Spark Innovation & Creative Power - A Dialogue

What made you decide to write about the feminine side of creative power?

Primarily because the world of ideas and innovation is so focused on more masculine models of ideas. When I say masculine I mean the concept of “ideation” which focuses on getting an idea out there and making it happen. Our understanding about the silent feminine side of the creative process is quite underdeveloped. Though we have notions about “idea incubation” and things like this, we tend to skip over these quickly and want to move to the action-stage right away. Spark focuses on the whole creating process with a lot of attention and care on this feminine side.

Are there advantages to focusing more on the feminine side of ideation?

Oh, yes. For one thing our over-reliance on action tends to get us to take ideas out fairly early, often without adequate contemplation and refinement. As a result, they tend to be somewhat incomplete and create difficulties that arise in the implementation process. We actually have more creative-power in the idea process, which sets the course for the rest.
With a deeper and more purposeful idea process, the ideas we do have are more reflective of an inclusive ecology, whether this relates to the sharedness of the idea, the people it impacts, and the value of the impact themselves. Our current processes are very short-sided and often lopsided.

Do you think this relates to male models of power?

Sure. You’d have to be a complete idiot not to notice that there’s an imbalance. Whether it’s social, ecological, economical, emotional or spiritual eventually we all pay the costs of this imbalance. So the urgency to become “wholeness-oriented” is escalating with the issues they impact. And they impact everything.

What is the fundamental shift of awareness that your message in Spark brings to people?

The first is that everything is created from spirit. And in order to create perfectly we have to be centered in this realization. We have to be conscious in our hearts from the conceptual moment we begin to consciously create.

This desire for people to follow their dreams is not new. But a lot of people seem to be pursuing I these days. Can you account for why this is?

Well I think that when we see people actually creating lives that we didn’t believe were possible, this is a great motivator. If that person can do it, why not me? And this starts a learning process to find out how, which is accelerating now because of the age we live in and the availability of information. So we want to know. We want to understand our cognitive mechanics, how our brain works and how it doesn’t, the power of our heart and how to empower ourselves.

We want to understand our creativity and the purpose of desire. We want to conquer our limitations and what better way to do this than to break rank and say, this is the life I want or this is what I want to create, and then put your heart and mind into it and do it.

There is no sweeter accomplishment than the act of creating something from nothing. It is that place in humanity that all artists, poets, designers, inventors, film-makers and writers know - the yearning to create. By creating from the beauty of ourselves we invoke and enliven our innate divine-ness and I don’t mean this in a religious way. It is the core of our essence, our energy and our central being.

ow do the stages of manifesting your creation work together.

There are several and these are not cleanly iterative either. The first phase is what I call the Spark phase. Every thing starts first with this Spark, which is the energized beginning of the creative process. This phase opens up a space where grand things begin to unfold and the entire infinite universe becomes a play of invention and possibility.

From here we move into making it into the Living Vision phase where we perfect our idea. We correct the misperception that exists because almost everything we see with our physical eyes is actually dead now, or the past. The Living Vision is something we can’t see or sense with our five main perceptions. So it becomes a faith exercise and we can only move forward based on trust.

The next phase is the Manifesting phase where we begin to see the fruition of our idea in the world of form and we continue to shape it and refine it as a living model. There are important lessons here too. In this phase we learn to magnify and magnetize the things you want so they come rushing towards you like bees to a flower. We become an irresistible attractive force calling infinite possibility to fill our “cup”, whatever form we’ve chosen as an outcome.

The final phase is to receive, enjoy and appreciate the created result. This requires a completely different kind of receptive energy.

What if what we want to create is not good for others or somehow restricts them?

Our highest creative capabilities are those in harmony with life. If we choose to create of out of this harmony, the refractive force ends up biting us somehow as learning experience.

What are the biggest enemies to our power to create?

Fear and doubt. Almost everything can be traced back to this.

Are there impacts for group creating and innovation?

Yes. Huge impacts. But we have to understand conscious creating first as individuals before we can do this with groups. In a group this is a very powerful thing which can have wonderful innovation outcomes if you get the “energy” right and source from infinity not limitation.

In Spark I say this, “Dream from a limited mind and you’ll get limitation. Dream from an infinite mind and you’ll get abundance.” Though we may not measure abundance strictly in monetary terms. That limited view of abundance ignores the ways we have hugely impoverished ourselves. So we need to open ourselves to real abundance that includes happiness.

Think of it this way. As a mentor of mine told me “To set a goal is to limit infinity.” Now think of the organizations you know and their internal politics and culture. Think we might need to make some changes there to enable more conscious creating.

Absolutely. But these capabilities are self-reinforcing. They reinforce the power of individuals, which in turn invigorates and reinforces the power of groups. You just have to get very real. With a renewed both global and local focus on innovation we have the possibility to transcend everything we have ever considered a problem. But not the way we’ve been doing it in the past. Now there’s an innovation!