Creativity isn't just pen & pencil or paint. Since my last post here (can you see how busy I've been? It's been a long time), I was exposed to an idea called Law of Attraction. It's fascinating to me, and I have found that discussing the ideas of it at length with others on the same path is very valuable. So I will now include posts that include my thoughts on that subject here in my "Creativity Blog." Because if a creative approach to life doesn't belong on this blog...nothing does! Here goes:
=================================
Looking out the back picture window on a Sunday morning. Dave and Nate had just left for church, and I awaited their driving by. To beep & wave at me in the picture window is our custom.
They were taking a long time, so I was able to look around at leisure. Suddenly a chipmunk popped up out of the ground and sat there in the snow, looking around. A chipmunk? I thought they hibernated all winter. Does this mean something? It sat still as a statue for the longest time. I wondered why; its behind must be getting cold sitting with its rear end in the snow like that. It occurred to me that it may have seen my movement in the window. Sure enough, as soon as I moved it disappeared quickly into a little hole right there in the yard!
My eyes swept the snowy lawn, and I noticed the tire tracks left by the car. Dave drives into the yard every time there's music equipment to pack or unload. The members of my husband's band do, too. We've been taking care not to leave the yard by doing the usual 3-point turn. I mean, I don't know why Dave doesn't do the 3-point turn. Speaking strictly for myself, I stopped doing it as soon as Nate started making his "trails" in the snow and caring what happened to them. So I back out, reusing the tracks I made coming in, and I'm not very good at it. I nearly wiped out that little fir tree that one of the Bonedogs ran over last summer. At the time, we had all been encouraged that the little tree wasn't killed by that act of carelessness. But this month I noticed that the small and valiant little evergreen was not actually green any longer. It is brown. I was tempted to think that it's dead, but I don't know that for sure. I don't know what's going on down there in its depths, or what Mother Nature has planned for it. I was tempted to do something, to prune it or some stupid move designed to "help" it, and then I remembered that it is precisely that sort of action that gets things all wrong.
First of all, Nature doesn't really need my help. Moreover, my helping sometimes just wrecks things. I will never forget that giant insect I found in Illinois back in the 90's. I had been pumping gas on a busy suburban street. The bug was sitting on the concrete, right next to the pump. I had looked around and saw noplace that the thing could go. No green plants or grass anywhere. I was sure it would just sit there, helplessly, and get stepped on. Why I didn't think it would fly away escapes me now; maybe it was a wingless creature. In any case I had picked it up with the intention of bringing it to the tree-lined college campus where I was going. I no longer remember the reason for the errand. But no sooner did I put it on the dashboard than it feel down into the vent between the dashboard and the window, never to be seen again. I was crushed. The bug would have been better off without my help. As vividly as I remember that incident, it took many more instances of helping and meddling in everything from nature to interpersonal affairs to my own career before I finally realized that none of this is my job.
As I looked out the back window I thought of the new philosophy I am studying, called Law of Attraction. What excites me about LoA is the way in which, as I listen to Abraham or other LoA teachers, I hear echoes of philosophies and wisdoms of all kinds, which I've heard all my life. It's like they are all being tied together now, suddenly making sense. It reminds me of those trick pictures that you can get where you stare at a supposedly abstract design long enough, and suddenly you can see an image.
I thought about the little brown fir tree, and started to think about it growing. I wanted to send out vibrations about it growing. But you know, there's a fine line between believing that wishing something will make it so and trying to pre-pave for a desired outcome--as Abraham calls it--with our thoughts. A conundrum, this fine line is only fine in the visual sense. It's so fine one can barely see it, but with discernment you can see that it's actually wide as the ocean. Another illusion! The difference is this: with wishing something into being, you act as though the locus of control is still with YOU. With Law of Attraction, on the other hand, your thoughts are sort of preparing the way for something to happen, but it is not really you who makes it happen. Here's another echo that came to me as I typed this. That old song I sang in high school: "prepare ye the way of the Lord." Picturing a road, with Jesus riding on a donkey, people putting down palm branches which serve no practical purpose at all, but yet they were pre-paving the way for him. But therein lies the difference and it just came to me this morning. With wishing, it is still YOU thinking that YOU are in control of how things go. But that's not the way it is. The Universe (God? Reality? Spirit?) is in control, and I think just wants us to admit it. Once we do, it's surprisingly generous. Reminds me of a parent.
