Creation Is a Return to Source

We live in a physical reality, and consumption is part of being here. We consume food; information; entertainment; objects; experiences; one another’s ideas. There is nothing inherently wrong with consumption. It is part of how we learn; how we receive; how we participate in the world around us. But I wonder what happens when we begin to overconsume and under create. When so much of our attention is directed toward taking in what has already been made; already thought; already interpreted; already imagined by someone else; we can gradually become disconnected from our own Source. The point of origin. The point of originality. The point of authenticity. That place within us from which something that has never existed before can enter the present moment.

Creation is not reserved for artists. Creative energy is life force energy. It is the movement of something from the unseen into the seen; from possibility into expression. Every one of us possesses this capacity. Our imagination is one of its most extraordinary faculties, and we are creating even when we do not recognize ourselves as creators. Consider how easily the mind constructs an entire reality around a fear. Something happens and immediately we begin imagining what it might mean. We imagine what could go wrong; what we might lose; how we might fail; how someone might leave. Nothing has happened yet, and still the body begins responding to the world we have imagined. Our heart changes. Our muscles tighten. Our breathing changes. The imagined experience becomes a felt experience in the present. This is creative power too. We have taken something that does not exist in the present moment and given it form within ourselves.

And if our imagination has the capacity to rehearse fear, it also has the capacity to entertain something else. Joy. Peace. Aliveness. Inspiration. Love. What happens when we allow ourselves to imagine that which feels good to think? Not as a denial of reality; not as an insistence that painful things do not exist; but as recognition that fear does not deserve exclusive access to our imagination. We can turn our attention toward what is beautiful. We can imagine what we desire to build. We can linger with gratitude. We can allow ourselves to experience possibility before it has taken physical form. When we repeatedly entertain these experiences in imagination, we are giving the subconscious mind another experience to know. The body responds to that too.

Perhaps one of the questions we have forgotten to ask is simply: How does what I consume feel inside of me? We consume an extraordinary amount of information without noticing what happens within us as we do. We scroll; we watch; we listen; we compare. We absorb other people’s fears; desires; arguments; aesthetics; interpretations; and definitions of what a meaningful life should look like. Meanwhile, our own being is responding. Does this leave me expanded or contracted? Inspired or depleted? Present or restless? Connected or fragmented? More myself or somehow farther away? Our bodies are continually participating in our relationship with what we consume. We only have to become quiet enough to listen.

Creation asks something different of us. Creation asks us to bring ourselves forward. To write something that did not exist until our hand moved across the page. To sing. To dance. To paint. To garden. To bake bread. To build a home. To arrange flowers. To solve a problem. To tell someone what is actually inside of us. To make meaning from an experience that arrived without instructions. Even meaning itself is creative. Something happens, and we participate in deciding what it becomes within the story of our lives. The act of creation is the experience of self by way of expansion. Something that existed within us becomes expressed beyond us; and through that expression, we encounter more of ourselves.

And perhaps this is one of the deeper problems with the way many of us have been taught to live. Our culture is extraordinarily good at turning human beings into consumers, and capitalism is extraordinarily good at directing our creative energy toward the production of something that belongs to an entity larger than ourselves. We give our imagination; intelligence; attention; ingenuity; time; and life force to organizations for hours each day. We create inside carefully defined boxes so that something outside of us can grow. There is nothing inherently wrong with contributing to something larger than ourselves. Collaboration can be deeply meaningful. Service can be sacred. But there is a danger when we spend so much of our creative power building someone else’s vision that we forget we possess a vision of our own.

There is nothing, and should be nothing, bigger than your own presence within your reality. That does not mean believing yourself more important than other people. It means remembering that you are the one experiencing your life. You are the point through which your particular experience of existence is occurring. You are not merely here to consume what other people have created. You are not merely here to perform a function inside someone else’s creation. You are participating in the creation of your experience every day; through what you attend to; what you imagine; what you decide something means; what you make; what you express; what you nurture; and what you choose to bring into being.

So perhaps the question is not simply, What am I consuming? Perhaps it is also, What am I creating? What am I giving life to with my attention? What am I rehearsing in my imagination? What meaning am I creating from what I experience? What am I allowing to move through me that could not have entered this world in precisely this way through anyone else?

There is a place within you that exists before comparison; before performance; before someone else tells you what something should look like. The point of origin. The point of originality. The point of authenticity. Return there. Create from there. Your imagination is powerful. Your attention is powerful. Your presence is powerful. Your life is creative energy in motion.

Choose wisely. Choose yourself.

That’s the Pura Vida Way.