We all have a personality that is based on our childhood and the experiences that shape us. Usually we live in this box of limitations and self-protective mechanisms for our entire lives without even realizing it. It is what spiritual teachers call the "conditioned mind."

It is hard to even know that we have a much larger, grand, magnificent self behind our everyday thoughts. This grand self is our unique flavor of love that is meant to be expressed in the world. I have caught glimpses of people's essence as it awakens from its spiritual slumber at creativity workshops and in my daily life. As I recover more of my own essence self I am able to see it in others and it is always surprising to me. Often what I see is that someone's essence is quite different than what they express on a daily basis.

If you wonder who you might be in your greater essence consider who you would be if you felt no fear. I discovered the unique tone of my "larger self" when my daughter was a baby. I had a traumatic birthing during which I almost died. During that time my marriage also ended abruptly and I underwent a time of personal crisis when five close members of my family died suddenly within the period of about a year. That multifaceted crisis in my life temporarily intensified my awareness of a deeper unfolding and opened up a window to a self that was infinitely larger than my regular everyday self.

That period of my life marked an explosion of spontaneous creativity. I opened up to a relationship with a woman and fell passionately in love with my partner Ondrea of 12 years. I had prophetic dreams during that time. I wrote incredible visionary poetry that I have never been able to repeat since. I painted stunning intuitive paintings in my basement all night. I hardly slept. I felt absolutely no fear. I trusted life to unfold and it did. Everything just came to me as it needed to. Love, support, money. I did not struggle.

Then after a few months, my old conditioned mind began to seep in and I lost my free flowing uninhibited, visionary creativity. I remember feeling desperate as my higher reality began to slip away. And slip away it did. Every conditioned fear and doubt that was crystallized in my mind that blocked my access to my divine self came up for clearing — and the clearing is still ongoing.

I crashed into an ordinariness that I could not fully accept anymore and thus began the excavating, the releasing, and the teaching of myself how to come back to my fullest possibilities. I found spontaneous collage to be a good way to easily bypass my ordinary mind. It helped me open up to possibilities beyond the everyday and provided a small daily door into my previous visionary state.

The richness of a spontaneously creative life begins when we can let go of most of our thinking. We cannot listen to the creative abundance of life through our regular mind. We have to move into the feeling sense of the heart and when we do we gain little insights into the spiritual secrets of life. Most of us do not fully realize that there is an entire spiritual world unfolding beneath our habitual thoughts.

When we fall into a state of spontaneous creativity we have to be willing to no longer recognize ourselves. Our conditioned minds want to control everything. Most thinking is a reaction, a defense, a protection, a desire. Our everyday minds most often work against life. Our rigid, habitual thinking runs a personal interference pattern against the greater unfolding that is happening at all times.

Our unconditioned mind however is behind our regular thinking. Our quiet mind is simply listening to the flow of life and is spontaneously following our rightful path and purpose with innate wisdom. We need to find ways to let go of our regular ways of thinking so that we can participate in life creatively and spontaneously. Who we are in our greatness often bears little resemblance to who we have been.

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Next: Expressing Vulnerability with Creativity

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Copyright ©2006 Shelley Klammer. All rights reserved.

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