Connecting to the Creativity Within

This blog is titled Creative Butterworth, because Eric Butterworth believed that each person has a creative nature that is an expression of his/her Christ nature. EB believed that anyone could create anything his heart desired. To EB, to deny one's creativity would be tantamount to denying one's breath. Nearly everyone would fight for dear life to breathe; yet how many people deny the creativity within? These next blogs take resistance and non-resistance to another level: the resistance of the wisdom within and the acceptance of one’s own divine creative nature?
For this discussion, a return to the 1969 Unity of All Life sets the stage: "The vastness of creation is whole. The Infinite Creative Spirit made it all possible; but there is no division, separation, or diminution of the Creator in the created. The Creator has expressed and fulfilled . . . Itself in the creation, which has no existence outside of the Creative Spirit that brought it forth. The whole is present at every point; therefore, all is totally and completely 'within' you all the time. It may be difficult to comprehend, but the Infinite I AM is the point in you where the whole becomes individualized as you" (p. 35). This is EB expressing a key Fillmorean theology: the Creator, whatever one may call it, is expressed in each and every person. It is the Creator's nature to be fulfilled within each of Its created. It is a concept so simple, and yet so complex, that many people find it difficult to grasp. Part of this is because many people grew up in traditional religions, which did not always encourage free thinking, especially about one's divinity.
EB believed that when Jesus referred to the Father within who does the work (John 14:10), he meant that each person could be a "channel for the expression of Infinite Intelligence and energy and love. We are using the same power, the same basic Infinite Mind stuff, whether we are rising to success or floundering in mediocrity . . . . The Infinite Creative Spirit in us is to each of us what we are to it. It invariably responds to us by corresponding with our mental attitudes" (p. 35). This relates in Unity to the Law of Mind Action and to the Power of the Word.
For instance, if a person thinks that she can start a gourmet and catering business because she loves to cook, she begins to think of herself as a gourmet caterer. She turns her thinking away from her boring, federal government job and begins to focus on food, cooking, and the creativity within. She affirms her ability to feed people delicious food prepared with love. She finds a location for sale that allows her to build a business. She makes mistakes, but she focuses on her abilities and surrounds herself with supportive, caring, wise, loving people who affirm her creativity and her ability to achieve the success she desires. She learns and learns and learns. Eventually her business grows larger, and she moves to a new, bigger shop. She continues to focus on her success. She hires a staff and earns hundreds of thousands of dollars. And even when running the business day-to-day becomes too much for her, she believes in her ability to share her love of delicious food with the world. She begins to cook on television, showing others how to prepare delicious food and how to entertain. More important, she helps others realize that they, too, can express their creativity by cooking and sharing their culinary creations with others. And because of her belief in her own creative power, the world knows this woman as Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. Had this highly successful entrepreneur and gourmet guru stayed at her boring government job, thousands of people never would have experienced the beauty, wisdom and inspiration of her creativity. Yet, because she expressed her creative spirit, she allowed so many others to follow in her footsteps. She used the same basic power that is in each person to express her creative self.

The issue, of course, that is raised by a "famous person story" is that people deny or pooh-pooh another's success when they doubt their own innate ability to express creativity. Naysayers are easy to find. "She had money." "She had the lucky breaks." "She was smarter than I am." But EB would have none of this kind of talk. He did not deny that people might not attain their goals right away, but he said that "there is really no failure but surrender" (UAL, p. 37). Thus, people fail at expressing their creativity when they give up, believing that they must attain a certain status or place in society, or have some kind of possession or level of affluence. He said, "We have mistakenly thought of success as 'getting there,' arriving at a particular state or station" (UAL, p. 37). For some, it is like climbing a ladder that gets longer and longer because one never reaches the top. And then one may feel a sense of futility, as EB noted, wondering what life really means, because the person is working toward a dream that is not his. Instead of climbing the ponderous ladder of success, whatever that may be, EB recommended viewing success as a progression, rather than as a "static point." He noted that "the progression may not necessarily be in outward achievements with greater rewards. It may come in the form of increase of the creative process in what the person is doing" (UAL, p. 38).

This is each person's point of power: his/her ability to believe in the creative power within. This is what gives life meaning, not the struggle to achieve a goal one does not desire. EB may sound tough when he noted that one uses the same power to achieve personal success or to flounder in mediocrity. But the floundering in mediocrity in this case is not meant to be unkind, but to show that each person has his/her own choice. Granted, not all of people who enjoy cooking want a show on the Food Network. But each person who loves to cook has the opportunity to express his/her creative nature, not because it means great financial success or fame, but because the person feels an inner sense of fulfillment and joy, the contentment that comes with doing something well that one loves doing. This is what it means to express the Creative Spirit within.