A Creative Life
by Kenneth Smith
 Creativity, or bringing something into being, results from the
interaction between form and potential. Form is cohesion, a type of energy
field. Potential is abstract energy; that is, energy that has possibilities of
realization but isn't there yet. Pure potential is completely abstract, the
infinite creation, which contains everything but has no form.
How these energies play together determines what is created -- the
imaginings of your life and world. If you don't connect with
potential, you will just be circling within the conditional field you already
have. This may keep you amused, but you are not going to grow very much. When
you squarely face potential, you place your life on the line -- each and every
moment of it. This will move you from talk about life into a relationship with
the world in which you live to the hilt.
Creating Your Life by Living a Path with Heart
Now we get to the heart of building a quality life. In Toltec,
Buddhist, and other traditions this has come to be known as "living a path with
heart." To fully engage life with abundant meaning, Jack Kornfield offers a
range of perspectives and practices relating to inner transformation.
Throughout his book, A Path with Heart, he provides
perspectives on individual and group dynamics of growth. For instance, he deals
with self-knowledge, expanding awareness, altered states, ethics, and applying
meditation to psychotherapy.
Don Juan boiled down the process of creating a path with heart to
using your death as a way to focus your selection of involvements in life. The
trick is to consult death in such a way that it doesn't become encumbering, to
use death as a tool to battle fear rather than a morbid fixation. When making a
decision, for example, make it in the light that it may well be your last act
on Earth. Doing so helps bring to light the deepest drives and core values of a
person.
When you are suitably focused, the
criteria for selecting the elements of your path are based on peace, strength,
and joy. Once several pursuits have been initiated, you are on your path.
Rather than pursue money as a primary objective even though you really don't
like the chase, you actively involve yourself with something else. Seen in the
context of an energetic logic and ethic, having a large bank account is not
errant, but going after money when it doesn't resonate with your core
stultifies your growth. After several years of grooming your life based on
peace, joy, and strength, you will have a life with that foundation.
Other teachers suggest similar
approaches to finding, expressing, and living core meaning. To penetrate the
shrouds of awareness that interfere with developing a full and complete life,
meditation and healing-technique teacher Stephen Levine also advises us to use
death as a focus to bring ourselves to life. He advocates that this helps us
live in such a way as to "directly experience the moment-to-moment process that
is our lives." And he also holds that it is fear (a condition characteristic of
the orientation stage) that is the major impediment to this awareness.
A leader of the positive psychology movement, Paul Pearsall points
out the conditions of thriving include living a strong life, a deliberate life.
As such he notes that peace and joy are aspects of such flourishing. Like
others, he advises, "Don't die until you've lived." Perhaps
reflecting increased investigations into metaphysics, positive psychology
shares common denominators with classic mysticism traditions. Both find that
awareness and flourishing go hand in hand. They both aptly highlight the common
focus relating to personal and group development.
People typically derive meaning in their lives from group values
rather than from within. Jung tells us that this makes individuation
impossible, as the self is never developed, let alone expressed and lived. For
individual imagination to become alive and functional, we need to be able to
step away from the group. At the same time we are social creatures who derive
value from participation with the group. The balance is to seek individuation
while keeping an eye on what you can offer others. In this way, you learn to be
yourself while being part of the group, which is a measure of
self-actualization.
Both personally and collectively,
peace, joy, and strength characterize heightened consciousness. When these
qualities are manifested, the components of a path with heart -- the activities
you decided to pursue -- provide the means to solidify other gains. A life formed
in such a way will help you reintegrate your awareness after you've stepped
into an altered state.
Creating a path with heart is a way to begin working with cohesion.
It balances the forces inside and out. This produces more awareness as your
life awakens your core. Remember, all of the influences throughout your life
shape cohesion, the determinant of your perceptions and behaviors. Living a
path with heart is a means to purposefully condition your energy body. This
ongoing development is therefore a solid step toward being,
a state that Levine describes as directly experiencing that "moment-to-moment
process that is our lives."
This article was excerpted from:
 Awakening the Energy Body: From Shamanism to Bioenergetics
by Kenneth Smith.
Reprinted with permission of publisher, Bear & Company, an imprint of Inner Traditions International. ©2008 by Biocognitive Technology.
Info/Order this book.
About the Author
Kenneth Smith, writing under the name Ken Eagle Feather, has published several books on Toltec philosophy, including On the Toltec Path and Toltec Dreaming.
He apprenticed with Toltec shaman don Juan Matus and has served on the
staff of the Association for Research and Enlightenment, part of the
Edgar Cayce legacy, and also on the staff of The Monroe Institute,
founded by consciousness researcher Robert Monroe. He is the executive
director for Therapeutic Discovery, a medical science research
institute, and lives in Richmond, Virginia.
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