The answer: anything you want. Asking ourselves “What can I create?” is a mind-opening exercise which puts us on the path to expressing our creative potential in the physical world. When we realize that anything we envision in our mind’s eye can be created in real life, we realize the power we each carry within ourselves.
This article meant to open your senses to the realm of possibilities available to each of us. Like a sculptor who fashions a block of stone into a work of art, our life circumstances are sculpted by each of our choices.
This article goes into the importance of releasing the mind from its conditioned shackles. There are links included for readers who want to learn more about how to do that.
Let’s get to it!
Train Your Mind For Freedom
Like I write in this article, freedom begins in our minds. Until we release our minds from the shackles which have been placed on it, anything we do, ANYTHING, will result more of the same imprisonment.
We can get the job, the house, the spouse, the dog, the car, the body, the degrees, the titles, the scholarships, the anything, it doesn’t matter. As long as our minds remain the masters of our existence, nothing we do or say will release us from our prison. This is why I put such an emphasis on the importance of training the mind in my articles.
It’s the most important step anyone can take to achieve freedom in this life. Freedom from suffering, which is universal, but not inescapable. Rest assured, we can escape it. Indeed, we do so by living fully in the moment, being open to the manifold expression of life which ever shimmers as our consciousness unfolds in this plane of reality.
No one can make the choice to escape the shackles of the mind but you. I can write about it until I’m blue in the fingers, but unless you, the reader, take it upon yourself to liberate yourself from the tyranny of your mind, things won’t change for you. You will keep making the same tired choices which lead you to the same worn out places, exhausted and frustrated with the situation because you have no idea how you keep ending up in the same place.
When the mind runs the show, our choices serve it, not our selves.
The Shackles Of The Mind
If you paid attention to the first paragraph of the previous section of the article, you’ll notice that I wrote that our minds are shackled. You’ll also notice that in the second paragraph I write “As long as our minds remain the masters of our existence…” So are our minds shackled? Or is our mind the master of our existence? Which one is it?
It’s both; our minds are shackled because they are the masters of our existence. Until the mind is put in its place as the servant, rather than the master, it remains shackled. What do I mean by shackled?
I mean conditioned.
Conditioned by our environment. Our environment conditions us. When our minds are the masters we play out our past environmental conditioning over and over and over again. That’s why people who were abused as children are likely to experience the same patterns of abuse in their relationships once they’re adults.
When our environment conditions us we can’t create anything new. How can we? If we keep making the same conditioned conscious and unconscious choices, we will unavoidably wind up in the same condition. It’s only logical.
So if we want to experience our life as the unconditioned adventure it can be we must train our minds. There is no way around it.
Once we begin training our minds to obey us (our soul), the creative magic of life begins unfolding before us. We might not notice it at first, but if we continue with the process we will. That’s a guarantee.
The Creative Magic Of Life
What do I mean by the “creative magic of life”? I mean the fundamental understanding that each of our choices is creative. Again, this is utterly, solidly, logical.
Each of our choices creates our future circumstances. Each. Of. Our. Choices.
- What we read
- What we do for work
- What we think
- What we eat
- What we watch
- What music we listen to
- What clothes we wear
- What we study
- Who we hang out with
- Who we date
Everything we choose now creates our future. Here’s a mindblowing idea: you are being watched right now by your future self, through your memories.
Our future self is looking at us right now and thinking/saying/feeling “I’m so happy I made that choice.” Or our future self could be saying the opposite.
What determines that is what we choose now.
People seem to be utterly unaware about the magnitude of each of their choices. They choose to watch TV every night or they choose to be angry at the world or to play the victim when things get tough. Then, when the consequences of their choices manifest themselves in their life circumstances they raise their hands up in supplication and ask “Why me?”
Because you made the choices! YOU made the choices. Not anyone else. YOU DID. You are responsible for 100% of what happens to you in life.
Don’t Believe Me?
Do you know that there are monks who practice a type of meditation, called Tummo meditation, by which they can raise their body temperature at will? This was thought to be impossible until recently; body temperature is controlled by the autonomic nervous system, which has historically been considered to be beyond our conscious control.
Turns out we can control the autonomic system. The monks are so effective at doing this that they can go out into the 4 degrees Celsius (40 degrees Fahrenheit) environment of the Himalayas, while wrapped in a wet blanket, and completely dry the blanket.
That is how much control we can have over what happens to us.
What would an untrained person do? Shiver uncontrollably, probably go into hypothermic shock.
Yet the monks don’t do that. They don’t shiver, they don’t go into shock. They dry the blanket.
What an untrained person perceives is completely different from what the monks perceive. Where the untrained perceive cold (pain), the monks perceive (I imagine) opportunity. Opportunity to raise their temperatures and dry the blanket.
We are 100% responsible for what happens to us because we can control our perception. Our perception is what makes the difference between perceiving a circumstance as an insurmountable problem, or a challenging opportunity.
