I deeply appreciate the level at which Creators engage with the philosophical propositions of the Creation. I received a question from a frustrated Creator, who states, “I am having trouble with what inspires me and what my dreams are… Feel like I lost being able to create these long ago.” My response follows:

You are not alone in Your difficulty with creating inspiration: inspiring possibilities, dreams and visions. Possibilities, dreams and visions conceal themselves in the aspect of Existence, Being, as such. We tend to lose our facility with this powerful aspect of life around the age of five, give or take a couple of years. In the history of Human Being, Heidegger asserts, we began to neglect Being when we attached our approach to life to Plato’s philosophy of ideals (Heidegger. Being and Time. 1926). As I said on Sunday, ideals are possibilities that have died, changing their state from Being to Having. We have ideals, but consider them unattainable, or significantly, impossible.

Coming to Life from ideals (or preferences, desires, opinions, feelings, beliefs and so on) in the aspect of Having, drives us to react in the aspect of Doing, and then we get whatever results from that: disappointment, stress, frustration, elation, happiness, anger, a paycheck — and since none of those has any permanence or reality, these results dissipate and then we have to do more, or do better, or do something different, which then produces more, better or different results, and we are in a self-perpetuating downward spiral. This is the inevitable outcome of living in the neglect or resistance to Being. This was the fundamental mistake of Western Philosophy that produced our current condition of perpetual war, environmental disasters, greed, inequitable economies, oppression and slavery, and all of the outcomes we call “evil.” It has also produced progress in technology and techniques that we consider “good.” Continuing in our good or bad, better or worse, more or less, different and same strategies will keep us in dilemma, conflict, quandary and perplexity. What we need to get out of the vortex cannot be produced in the vortex. What we need makes no sense.

To live an empowered Life, we must create ways of Being, called possibilities, that serve as futures into which we can live. The future exists only in language, which fortunately for us, is the medium in which Human Beings can create. Language is not necessarily words and sentences, but it can be. There are no private languages, so one of the features of language is that it can be shared. Art, music, dance, non-verbal expressions of love can be language, as well as words, and they are most language-y when shared. (See, ‘language-y’ is not a word, but it communicates something.)

To inquire into what You could create, You may begin with considering the last time You were inspired by something. What was it? What inspired You about it? How did it feel, look, sound, smell or taste? Recreate the experience for Yourself. Then look to see what is in the way of creating the inspiration. We often think of the barriers in the way as something external to us, but the barriers are our own. “My upbringing” for instance, is not an external, as it is my interpretation of my childhood. Someone else with the same upbringing may have interpreted it differently, and constructed different barriers. When You’ve identified Your barriers, consider if You are wiling to give them up. If so, give them up. In the clearing that opens in the absence of the barriers You’ve given up, a new possibility (new future) will show up. I can coach You through this method, if You find it difficult the first time.

While it is not absolutely required that You share Your created future, it is valuable. Unpredictable promises and direct requests lead to the fulfillment of possibilities.

I hope this deepens the distinction of creating for You.

Love,
Samantha

This Sunday, we inquired into slavery and Freedom. We distinguished emancipation from the possibility of Freedom, in the extraordinary sense. We find that there are aspects of slavery and Freedom hitherto neglected, or so it seems.

The question to consider this week is, “What enslaves me now?” Other ways of phrasing the question may be “In what ways am I not Free to Be?” or “What is impeding my Freedom?”

We spoke of a section of US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s State of the Union Address, delivered January 11, 1944. This is often simply called “The Second Bill of Rights,” and once constituted the Progressive Agenda in America. Here is that section:

It is our duty now to begin to lay the plans and determine the strategy for the winning of a lasting peace and the establishment of an American standard of living higher than ever before known. We cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth- is ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure.

This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures. They were our rights to life and liberty.

As our Nation has grown in size and stature, however—as our industrial economy expanded—these political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.

We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. “Necessitous men are not free men.[1]” People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.

In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all regardless of station, race, or creed.

Among these are:

The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the Nation;

The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;

The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;

The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;

The right of every family to a decent home;

The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;

The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;

The right to a good education.

All of these rights spell security. And after this war is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

America’s own rightful place in the world depends in large part upon how fully these and similar rights have been carried into practice for our citizens. For unless there is security here at home there cannot be lasting peace in the world.

One of the great American industrialists of our day—a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis-recently emphasized the grave dangers of “rightist reaction” in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called “normalcy” of the 1920′s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.[3]

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[1] In the English Property Law case, captioned Vernon v Bethell (1762) 28 ER 838, it was affirmed that there could be no restriction on the equity of redemption. In justifying this rule, Lord Henley LC made the famous observation that, “necessitous[2]” men are not, truly speaking, free men, but, to answer a present exigency, will submit to any terms that the crafty may impose upon them.”

[2] necessitous |nəˈsesitəs| adjective
(of a person) lacking the necessities of life; needy.
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from French nécessiteux, or from necessity + ous.

[3] http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/address_text.html