Genie’s Note: During the month of April we will be exploring the connection betwen creativity and spirituality. Bob is starting us off with another of his insightful articles. You many have noticed we are returning to daily Espirational posts.

By Robert O. Robbins

The first thing we learn when reading the Holy Bible’s Pentateuch written by Moses is that Jehovah, God, is a creator. Common knowledge, you may say. And the first thing this creator did was to set forth universal, inter-dimensional, time-limitless instructions to create certain things: like light, stars, planets, plants, animals, birds, insects, and countless other things – including humans. Most everyone has at some time asked, or at least wondered within their own minds, how any being could create all these things and all of the people we see around us if nothing existed before such creation. The answer to such a question can only be answered through a circular response: The creation of all existence was possible because God was and is creative. And he wants us to be also. 

“Say what?”

God commanded his angels that he wanted to make people in his or their image. One of the first things this should then bring to mind is that he desires us to be wonderfully creative beings expressing his love of knowledge, wisdom, beauty, and mystery in all that we do. This is to be a celebration of helping the Creator bring light into darkness, order out of chaos, and love over fear.

But how does one live creatively?

First, one must look at the natural state of things, as they were before people became involved with them, and not only recognize the beauty and order of such existence but also realize its natural order as created by Jehovah. It is only when we can look at an untouched wilderness that we can realize the fact that the most creative thing we can do sometimes is to leave it alone.

Then, after truly experiencing the original creation, perhaps for the first time, we should feel the urge to merge with it. Now this does not mean becoming naked and leaving the city to live like a hermit in the back woods and hunting or gathering your food from the natural resources there. No, instead it is a recognition that even as God created what we see and experience around us, including ourselves, it was essentially created out of His own essence. Creativity within ourselves is much the same.

Being creative is more than sitting at a hung canvas with paint pallet in one hand and a brush in another to replicate what one might see before them which has already existed. While a tremendous skill, creativity only enters the picture when the artist steps outside the realm of duplication and into the dimension of possibilities. A dimension of unnoticed beauty, unrecognized emotional messages, and unpredictable outcomes.

Creativity is more, also, than just sitting at a keyboard or with pencil or pen in hand and placing a mass of words on a page as I am doing now. Words that simply describe reality or attempt to explain possibilities usually are written mechanically and show very little true creativity with unique solutions to life challenges for even just one of us if not us all.

Creativity is the ability to look at something and to see beyond the obvious to the grand possibilities if limited thinking is dismissed. To do this one must first put away childish toys but keep the ability to have childhood dreams and the imaginations which go with them. We must push away from us the negativity of the dark and fearful world which encroaches upon us from the moment of birth and recognize the spiritual light, joy and love which can help us create, through the power of faith, a wonderful life now filled with health, friendships, beauty and basic needs without extreme struggle. In short, we can create Heaven on Earth if we just believe and live a creative spiritual lifestyle as if we believed it is truly possible – because it is.

So draw, paint, carve or sew that picture. Write those words so incessantly haunting you. Live in service to your fellow humans. Enjoy purity and possibilities. Create a vision in any way you can of how life could be and how we can make it better. We are the children of God. Sons and daughters of the Almighty Creator. As a dog reproduces a puppy after its own kind even so has God created us, his children, like himself. Thus since God is a Creator and we are his offspring, even so are we creators.

Let us all go out with purpose to create a better place for us all to live.

More of Bob’s writing is available in the Espirational Free Library.