Our Perception Makes Our Reality
We don’t see the world as it is. We see it as we are. If we identify as victims, we see the world as a dangerous, scarce place in which everyone is out to get us. If we identify as creators, we see the world as an open, abundant place in which everyone is a co-creator of reality alongside us.
What makes the difference is our perception.
And we can control our perception. So we can control our reality.
How can we control our perception?
By training our mind. Our mind is the prism which reflects the universe within us. When we have trained our mind we can shift the prism in whatever way best suits the situation.
At this point, I feel it necessary to say that I am not currently capable of doing what the monks can do. I am still training my mind, it’s an ongoing process. But I can tell you that after training my mind for a few years I am beginning to understand the fundamental power it has in shaping our perception.
It is unrivaled.
But we can only start to experience that once we take the steps to train our mind. If all a person has ever known is slavery to the mind, how will that person ever know what its like to be the master?
The answer: that person won’t know what it’s like to be the master until they become the master.
And Once We Are The Master, What Then?
Well, what do we want to create?
That’s the question we can answer as we have master our mind and release it from its shackles.
Our supreme creative power becomes unlocked as we achieve mastery over the mind. Anything we want to create then becomes available to us, within reason. If I wanted to become an Olympic gymnast at this time in my life it would be impossible; I don’t have the required bone structure nor the flexibility to be competitive. These traits need to be developed in childhood. It’s too late for me. Oh well, boo-hoo.
I’m not going to sit here and write that you can create anything. That would be naive of me.
But I am going to write that you can create more than what you believe to be possible now. And that is good news for everyone, because I believe everyone has something in their life they want to create.
What Do You Want To Create?
- Do you want to create a healthy, happy and prosperous family?
- Or a meaningful career based on service to others?
- Or art which speaks from the depths of your being?
- Or more free time to do the things you love doing?
- Or wonderful friendships with people who inspire and challenge you?
- Or peace of mind and an abundant heart?
- Or deep, restoring, stable sleep? (so many people have trouble sleeping these days. I was included in this).
What are all those things compared to being an Olympic gymnast? There’s no contest, I believe. These are universal human wants/needs! No offense meant to any Olympic gymnasts who may be reading this.
But I would wager good money on most people wanting most (probably all) of these things. While only a handful of people want to be an Olympic gymnast.
What I’m saying is, you probably want some (or all) of these things, and you have within you the power to create them. You probably don’t want to be an Olympic gymnast, and you probably don’t have the power to be one, but that doesn’t matter because you don’t want that anyways.
You Have The Power Within You To Create What You Desire
Nature makes no mistakes, it gives us our desires because we are capable of satisfying them. Look at any other plant or animal and you will see that’s the case. Every plant and animal has the tools and skills it needs to satisfy their needs and thrive in their environment.
And so do human beings. Having these desires allows us to expend the energy to express our fullest potential.
These desires further life. In fact, I believe living these things is our birthright as human beings. It’s our birthright to be happy and healthy; to do meaningful work; to be of service to others; to have time to do the things we love. We are divine beings and we are here to express our divinity, through each of our choices.
I Invite You To Be A Creator Of Your Life
Each of our choices makes our future. We are 100% responsible for what happens to us because we are in control of our perception and our perception makes our reality. The more we train our mind, the more power we have over our perception. We can create anything we desire.
These are the messages I hope you take from this article. The world needs more people to take responsibility for their minds and their choices. Far from having more credentialed “experts”, what we need now are happy, healthy people who are open to sharing love with the world. I am a firm believer that love is the only way forward for our species. Because it’s only when we love one another when we become incapable of hurting each other (the “love” that is represented in movies and sung about in songs in which people hurt each other is not love. It’s a distortion of love.)
So what are you going to do now? Are you going to continue being a slave to your mind? Or are you going to be the master? Leave a comment below and we can discuss!
To our wealth and success.
Hello there, Erick. Your articles are very educative and informative. I appreciate all these motivational articles and I must confess that I have all of these articles bookmarked. Everyone has their own goal and it’s important we ask ourselves these questions and always try to be unique and distinct in all that we do.
Hello igbunumiracle, thanks for visiting Explode Your Wealth and for leaving a comment. It’s a pleasure for me to write these articles. I’ve been through my fair share of ups and downs in life and I feel these articles are my way of serving.
If there’s anything we can do for you please drop us a line.
All the best,
Erick
You write so well and inform deeply! Very inspired by your articles. Everyone has a reason to create .This is precisely why I enjoy learning and you collected those reasons in this post. It shows how different we are but how much similar at the same time. That diversity (of reasons) and the things it can create are beautiful. I’m definitely sharing them with my friends.
Hey again Esiri. I’m happy that you gained something from reading the article. All I can say is use what you learn! Don’t wait to apply it! The smallest action is greater than the grandest of intentions.
All the best,
Erick