Standing in Your Light: Being Generative

Editor’s Note: For the background and context of this exercise, please read David’s blog post, Generativity.

I would ask you to enter into the theater of your heart and mind, a place of imagination.

Let us each begin by stepping into our sense of sovereignty, into the felt sense of our sovereignty and of our self-light.

Imagine around yourself a sphere of energy; it’s as if you're within a bubble and this bubble is responsive to what you think and what you feel, what you decide, what you choose.

The shape of this bubble around you and the energy that fills it – the colors that fill it, the texture, the music, the sound, the vibration – this becomes part of the subtle environment that is around you; it becomes part of the sea of life in which we all are immersed.

Now imagine or feel into your emotional mind, your emotional body, the seat of your feelings. Feeling and thought are deeply intwined together, but for the moment let's pretend that they're two separate things and just focus upon your emotional life, your feeling life. You’re not trying to identify specific feelings. Just gain a sense of your capacity to feel, to have emotion and what that means to you.

A great power that we have is our ability to step back and witness this emotional life and to recognize that it is not the totality of who we are. It does not need to define us. We won't try to identify what this observing witness state is. Let's just say it is simply the ability to step outside of ourselves and look at an aspect of ourselves.

From that place, just perceive your emotional nature with respect, honor, appreciation, and love. It is a source of energy for you. It is a way to perceive the world, a way to define the world, a way to shape the world. Our emotional nature is like an artist’s palette of various colors that are selected and used. Some things we’ll paint one color and some things another and some things a mixture of colors, but that is ourselves choosing and using our emotional nature to color our world, to shape our world, to define it for us.

We say, “I like this” and “I don't like that.” “This makes me pleased and happy” and "That makes me frightened.” “This makes me disgusted.” We have all these different emotional responses. Without trying to say which responses are correct or not in this moment, just be aware that we have the ability to choose. What we generate into our own inner world in the way of feeling and emotion can be under our control, can be held within our creative choice.

In a similar way, stand as witness and observe your mental activity – your capacity to think, to reason, to have thoughts, to form ideas, to form mental images and pictures, to have intention and plans, to have memories. What is this capacity to think, this part of you that is your mental self? What is the felt sense of that to you?

We so identify with our thoughts that it can be challenging at first to step back and say, “These thoughts are not who I am. They do not have to define me but they are colors that I choose, they are tools that I use to give expression to who I am.”

Thought and feeling form and shape your internal world. They give it color and motion and energy and dynamics. Imagine this mental and emotional capacity blended together into a single generative presence – your psyche, your psychological self. It contains a wealth of tools to enable you to engage with the world, to create with the world, to understand the world, to converse with the world.

But you are the tool user. You are at the heart of this generative system, and your self-light – the light of your soul emerging and manifesting in conjunction with the life of the world – can embrace and bless and hold and work through the psyche. It can use the generative power of our thoughts and feelings to influence and shape the world, to carry the message, love, and light of the soul into the world.

When you stand in your sovereignty and self-light, you can stand in the moment – free from the past, free from habit. In that moment, you can choose what you will generate and give to the world, and what you receive from the world in return. You are a generative source and therein lies your capacity to bless our world and to make a difference within it.