What is Creative Consciousness?

Consciousness is the cause of life.

There are no outer causes in our world even though there have been plenty of times when I railed against this idea, because it often seemed that the challenges, fears or worries I experienced were as a result of stuff that was happening ‘out there’ not in me.

But I soon learned that if I wanted my life to be different, then the talk in my head had to be different.

George Harrison, he of Beatles fame of course, on one of his many trips to India, experienced the opening of his spiritual consciousness which emboldened him to write a song that John Lennon later said was his favorite George Harrison recording. It was “Within You Without You” which clearly illustrated the concept that what is happening within us is why it’s happening without, or in our outer physical world.

That struck a chord with me.

And then some years later I read a sentence that Neville Goddard wrote:

Consciousness is the only reality, not figuratively, but actually.

That struck another, even bigger chord with me, although it was a thought beyond my level of understanding at the time. And being the curious one I am I had to contemplate it further. Of course!

Luckily I had a four hour drive to make. A perfect time for contemplation. So I invested those four hours dwelling on this one thought. And that phrase stayed with me for days after as I tried to work out how this idea could be a practical fit into my life!

It took a while.

I turned to the knowledge I had gleaned over my many years of study and practice of spiritual principles that I used in my every day life. How could this one fit?

I liked it. I liked it a lot, but what did it really mean and how could I use this idea of consciousness as a tool to grow my life experience? That was the million dollar question and I had no idea of the answer.

So I did what I knew to do. I began assuming that I understood it better. And eventually I did. I finally understood that the power of manifesting or creating, whatever you want to call it, was within me.

Experiencing awareness

Okay. But so what?

What was I supposed to do with this idea.

Gradually it began to dawn on me. Even with a limited level of understanding I could see that some changes had occurred.

I started to get that it wasn’t really that life was happening willy nilly around me. I was somehow making it happen, unwittingly, or at least helping it to happen, equally unwittingly.

But since I still had no clue what I was doing or how, it continued to feel that I was at the mercy of life. Apparently I couldn’t quite change my old way of thinking that my current experiences were set in motion by outside causes.

How could it be it true, that I was responsible as a partner in creating all that showed up in my life.

I still didn’t totally get it.

Until, through a persistent desire to understand better, I did!

A limited, but necessary awareness showed up. After all nothing can change if we don’t have a new level of awareness to operate from.

It’s all a reflection

One day it hit me like a ton of bricks. The circumstances and events of my world were a reflection of some activity in my consciousness. I was an unconscious partner in my life experiences. That awareness changed everything.

And though life seemed to be set in stone; an unalterable fact heading towards an inevitable conclusion that may or may not be what I wanted I realized this simply wasn’t the truth.

But it’s the way most of us view our world. How many times have you said or heard things like “That’s just life. That’s how the cookie crumbles. It is what it is.”

No, it isn’t!

So now here I was, suddenly realizing that nothing is set in stone.

What was I going to do with that?

I decided I’d try to put my consciousness to better use.

I began with stopping my all too ready acceptance of the status quo.

And somewhere along the way I stopped living from the outside in. I stopped letting those outer experiences that I had previously created through past thoughts and feelings direct the rest of my life.

I think that most of us live from the outside in. And why wouldn’t we?. Nobody ever told us that it could be different. That we could be different or that what goes on within is creating what goes on without.

What is your personal myth?

Consciously or unconsciously, we have a narrative in our heads about ourselves. Internalized stories about who we are and what we can do, but sadly we often waste our day repeating the same narratives about who we are that caused us to experience anxiety or worry or stress the previous day.

We don’t have to do this.

As anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson puts it:

We are all storytellers — all engaged in an “act of creation” of the “composition of our lives.” Yet unlike most stories we’ve heard, our lives don’t follow a predefined arc. Our identities and experiences are constantly shifting, and storytelling is how we make sense of it.

And I ask you, who hasn’t created their own personal history based on the highs and lows of life?

What I have learned is that we can edit and reinterpret our myths as we grow so we can stop being at the mercy of the disempowering stories of our past, which only lead to an equally disempowering future.

Here’s a story of conscious at work

Before my mum passed away I used to regularly travel back and forth between England and my home in the States.

Which was wonderful.

Except for the disempowering story I told myself.

“It’s a long flight. it’s really tiring. On top of that there’s a long drive from the airport to her home. And I have to remember to drive on the other side of the road, probably in a car where I have to shift gears.” 

Oh dear!

Needless to say I’d driven on that side of the road countless times, even having learned to drive on a stick shift, but that didn’t matter. I could still work up a sweat thinking about all the challenges that lay ahead. My myths were in charge of my life experience. Not great, right?

And then, prior to one trip I realized that I was the creator of that myth in my mind about my travel experiences to the U.K! But the story was just that a story about maybe one previous experience that I’d turned into an ‘always experience.’

No wonder I kept reliving it.

A subtle reframe

We all live by our stories, by the narratives we tell ourselves. And even a subtle reframing of those narratives create a more positive identity that allows us to live more consciously and purposefully.

I was reminded of ‘as within so without’ and decided that l didn’t have to continue to experience that same reality in every ongoing travel experience.

If I’d created that myth I could surely change it. After all It was just a narrative I’d created being revealed to me in my outer world of experiences.

So I consciously began mentally creating a new story of traveling ease, and it worked. My next trip was like a dream come true. Well, it sort of was, wasn’t it?

Get used to changing your mind

When you create a shift in your mind by changing the narratives and the myths you’ve created you create a shift in your world. You begin to flow more easily with the naturally positive energies of this universe of ours.

In this place you are capable of almost anything. Of great things. And amazing brilliant opportunities can open up for you. Things that were always there, but that were blocked by the narratives you repeated to yourself about every aspect of your life.

So, whether you’re brand new to the concept of consciousness as the one and only reality or not, I’m hoping that you now have a greater awareness and understanding of the phenomena of consciousness at work in your life. 

Why not test it out and see for yourself. You could try by deliberately changing on myth you’ve created for yourself and see where that leads you.

My hope is that it works as well for you as it’s working for me.

Encourage one another.

Love Elle

xox