There is a creative urge that is present within you and me and within all people. This urge includes the artistic impulse, but it is far more than that. It is the urge to live and the urge to love. It is the urge to create and inhabit a flourishing world. It is the desire to create a kingdom of love.

This is the essential human urge within all people. But it is certainly not confined to humankind. The urge of Creation activates every plant, every animal, and, indeed, the entire planet. And if you really want to appreciate the vast reality of it, the creative urge is universal. Moment by moment, the cosmos is busy manifesting itself in a reality of unimaginable proportion, all an expression of the creative urge within it.

This is the urge to manifest and thrive. Even if you think of it materially and logically, it becomes clear that the very nature of the universe is to thrive. That is what it does. And in fact, anything that does not thrive is no longer here. Is that not true? The universe, and all the dimensions of it, is here because it is thriving, and it has the urge to thrive within it. That is the very nature of the universe. And if that were not its nature, it would not be here. It would not be thriving.

The same is true for us. The same is true for this planet. We are thriving because we have the compulsion to thrive, to live, to flourish, and to love.

This quotation is from Rupert Sheldrake, speaking about the theory of the Big Bang:

It’s almost as if science said, “Give me one free miracle, and from there the entire thing will proceed with a seamless, causal explanation.” The one free miracle was the sudden appearance of all the matter and energy in the universe, with all the laws that govern it.

The Big Bang theory attributes Creation to an event 13.8 billion years ago. It gives some comfort to people who believe in this conception of the origin of their current reality. But when you pull back the curtains, you are left with the question: What created the Big Bang? And, What is the cause of the Creation in which we are participating now? Are our lives now only an echo of an event in the far-distant past? If we dare to think these thoughts, we realize that there is far more mystery here than known fact.

There is a great human tendency to see the causal factors in human experience as related to the manifest reality outside us, as opposed to the creative compulsion within us.

I’m never happy in this humidity. It’s their fault. The government doesn’t care. Big pharma is gouging us! 

We are aware of a certain manifest reality, whatever it might be. And then believe that it makes things as they are now. And at a certain level of things, of course it’s true.

But here is another way to look at it. The primary reason Creation is unfolding is the creative urge within it right now. That urge is the creative power within all things, including us. The Creator desires to express, to love, and to manifest. This is the primal cause for all things. All other causes are secondary to this one creative urge.

Sometimes people interpret this urge purely locally, as if it is related only to them. They do not see themselves as part of the larger entity in which they live, and they do not understand that the urge they are feeling is not just their own. It is the urge of the world in which they live—of the people and the natural world around them. They are feeling that great urge, interpreted personally. At that point, they might attempt to thrive at the cost of others and the expense of the world they live in. They have become unconscious that they are part of a larger field and that the compulsion they are feeling is the desire of the Creator of something much bigger than themselves as an individual human being. They don’t understand that they are present as an expression of the creative urge for the entire world in which they live.

When the human experience is not held in this larger awareness, it goes kerflooey, does it not? When we become survival-oriented because we are all worried about this little local experience of this human being that we are, it does not go well for us. It makes us subject to fear. It causes us to become embattled with the people and the world around us, and even with ourselves.

If you have read this Pulse of Spirit this far, I am guessing it is because you have felt the cosmic compulsion powerfully and that you are on your way to knowing that who you are is far vaster than your local experience. And you are somewhere in the process of becoming a voice for the creative compulsion you feel in a myriad of ways.

Here in America, the populace is struggling with the Delta version of the coronavirus and how the institutions of our culture have imposed restrictions on us. Wear a mask! Stay at home! Get vaccinated! Socially distance! There is rebellion against those things, or even the possibility of them. So, people rail at the government, the media, and the scientists.

What is happening for the human psyche through all this? Don’t you wonder? There is a sense that one’s freedom is being taken away. And that one’s responsibility for one’s own life is being co-opted by the government or by science. Surely, I should be free to make decisions for myself!

So, this is where a person finds themselves. The creative urge is the most potent force on the planet, and it is stirring at the deepest levels of the soul. The cultural institutions in the world around them are telling them what to do and what not to do, seemingly in a way that cuts across the possibility that they could thrive as a human being.

It is easy for a person in that position to interpret the creative urge within themselves personally and use the energy of it to react to the imposition of external authority, not realizing that the urge relates to something far larger than who they know themselves to be as a human being. It is the urge of their world to thrive. It is the urge that is in the trees and the flowers, the ducks and the deer. And then they become defensive about the cultural institutions that seem to be so disempowering, taking away their personal freedom.

