As I consider the power of love, the energy of deep thinking, and the formulation of new ideas, I want to explore the rituals we go into that allow these elements to come to fruition. Where do we go when we create? What are we doing without even being consciously aware of how we create? Without the power of love and deep thinking combined, nothing we love could ever be created. Therefore, we have to love our creative thoughts enough to manifest them.
So, what do we enter into to create life from what we love? I often meditate on what God must have thought and what he wanted to create in this universe of ours. He must have loved that thought more than anything—loved it so greatly that he made all life manifest. Beyond that, I considered What state was God in when he loved those thoughts so deeply? I wanted to feel and explore the power of what God must have done. Was it a ritual he went through? Did he go off for a gentle break, and the thoughts simply came to him?
It is my job as a graphic designer to go beyond the pattern of rigid thinking and into expanded creative thought processes. My yoga rituals also allow me to go deep into the elements of feeling and experience transcendentally.
When I look at Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel ceiling and feel into what he painted—the ecstatic image of God and man, tips of fingers almost touching—I see the divine spark spoken of by the Gnostics. It always stimulates me to think bigger, deeper, and wider. And when I feel I am the divine spark, possessing what God is and what God passes on, I am creative—and aren’t we all? We are all created in the image of God, and we are all parts of God, are we not?
So, where did God go in his thought patterns? What was the pure, divinely expanded thinking? God must have gone into a soft spot, into his own surrendering. Letting go allows the seed of Creation to grow into becoming something manifest.
Well before babies are born, they must be in the place where the soft spot is. In their birthing, they must have a trust that is so implicit for them. They have to be totally surrendered, non-rigid, to move through the mother’s body into this world. Imagine if they were rigid—they would not be able to slip through into life, taking their first breath. Just as those creative thoughts slip into our minds, a baby softly slips into being. Even the mother has to let go and surrender so deeply that she can release her soft little babe into this world. If the mother is rigid, a difficult birth could occur.
I have to surrender to create—to conceptualize and bring new ideas through, sometimes after very complex meetings with clients. I am sure other inventors, writers, artists, engineers, musicians, and architects have come to the soft spot in themselves to allow the divine birth of the new.
There are many rituals to go into to reach the soft spot. Buddhists look to the purity of life in non-suffering, yogis to samsara. Without a deep letting go and surrender of the body, we cannot reach the depths of meditation to become refreshed and soft in ourselves or become flexible enough to achieve dynamic yoga positions. And so, the soft spot is entered through the releasing of the whole self in the yogic ritual.
Fitrah is a Muslim ritual of becoming pure once more. By coming back to purity, Muslims are able to live in a clear state, which is as close to God as possible. They go through a ritualistic existence that involves surrender and a systematic way of washing the body to maintain the untouched energy from before birth.
Without any conscious consideration, our physical bodies are in a constant state of the soft spot because we trust it all to function without thinking or doing. Our body simply lives.
When I look at my new grandchild, I see the ever-so-newly innocent soft spot in her Being. And she touches my soft spot just by being natural, as she releases into our relationship. I treasure her gentle, surrendered trust in me to hold her, care for her, and naturally love her. It is then we enter the soft spot together. And so, a deep, innocent love resides between us.
When we surrender into the soft spot of ourselves, we find that place that only we know for ourselves beyond this physical world—an empty, loving, sacred space where all is welcomed. We go into something quite empty yet full enough to love us. We can trust the power of love to be released into creative ideas, or we can simply bask in the enfoldment of bliss, and the gentleness of the purest soft spot emerges in love.
If being no-where and no-thing we enter the soft spot, is the soft spot then right there in the center of our hands? Is this how we bring healing to another person when we give Attunement?
Are our established rituals a way of reaching the soft spot? And if so, what is your ritual? How do you enter sacred space? How do you realize when you are there in your soft spot?
So many beautiful thoughts Karen – thank you – I have to surrender to create. Primal truths!!!
“When I loved myself enough…”
When I loved myself enough
I began to feel a divine presence
in me and hear its guidance
I am learning to trust this and
live from it
This is from a page of a tiny tome, by Kim McMillen, a former volunteer chaplain at a hospital in Boulder, Colorado. I’m visiting a coastal town in South Africa and found this little book, as I browsed in a second-hand bookshop. What a gem!
“When I loved myself enough…”, runs through each page, accompanied by an inspiration. Love is feeding-back a response, an inner realization.
Thank you, Karen, for your sharing of thoughts and insights. We are all in the conversation.
Thanks Karen – I needed to hear your thoughts about surrendering; they will help to round out my creative process. I have a couple of thoughts that have been living in me relating to that space God was in when creating, especially that process of creating the human being. After creating an environment suitable for plant, animal and human life, I think God experienced loneliness – perhaps it was a longing for another being who could respond to what had already been created. The reason I think God experienced loneliness is that after God created the human being, it’s specifically told us that God said “It is not good that man should be alone.” The only way that could be known is because God experienced it.
It’s possible to live in a city of people and to feel loneliness. I wonder if David would relate to that, having told us of his years in New York City recently? I’m in a rural community, and people are pretty active, but I find a vacuum when I look for anyone interested in spirituality. Most residents here are very busy surviving in today’s difficult economy, and when they’re not working, they seem to enjoy what I’d consider to be “frivolous” activity, the kind of activity I used to enjoy myself before becoming awakened to the spiritual side of life. So while I’m surrounded by people, I have to go online to find some who share my interest in what might be termed the “full life”, the life that includes spirit with mind and body. This is how I think we can experience loneliness in the midst of activity.
The other thought that’s been living in me, and which I hope to develop more, is this one of response – how anything we’re involved in creating can provide so much more if there is someone who responds to it. Like this article you’ve written – you can derive pleasure from what you’ve created when you read our responses to your creation. I think God is the same, that He/She derives great pleasure when we respond, especially with gratitude. I’m sure that you and the new grandchild take great pleasure receiving the others’ responses.
“In the creative spirit, Kari.”
Thank you, Karen, for so beautifully articulating the ‘soft spot’.
I have always loved this quote from Yehudi Menuhin : “Each human being has the eternal duty of transforming what is hard and brutal into a subtle and tender offering, what is crude into refinement, what is ugly into beauty, ignorance into knowledge, confrontation into collaboration, thereby rediscovering the child’s dream of a creative reality incessarntly renewed by death, the servant of life, and by life the servant of Love.”
There are so many examples of ‘soft spot’ – may we offer that to each other in this God Family.