Generativity
Editor’s note: For a practice that goes with this essay, please see Standing In Light: Being Generative.
The idea of generativity is at the heart of Incarnational Spirituality. There's nothing passive about our spiritual being; it is in engagement at all times with multiple levels of the world.
To understand generativity, it's important to understand that we inhabit not only a physical universe, but a subtle one as well. One of the images that I've used many times in the past is that of the seashore, in which the physical world is the land and the subtle dimensions are the vast ocean. Where these two meet in the shallows and in the seashore, that's the subtle environment, that’s the place where these two aspects of planetary life come together and engage.
The idea behind generativity is that each of us is like a little broadcasting station, and what we broadcast is determined in large measure by our thinking and our feeling, and also by a deeper activity of spirit and soul within us.
If we only think of ourselves as physical beings, then generativity doesn't make a lot of sense because we seem to be enclosed and isolated within this physical body of ours, and so we don't have a sense of anything radiating out from us that’s having an effect in an invisible medium that surrounds us. If I'm only thinking of myself as a physical being, then I'm ignoring or not aware of the other ways in which I'm a broadcasting station and I'm adding to the general quality of the subtle environment that surrounds me.
Our generative nature puts things into the subtle environment that everybody who is sharing that subtle environment has to deal with in one way or another. The path of spiritual development is one of learning how to be aware of that and how to modulate it so that what we're generating becomes a blessing to our environment. It gives positive energies and qualities to that environment, which then can be helpful to others who share that environment with us.
The one thing I want to get out of the way right at the beginning is the idea of blame and of feeling that I have to monitor my thoughts and feelings at all times to make sure I'm not polluting my subtle environment and thereby inflicting things on other people. Because that creates stress and in all forms of working with subtle energies, we want to strive to do so from a relaxed and peaceful place where energy can flow on many levels.
In the beginning, as we start working with ourselves as generative beings, we may get into this stressful state of thinking, “oh, I've got to monitor everything I think about and everything I feel, because in some ways these are going to enter out into the subtle environment around me and perhaps become pollutants that affect others.
It doesn't work exactly that way. As a broadcasting station, what we send out and how it impacts the subtle worlds around us depends a great deal on two things – our intensity of intention, and our habitual patterns.
As far as intensity of intention, there are two kinds of energy here: there’s the emotional energy that can be sent out like a burst, and then there's the energy of will and intention, which is more laser-like, focusing in a particular way and creating a structure of thought in the inner worlds. When these two are combined, it can be very powerful.
Think of yourself as a planet with a gravity well. We know that for something to reach orbit or to go further out into space, it has to break free of that gravity well; a certain amount of energy is required to break free. That’s true for us too–a certain amount of energy is required at a mental and emotional level for the effects of our thought and feeling to move very far beyond our own auric field.
Of course, if I'm engaging in negative feeling and thinking and I'm keeping it to myself because I don't want to pollute the environment, it still can settle into my own auric field and then it’s there and I have to have to deal with it. But not everything we think or feel automatically goes out and becomes something that other people have to deal with or the life around us has to deal with.
As far as our patterns, if I have certain kinds of moods and thoughts that are repeated so much that they have become habitual, then they gain power by that repetition. A kind of pattern is created and an energy field or an energy form is is created that then does have the power to begin to affect the environment around us.
However, if I get irritated by something in the moment – if I'm out driving, and somebody does something that irritates me and I have this flash of anger, or I see something on the news and I have a flash of irritation, that energy is there for a moment and then dissipates.
The subtle environment is very resilient and robust. We’re not the only agency that's contributing to it; everything is contributing to it. We give ourselves too much credit if we feel that our personal thoughts and feelings are going to have this huge effect in the moment. They may have no effect at all, depending entirely on what else is present and active in the subtle environment at that moment.
But if I develop a pattern of thinking or a pattern of feeling over time so that it becomes habitual, then it gains a certain weight, it gains a momentum. And that momentum is what can carry it out into the subtle dimension.
To put it another way, it begins to shape us energetically and then our energetic shape, our energetic configuration or pattern begins to impose itself on the subtle environment through a kind of induction.
Here in the physical world, if I bring a chair into this living room, then we have to move around that chair. It sits there and it's either useful or not, but it's an object in the environment and I have to deal with its presence.
In the subtle worlds, something becomes an object like that when there’s attention and repetition and energy given to it over a period of time. Then it takes on a certain certain mass, a certain quality of persistence that does begin to shape the energy around us.
In dealing with our generative nature, what we want to look at are what are the patterns of thought and feeling that we engage in and use to identify ourselves and to express ourselves over and over again.
I can have a moment of depression, a moment of sadness, a moment of anger–any negative emotion or thought can be there. If I'm not holding on to it and I'm not building a pattern around it and saying, “This is who I am and this is how I think and this is what I want to be part of my life,” then it dissipates very quickly.
It could be an effect in the moment. I've told this story before, and this is by no means an isolated case, but this one was particularly dramatic, of going to visit a friend who was working in a store, and when I came into the store (she was the manager), I was immediately hit with this really painful energy – it was like I'd run into a hedgehog or a porcupine. This was one of the few times when I've had really powerful visual clairvoyance – I could see these red spikes of energy coming out from her. She was really angry in that moment, and the people working with her in the store were avoiding her. So I talked with her and we went out and had tea together and she calmed down. Something had come up in the store that had just been a kind of last straw and she really lost it and was having this meltdown in the moment.