What to do?

There is a spiritual axiom that goes like this. Use your energy to be free in the circumstance, not from it. But free to what? Free to answer the creative compulsion within oneself. Free to be a creator. Free to love. And free to bring the kingdom of love into your world.

This is what it means to acknowledge primal cause in your life.

Railing against all the secondary causes in our life—perhaps against the coronavirus or the place from which it came, or all the cultural institutions that are coping with it—can steal attention from primal cause. It can stop us from creating.

No matter what we do, the universe is thriving. Planet Earth is thriving, and so is the immediate world in which each of us lives. Despite global warming and despite a pandemic.

All Creation has its undulations and its ups and downs. The sun rises and sets, and the tide floods and ebbs. Think of the daylily. It has the urge to thrive. It blossoms for the day, and it is beautiful. The creative urge invests itself in that daylily, as it does in all forms of Creation. But not to the exclusion of the rest of the field. That one blossom is part of all the other daylilies in the woodland and a part of all flowers everywhere—the whole natural earth, and all Creation. Daylilies come and go. Creation thrives.

So, what happens for a human being when this compulsion to live and to love is shut down? We can rebel against what is around us and not notice that, in the process, we have given up our birthright to respond to the creative urge, to be part of the thriving. We have not seen that this compulsion, which is so powerful deep within us, is not finding creative expression through us. Our urge to love has gotten shut down. Our compulsion to create has dwindled, our desire to thrive—not just ourselves but with those close to us, with our family, our community, and the world—has turned to survival fear.

As a human race, that urge to thrive has somehow been throttled. And some kind of local self-concern has tended to take over—a concern about me!

As Creator Beings, we do each have to take responsibility for the human that we are assigned to in this life. We cannot rely on somebody else to do that for us, even though they might support us. So, we have to take care of our humanity, for sure. But not out of the context of the thriving world in which we live. We are part of that thriving when we know our lives are part of that world. And we are creators for not only our own human but for the world that he or she is a part of.

Awakening to this, we become the voice of the creative compulsion for our world. We are a living expression of the urge to live, to thrive, to love, and to create a kingdom of love in the world.

I am the One Voice in that field. Yes, I am my voice, but my voice is an expression of the One Voice, the one compulsion of the Creator to truly live. And so, I speak for the world in which I live. I speak with the One Voice of that field. When I speak, I speak for myself, but I speak for you, and I speak for all people. I speak the voice of Creation, and I speak the voice of the Creator. What is that voice? What does it say?

Here is a chorus of voices speaking the One Voice of the Creator. People wrote them into the chat on a recent online service on Zoom.

I Am evolution, ever-unfolding with grace.
I Am the fire of love.
I Am regenerative source embodied.
I Am the spirit of peace.
I Am kindness and caring.
I Am the voice of your heart.
I Am free and alive and with you now.
I Am the fire of fusion of the truth of love.
I know intimacy with the One I Am.
I Am.
I Am the spirit of life birthing.
This is the sound I Am.
I Am the song of life.
I Am the song of Creation, the eternal fire of love.
I Am one with you in the creative compulsion.
I Am, and I create whatever I create.
I Am joy and abundance.
I Am a servant of peace.
I Am the spirit of life that gives birth to love.
I Am one with the stars.
I Am increasing awareness.
I Am love in my world.
I Am grateful.
I Am whole and complete.
I Am evolving with the truth of love.
I Am the voice of the Beloved, alive and thriving on Earth.
I Am the cake that I baked for you.
I Am the One who melts hard hearts and stubborn minds resisting oneness.
I Am God’s co-creator on Earth.
I Am the spirit of new Creation.
I Am that gentle softness which moves as the Mother; I am bringing divine love onto the Earth now, to all people, to all things.
I Am the one bringing the compulsion of love.
I Am love. I am truth. I am life.
I Am the living Word; I am the Word of the living.
I Am light emanating into the universe.
I Am the love that embraces all with compassion and presence.
I Am liberation in the One, the one burning fire, transforming.
I Am the source of the living waters.
I Am a conduit of love.
I Am the expansion of love.
I Am light.
I Am here; it is now; we are together.
I Am the deep voice of the Earth, backed up by spirit.
I Am a Creator-being.
I Am here now.