Imagination is the eye of the soul.
— Joseph Joubert
Everything is created twice — first mentally, then physically.
A blueprint precedes construction. A business plan comes before business success. Character development prefaces responsible and self-disciplined children. The first creation is on the mental plane; the physical result follows.
It’s the non-negotiable Law of Creativity.
We use the law all the time, but seldom do we use it consciously. It’s a principle that applies everywhere.
My wife is an amateur seamstress. As I write this, she is working on a new outfit for our daughter. In the creative process, she first has an idea for a colorful jumper. She and my daughter talk about colors. Then they select a pattern. Next it’s time for material. Now the buttons. Every step is preceded by its mental equivalent. The physical follows the mental.
This is the Law of Creativity. Everything is created twice.
This simple and powerful principle applies to every area of life. Our parents come to visit and want to select a different, more scenic route home, something that will keep them away from the big cities. We get out the map; locate the starting point, their destination, a stopover for the evening; and plan the entire route — all mental activity to this point. Then the day arrives for them to actually begin travel and the mental work is transformed into a physical reality. The thought precedes the deed.
The law is omnipresent. We recently did some landscaping; first we drew a plan. Our neighbors plant a large vegetable garden each year; Bob lays it out on paper first. Mental work. I create a speech first mentally, with the “take-away” message clearly in mind. The principle of two creations is constantly at work.
The Law of Creativity may seem so self-evident as to be unimportant. Beware. Do not be lulled into complacency or dismiss the power of this law. The potential for massive transformation resides here. For while it is true that all things are created twice, not all creations are conscious. And this is where our complacency can get us into deep trouble.
The Law of Creativity comes into play either by default or by design — by accident or on purpose. The trouble is, most often we simply react; we are passive. We accept what is without a single thought of what might be. We allow others to press our creative buttons.
Think back and connect with the Law of Personal Accountability. We each have an ability to respond, a power to create. This is not reaction. It is proaction, an idea that is intimately tied to the Law of Creativity.
Look at our personal lives. When we do not accept personal responsibility and do not develop awareness of the tremendously powerful Law of Creativity, we empower other people to set the agendas of our lives. Circumstances tend to shape our lives by default, not by choice.
Design or default — a key criterion for understanding the Law of Creativity. For instance, a life script may have been handed to us by our parents. We respond out of habit, obligation, or even coercion. By default, without conscious thought, we find ourselves in a life of someone else’s choosing.
William Taylor found himself in a preparatory school and then in an Ivy League college, headed for Harvard Law. “My father was an attorney, a partner in a large Wall Street firm, and very successful by his standards. But that was the last thing I wanted to do. Three days before I was to matriculate at Harvard, I told my dad I wasn’t going. He came unglued. But I stuck to my dream. Today we have a great life in the north country of Idaho.”
Think about first creations: a father creating a life for a son; a son rejecting the father’s dream and following his own. In both cases, the idea — the first creation — precedes the reality. Take charge of our own agendas and we creatively shape our own lives.
William risked big-time. He knew there would be resistance from his parents, maybe even total rejection and no inheritance. But he was willing to challenge the script that was being handed him by his family. William felt he had to shape his life by his own design. Default would never have been acceptable.
The Law of Creativity would have us challenge the scripts that are everywhere in our lives. Whether we see it or not, there is a first creation at work all the time. Who we are and what circumstances we experience are second creations. Those second creations either are a product of our own design or come from other people’s agendas, from unchallenged circumstances, or from our own unexamined personal habits.
The good news is that the Law of Creativity shows us an incredibly powerful way to shape our experience of life. Through our unique human capacities of self-awareness and imagination, we can take charge and learn to fashion our own first creations.
I have had the good fortune of knowing and working with Robert Schuller, the founder of the Crystal Cathedral Ministries. His concept of “possibility thinking” has yielded positive changes in countless lives throughout the world. The very word possibility releases a mental climate conducive to creativity. I have, seen the simple suggestion that something is possible release creative thinking and break the invisible and limiting prisons of difficult circumstance and deep despair.
Wilbert was in a severe work accident. A tree fell on him and broke his back. He was paralyzed from the waist down. The doctors told him he’d never walk again. But Wil felt it was possible to strive for recovery. “In my mind,” he said, “I saw myself walking again. In my mind, I saw myself exercising every day. In my mind, I saw myself happy, making a contribution to family and society.”
Wil’s first team of doctors told him he would be living his life confined to a wheelchair. But they did not understand who Wil was or what motivated him. They did not recognize that Wil could use the Law of Creativity to help himself, that he was filled with possibilities.