So that was a case where she was putting a lot of energy into the anger that she felt and that did manifest as the radiance of painful, subtle energy that was emanating out from her. Even if you're not sensitive to subtle energies, your body still reacts, you can still feel it like you feel something in your gut when you're with somebody who's having that powerful emotional reaction.
But she calmed down very quickly, and this was not something that was usual for her, it was not part of her habitual way of being – she was a very sweet, thoughtful person. Her energy calmed down very quickly because her habit pattern was one of being much more stable than that and of generating helpful things out into her environment.
Any of us at any time could suddenly become a generating station of something that's painful for others in the subtle dimension, for others who are around us. If we recognize that, we don't say, “Oh, I shouldn't have done that.” We say, “Let me calm that down and then let me put out something that's more constructive and loving and healing in its place.”
For many of us, our thoughts are a constant stream of consciousness and one thought gives way to another and our attention goes in one direction and then very quickly is turned to something else. But when we begin to practice a mental discipline, one in which we learning how to focus our thinking, then our thinking becomes much more powerful in terms of how it can radiate out thought forms that can escape our internal gravity field.
I've been sensitive to the subtle worlds and to the subtle environment all of my life. What I discovered as college student was that the more as I got deeper into my study of math and science, which demanded a lot of mental discipline, the clearer and more effective my awareness of the subtle worlds became. Something about the study of math and science for me created this very orderly pattern of thought. It was a mental discipline that created a container that paradoxically allowed me to become much more intuitive and much more sensitive to the subtle dimension than I had been up till then.
It doesn't have to be math or science; it can be anything that captures our attention and our interest and that helps the mind to develop its creative and imaginative muscles. In many kinds of spiritual and metaphysical practices, we’re asked to learn how to visualize, how to hold thoughts clearly, how to empty our minds (which in a way is a kind of mental discipline). All these things can give more power to our mental energy and to what we broadcast at a mental level.
So when we’re on a spiritual path, we do take on a certain responsibility for what we’re generating, but we also take on a creative freedom and joy in recognizing that there are ways that we can make a difference in our world by understanding that we are not just passive receptors of the world or victims of what the world brings to us, but we’re active generating stations that can create qualities and thoughts and moods and feelings that are positive and supportive and loving, and vitalizing, and giving those out to our environment.
It doesn't mean that we don't have moments of feeling something negative, but it does mean that our general posture, the shape that we're creating energetically around us becomes more and more solidified or more and more powerful in being able to hold a spiritual presence, the spiritual energy that we wish to give to the world.
For me, the the power of thinking of myself as a generative being lies in the fact that it gives me choice, it lets me know that I can make a difference in what's going on inside of me, in my interiority, in my subjective world of thinking and feeling. If I make a difference there, that's going to make a difference in what happens around me; it’s going to begin to shape my subtle environment in positive ways. That in turn opens me through resonance with the larger spiritual dimension of the subtle worlds.
There are reasons why in the moment we may feel unable to exercise that kind of sovereignty or that kind of agency and choice. We can be overwhelmed at various times. We know that people suffer trauma and suffer emotional and psychological states that can make it very hard for them to express their agency and to be intentional about their thoughts and feelings.
There are many things that we can take in from the physical level of our environment in the form of consciousness-altering substances, and from the mental and emotional levels in the form of things we read or watch. These things can lodge within us like a virus that brings its own kind of intelligence into us and says “This is how you should feel and this is how you should think.”
Understanding our generativity helps us understand that we each have the ability to decide what our internal world is like. There are such a wealth of spiritual and psychological tools that are available to us at this time in human history that we can use to help us with that. But to me, one of the key tools is just recognizing the spiritual nature of who we are, recognizing that we have this sovereignty and this generative agency, and relaxing and opening to that.
Sometimes I think we try too hard, and that creates stress. And sometimes, of course, we don't try hard enough and then nothing is accomplished. It’s sort of like going to the gym and learning how to be fit. If you do too much and train too hard, you injure yourself. If you don't do enough, then don't get to that state of muscle tone and fitness that you're looking for.
It begins with an awareness that I have the power to choose and I'm not a victim. I have the power to determine the flow of my thinking and the flow of my feeling. If something happens in my environment and I start to feel a reaction, I can step back and say, “Is this how I want to react? Do I need to react? What does the situation actually call for from me? What do I want to generate here?”
Just being aware of our generative ability can give us a sense of power, a sense of being empowered, a sense that I can be a co-creative force in determining the shape of my life and, just as importantly, the shape of the larger environment of which I am a part.
We’re all co-incarnating this world around us and it is helping to bring us into being. Our generative capacity is not at all isolated; we give the gifts of who we are to the larger commons of which we are a part, and in turn receive the gifts from that commons.
The converse of generativity is that I have the right always to determine what I'm going to receive. I have the right to determine my receptivity. I don't have to take in everything that I run into, I don't have to take in whatever it is that I'm feeling in my environment. I don't have to let it become part of my emotional and mental makeup. I can say no to what I don't want to be there and I can say yes to what I do want to be there. In either case, whether I'm being generative or receptive, I have that power, I can make that decision.
Spiritual work and spiritual growth rest on that. It's a kind of pivot point, because our unfoldment into greater capacities of service and consciousness and engagement with the world is something that is within our control. It is part of our agency.