III. Taking Control And Reclaiming Your Creativity
We have established certain things so far: creativity is something we are born with, and generating world changing ideas is not a function of brilliance because creativity works with intuition; your subconscious mind, your spirit.
The first instinct is to think creative ideas is something irrational and as such, it is not something that can be expected or planned for. That instinct is wrong, for there is so much that can be done to get into a creative flow.
We have people that constantly and consistently generate creative ideas. If it was impossible, then there would be no recorded cases of people who have done such before. George Washington Carver walked into his laboratory and returned with three hundred new ideas!
We have countless examples we can learn from and follow in the same footsteps. Creativity is simply misunderstood, once better understanding goes mainstream, I can only imagine how much it will increase efficiency and productivity.
I believe that creative ideas automatically surface when you add knowledge, information and skills to a “correct” spirit. Anybody that commits to wholesome development can maximise their creative potentials.
If you commit to completely develop your body, mind and spirit; that wholesomeness is key to all of this. People who express their creativity usually fit a certain profile and a commitment to all- round development is part of it.
Every feat of creativity and invention has its root in the spirit. Only people who see themselves as spirits can access it and so, you find that spirituality is not a topic to joke with.
Spirituality is a sensitive topic any day, and it is one I have laboured so hard to shy away from. However, I realise that there is no other way.
In order to be extremely creative, you are going to need a source of ideas and power that goes beyond the 3-dimensional physical world we can all touch and see. To become more creative, you need to invest in your spiritual development. The more spiritual you are, the more creativity you would unlock.
When I say the goal is to be completely in tune with God – the secret origin of all creativity and inventions. Someone else may express the same idea as “the goal is to be completely in tune with the Universe”. Like I said, spirituality is a sensitive topic.
Indeed, I could write, teach and train creativity without all the spiritual stuff, but then my message would not be whole. It would be grossly incomplete and hence, success cannot be guaranteed.
I have reviewed several works on creativity by people who would rather shy away from the spirituality of creativity and invention, and one can see clearly that such works are not whole. They do not contain the entire pathway.
If I were to toe that line and simply share a part of the message, I would have to then pray that somehow God brings the missing pieces to you.
I do not want to say things that might be politically correct like: “I would have to hope that somehow the universe brings the missing pieces of the message to you” or opt for scientific sounding nonsense like: “hoping that the unknown laws of quantum physics will by chance bring you the other parts of the creativity message.”
I would rather bring you a complete message, which is obviously heavily influenced by my Christian background, something I have tested and proven over to work. I have taught and seen real results with everything I am sharing with you, this work is a product of my research.
We do not need to look too far before we discover that Christians (and people heavily influenced by the Judeo-Christian worldview)
contributed heavily to the development of all of the scientific stuff we use today.
It is very long list, and so, I will highlight a few and then we will explore WHY they were able to manifest such high level of creativity and inventiveness.
The father of modern genetics is a priest called Gregor Mendel, he conducted an experiment on genetics for several years before writing on genes. Mendel’s work remains ever relevant and is still taught in schools till today.
A Scottish mathematician, John Napier is best known as the discoverer of logarithms. He invented logarithms which converted multiplication and division into addition and subtraction respectively. He also made common the use of the decimal point in arithmetic and mathematics.
Anyone that has ever passed through the four walls of a school must have encountered logarithms at one point or the other. John Napier was as passionate about his Christian faith as he was about mathematics, physics and astronomy.
There are just countless numbers and examples of people who maximised their creative nature through this spiritual route. It can be done, I can assure you of that.
We also have Nigerians that have done great things by tapping into God – the source of creativity and inventions. A quick example would be Professor B. O. Osuntokun.
Professor Benjamin Oluwakayode Osuntokun (1935 - 1995), was a researcher and neurologist from Nigeria globally acclaimed for discovering the cause of “ataxic tropical neuropathy”. He operated firmly from the University of Ibadan, South-Western Nigeria from which he launched an extremely productive career full of fresh ideas.
Adeloye Adelola, a contemporary of Professor Osuntokun writing about the man after his death wrote:
“His (Osuntokun) religious and spiritual upbringing started much earlier than his mates at school imagined. It started, antenatally, from the miracle of his birth wrought by prayers; it continued in the childhood years which he spent in the compound of the apostolic church: at the age of six years, he was precocious enough to read the native edition of the Bible from cover to cover. One suspects that the regular religious knowledge classes which we all had at Christ’s School Ado Ekiti must have been child’s plays to him!
The education in Christ’s School gave its students more than a religious philosophy to prepare them for the battles of life. The school imbued them with a disciplined mind, love of hard work and industry, self-confidence and the grit to meet challenges. Osuntokun was an archetype of that generation.
Some of us who made successful careers in the sciences left Christ’s School without physics and chemistry, and like Osuntokun, saw a bunsen burner for the first time as medical undergraduates. It was from such an unprivileged and unpropitious origin that Osuntokun grew, an apostle of hard work, to attain the pinnacle of his profession.”
Creatives and Inventors come from every walk of life. Prolific inventors all have certain things in common, and if we can learn that and imbibe that, our creativity will find room to blossom and impact the world positively.
The first step to reclaiming your creativity is spirituality and I choose not to skip that in my work. Let us consider what it really means to be spiritual.