actuality, personal rituals and personal power are the essence of sustaining the flame of heart and they go hand in hand. The personal practice determines the ritual and the personal ritual defines the personal practice.

The rituals should not be used as a way to sustain a practice because the practice can change. Rather, they should serve to address the issues of ownership, control and self-esteem derived from living in the existing environment. Once we use to develop the strength of will and proper identity we need to create what we desire within our environment, we would change the rituals accordingly.

The rituals we do, whether private or communal, are ultimately for our own practice and to develop and sustain our personal power. From this perspective need to design for what we want and what serves us. Our only recommendation as to what is designed is that the rituals are designed from a position of play. We need to remember the most creative state of being is one of play and the whole effort of developing our personal power to manifest effectively in the physical world. So it only makes sense to seek to move into that most creative state.

The worse scenario in using a ritual is where the ritual is boring for everyone because the ritual has fully served its purpose, but people continue to practice it because none of them have awakened to the courage to change it. So they spend their time redoing that which they already know.

The way one continues to get emotional energy from rituals is to continually adjust and renew the rituals in a new form so that the sleeping consciousness can then awaken. In doing so there will be excitement, joy and enthusiasm, for that is gift of awakening consciousness. It has to be done or the practice will become stale and stagnant. To create the future new and not repeat the past, we need to look carefully at those things in our life that we continue to do that have already awakened our consciousness, let those things go and move onto something new. We only needs to ask the Universe. It will respond and tell us what is old. We will have a feeling of boredom or new things will come into our life as if by magic or tragedy. Tragedy is also magic, except we have held onto that which needed to change in our attachments, so we consider it tragic when it is "forcibly" taken away from us.

Overall consideration in creating a personal practice

To sustain the flame of our passion and be able to live from the heart, some type of discipline or practice is essential. It is needed focus our attention and awareness and hold that focus as a single point focus to create our reality.

Whatever discipline we develop should start at the "highest" level. That is what has been traditionally called the spiritual or better said, the realm of the unseen and unmanifested. Although it is said here to start at the "highest" level, it is not that which is traditionally called spiritual is more important than the emotional, mental or physical. Rather, it is because what we create should be created from the top down for that is the way the energy of the universe works. It flows from the unmanifested and formless what is considered or perceived to be the top into the manifested which is considered or perceived to be the bottom. However, we need to understand, the process starts with what is as it is. That is, we dissolve the existing form in the sacrifice of creation so that the energy can flow and be recast into our desired creation. In essence, we start from what is in the current form physical or otherwise, dissolve it to move into the unmanifested and then have the energy flow back into the desired form or experience. The is no top or bottom. It is only the illusion of Creation which causes us to think it is such.

Although our new creation starts from the formless and unseen, the creative process start with our existing way of being and form of creation. To best create what we desire, we should have a clearly identified form for the energy to flow into before we being to dissolve our existing creation. If we being the dissolution process before we fix the form we desire we will scatter and fragment some of our creative life energy and rob our of our creative power. We then wonder why we do not create what we desire. We need to understand our intentions become thoughts which manifest by what we say and what we do. It is only wise to start from the top down and ensure what we say and do is consistent with what we desire to create before we begin to create it.

The paradox is that we create a stronger foundation for our world by working from the top down in all ways rather than the bottom up. We need to worry about our internal alignment and clarity of intention first, and all else will follow. We need to remember our inner world is reflected in the outer. If one worries about the physical first is it like pulling dandelions up from the lawn. We may pull the top off but we don’t pull up the roots and the dandelion quickly grows back. If we want to make a lasting impact on anything, we need to start with our internal work first and manifest downward and outward.

Pulling inward and trying to go upward will not work. Pulling inward and upward is telling the Creator, God if we wish, how we want the existing physical plane to change to give us want we want or desire. What we are doing is claiming parts of a whole that exist outside ourselves, claiming them as ours and pushing them up to God saying "more of the same." Pulling downward and outward is to ask, "What do I need to do internally to make the reality I choose to have?" Here we take responsibility for what we create. We recognize the creative life energy flows down through us and out. We recognize we must be transformed first if we want the energy going out to be transformed.

Additionally we must recognize that all is interconnected. We cannot take part of an existing reality, the "good" part that we want and like, and separate them from the rest. It all comes as an integrated package. It is like having a sweater with several strands of red thread woven throughout and we attempt to take out only the red strands, keeping them in the form of a sweater, and say "see this is the sweater I want - only the red strands." It can’t be done that way and still have a sweater. All we can do is weave a new sweater to our liking built around the red strands. However it will take time to make a new sweater and replace the existing sweater.

Although the discipline or practice that we choose may come from an existing spiritual or physical tradition, such as a Buddhist meditation, attending the Catholic mass, or a practicing a martial arts based judo, praying in the synagogue or mosque, we need to decide how we will use that practice to focus our mind. Whether we choose access our creativity, manifest a healing, gain enlightenment or what ever particular focus of our attention and awareness we choose to direct our mind, it is our choice. We should not rely on the existing tradition to tell us what to use it for. Any practice is only to discipline our mind and give us the focus of our attention and awareness that we need. What it is used for is irrelevant.