Wil envisioned working his legs, moving them in rhythmic motions so the muscles would not forget their movement. With the help of a creative physical therapist, Wil fashioned a unique bicycle he could strap to his legs and pedal while lying on his back. Wil used his arms to keep the legs moving, pushing and pulling his knees, all the time envisioning himself walking.
Soon he was able to sit erect. Then he wanted to mount a stationary bicycle. With some creative thought, Wil sketched a handrail that would keep him stable while on the bicycle. He strapped his feet to the pedals and away he pedaled. Wil added time at the whirlpool bath, worked with leg weights, and did upper-body exercises.
Today, he’s walking with the help of a walker. What’s next? “I’m going to get to a cane by the first of the year.”
Many principles are at work in Wil’s journey toward wellness. But the Law of Creativity governs them all. The first creation, thought, precedes the second creation, physical reality. Possibilities abound when the mind is set free to create.
To understand the link between creativity and possibilities, consider their antonym, that nasty ten-letter word impossible. Utter this word and the effect is devastating. Thinking stops. Progress is halted. Doors slam shut.
Think “impossible” and dreams get discarded, projects get abandoned, and hope for wellness is torpedoed. But let someone yell the words “It’s possible,” and resources we hadn’t been aware of come rushing in to assist us in our quest. I believe we are all potentially brilliant and creative — but only if we believe it, only if we have an attitude of positive expectancy toward our ideas, and only if we act on them.
The fact is, we can rescript our lives. We can engage the Law of Creativity and become our own first creator.
Pete wanted to lose weight, lots of it: 150 pounds. First, Pete became self-aware. This meant recognizing his problem and affirming a deeply held conviction that high-quality life was a gift he wanted to enjoy as long as possible.
Pete also became aware that his eating was a way of handling unfulfilled emotional needs. When he overate, he was living out a script that was not in harmony with the values he believed in. The way Pete was living his life was not the product of his own proactive design, but the result of a first-creation habit learned from his mother, who constantly met her emotional needs through food.
“I realized I could change,” said Pete. “I determined to live out of my own life rather than out of the memory of how my mother coped.”
Change Pete did! Over a period of seven months, Pete lost over ninety pounds. He is still on his program of a vegetarian diet coupled with exercise. Pete is scripting himself around his limitless potential instead of his limiting past. He has become his own first creator.
That’s the Law of Creativity. The vision precedes the reality.
What this law says is that the imagining facility is the creative facility. It is necessary for us to see an idea in our mind’s eye before it can become reality. The right brain, the creative and limitless side of the mind, is engaged. The left brain, the cognitive and linear side, takes second chair.
The Law of Creativity asks us not to mandate our future. Instead, the law asks us to seek the divine design in our lives. As we’ll learn in discussing the Law of Life Mission, few people have the faintest idea of what their divine and most creative design is.
I believe one should not visualize or force a mental picture. Thousands of people have been disappointed by doing so and, as a result, have come to mistrust the Law of Creativity. Instead, let the divine design come naturally and intuitively. It’s there if we’ll listen.
Mozart and Beethoven both said they heard symphonies in their heads, and had only to write them down. The Law of Creativity.
Begin to see yourself making great progress. But don’t press or drive the creative force. You and I need to be the ones to conform to the Law of Creativity rather than expecting the law to conform to our contrived needs.
The divine plan found through the Law of Creativity does, I believe, include things like health, ample supply, love, and perfect self-expression. The law brings happiness, albeit a happiness we may not have consciously chosen. In fact, the Law of Creativity may bring great changes to life, for nearly everyone has wandered far from the divine design.
As an eleven-year-old boy, the pioneering aeronautical engineer Igor Sikorsky recorded a dream he had in which he was inside a big flying ship, one that he built himself. About thirty years later, Sikorsky lived that dream as Charles Lindbergh piloted one of his “flying boats.” In his mid-fifties, Sikorsky developed the helicopter. In both dramatic cases, the mental creation precedes the reality.
The Law of Creativity calls not for my way or your way, but for the best way. This is the picture, the idea we must find and hold on to without wavering. Then we create wellness in body, mind, and spirit, wellness of the highest level.
Following my experience with cancer, I let go of my willful ways and was able to surrender, with sincerity, to God’s way. Out of that surrender came a vision of service to others, something that was never in my life formula before. I’ve held on to that picture. As a result, my life has been used in ways I’d never have dreamed possible. The vision leads the fact. The Law of Creativity is at work.
All things are created twice. First the mental creation, and then the physical counterpart. What are you holding in your mind? Ask for the divine design, and hold fast to that vision.
You’ll be experiencing the power of the non-negotiable Law of Creativity.