There is no baggage attached to a practice for any specific tradition unless we choose to attach the baggage. For example, prayer beads are used in several traditions. The Catholic tradition uses them as the Rosary. If you use prayer beads, including a Rosary chain and use it only as beads assigning each bead our own meaning, we carry no baggage or enculturation enfolded in the use of those beads. However, if you try and follow the Catholic practice of the Rosary as our practice using the beads as the Rosary then we begin take on the baggage of the Catholic tradition enfolded in the Rosary. Our attention and focus on the Rosary allows us tap into that Catholic collective consciousness of the Rosary and, as such, also opens us up to the large Catholic collective consciousness. Although we may not choose to use something like the rosary, many choose symbols of ancient Egypt, ancient China, shamanic or native traditions and the like with little thought as to how they are really using the symbols.

Another more difficult example for many is the Swastika. The Swastika is an ancient symbol used for thousands of years and was always considered sacred. However, the Swastika was used with tremendous effectiveness as a symbol of the Nazi party of World War II. Now any use of the symbol tends to be associated with being, or sympathizing with, the Nazi cause. If we use the symbol with recognition of, and respect for, how it was used by the Nazi Party keeping with the Nazi tradition, the symbol then comes with tremendous baggage. If we now attempt to use the symbol public as used for thousands of years independent of the Nazi party we still may reap the baggage of the way the Nazi party use the symbol as a result of the judgments of others.

In general, it is highly advised if we choose a symbol, practice or anything from another tradition, and unless we understand the full implications of that tradition, it is highly recommend we do not attempt to use what we have taken within its original tradition. We need to separate what we take from the tradition and define our own use for it. Otherwise, we will be energetically taking on things we may never suspect. We can always give honor and respect to the tradition from which we have taken the practice, symbol or object. It is just the recommendation is not use what we take as it would be used in that tradition trying to follow the practices of that tradition in its use. We need to respect the origins of what we use, but make its use our own unless we freely elect to follow the tradition of origin.

Developing our personal practice

What exactly does the maintenance of our spiritual, mental, emotional and physical aspect look like? Or, alternatively said, what do we need to do to maintain the spiritual, mental, emotional and physical aspects of our being so as maintain and optimum creative ability and creative power? Since we each are unique beings and live unique lives we each have unique ways of how we have given away our creative power. As such we each will have a unique path or way to do our maintenance. Of course, some of us may need to call back our creative power before we look to maintain it.

In developing the personal practice, it will often be as though we constantly have the proverbial monkey on our back. We will feel there are too many distractions and they seem to keep climbing all over us taking us away from what we desire to create. It needs to be understood that these distractions, these monkeys climbing all over our back, come from the ego and past habits. However, the issue is not doing away with the ego because the ego is what holds us in form and part of the creative process to give form to the unmanifested. As long as we are living in some reality we will have an ego, so we might as well get use to it.

The issue is learning to step aside the ego and view and act from a more cosmic perspective. Learning to act from our conscious awareness as to what serves us as opposed to our ego and our past conditioning. It is to learn to live from above the world of duality and being happy with what is. But this ability to side step the ego and step out of mind is also needed for another reason. It is necessary to step aside beliefs or thoughts that are seen as true which may not be true. Doing so opens the door for the currently unseen possibilities.

The recommendation is to develop a personal practice which allows us to hold our creativity sacred if not allow it to grow and unfold into the infinity of our being. As part of our personal practice for our life, we will need to develop a parallel process is for the creative endeavor we wish to undertake and, in particular to remain in a conscious awareness of how to create our reality. We should be very clear on what we wish to create, especially our choice and clarity of intention for what we wish to create and manifest in, and with, our life. The recommendation provided here is that we should routinely be actively and consciously creating some aspect of our reality to keep our skill fresh rather than being lead by the mundane of life or the desire of others.

We need to practice discernment and give ourselves the time, energy and resources to listen and understand. We needs to develop an individual practice that nourishes the our creative spirit and the true needs that are required to live the truth of our being. To have an individual practice we need to love ourselves sufficiently to realize how important that practice is. No one would deny a budding artist the opportunity to study under a master who could help perfect their techniques of painting. Why do we deny ourselves the same love and opportunity to develop our own unique practice under the mentorship of our own inner master? Who is to judge what is best for us other than our own inner self? We are our own best advisor and our body and our psyche will tell us what works and doesn’t work through what gives us a feeling of fullness of being and fullness of life. We must develop our own practice and use what is effective for us and realize our sequencing of actions can be expected to be different than another. There are no mistakes in a true learning experience and what we call mistakes are a natural part of the process to learn what is best for us.

Relative to a personal practice we need to remember, we cannot give to others what we do not have. Unless we love ourselves and practice loving ourselves, we cannot give love to others. If we don’t support and cheer for ourselves, who can we be assured of supporting and cheering us? If we don’t love ourselves sufficiently to support and cheer ourselves, who will feel like supporting and cheering us?

Related topics
Consideration for a personal practice
Creativity maintenance relative to the spiritual aspect of our being
Creativity maintenance relative to the mental aspect of our being
Creativity maintenance relative to the emotional aspect of our being
Creativity maintenance relative to the physical aspect of our being

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