By looking at the movement of your awareness in terms of the metaphysical trinity of body, mind and spirit, you will be able to understand more about the way your perception actually creates your reality. The creative process is an identical twin to the intuitive process––so being well-acquainted with, and able to move smoothly through the three phases of any cycle of creation will also keep your intuition flowing. To create anything, your consciousness must pass through three phases, 1) moving down from spirit as inspiration and occurring in your mind as concepts and plans, then 2) moving from your mind as motivation and occurring in your body as results and form, then 3) moving back up from your body as completion and being experienced at spirit again as renewal. This movement through spirit, mind, body, to spirit again, correlates with three simple actions: Be, Do, Have, and back to Be. The three arcs on the circle below depict the three phases in any cycle of creation. Your soul’s “descent” is represented by the first two arcs, from Be through Do to Have, while the “ascent” is shown by the third arc, from Have back to Be .

The Three Phases of the Creation Cycle: BE-DO; DO-HAVE; HAVE-BE

Creation begins with the spirit, or Being. It’s here, in the superconscious realm, where purpose resides, here where we are in tune with the collective wisdom of humanity and the planet, here where we know the most about love and are aware of the big picture. It’s the part of us that funds our physical existence.

The mind, or conscious mind, correlates with action, or Doing. It’s the function of awareness that focuses, compartmentalizes, chooses, registers impressions, makes associations, determines meaning, implements, catalyzes. Mind is the personal will, combining thought with desire to create action. The body correlates with the experience of manifested form, or Having. It’s at this stage that action precipitates results, where there’s an outcome to ideas. Until this point, nothing is concrete, tangible or stable. The body is part of the subconscious realm. Be-Do-Have. For anything to manifest, consciousness must follow these three simple steps, in order.

THE DESCENDING PHASE OF CREATION: BE-DO-HAVE

Let’s trace the process of how we create our personal reality. The first phase in the process, the downward swoop of spirit-be into mind-do, is the aha!, the spontaneous, impulsive influx of inspiration.

ACTIVATE PHASE ONE OF THE CREATION CYCLE

1. List five new ideas that excite you.
2. List five first impressions about people or situations.
3. List five sense-oriented experiences you crave.
4. List five hunches you followed today.

As the first phase of the cycle occurs we’re full of superconscious guidance, enthusiasm, purpose and the desire to expand. We’re motivated, curious and imbued with a childlike innocence that knows no doubt. For example, an artist sitting in a café may suddenly notice a reclining woman in a romantic dress and be inspired to pick up a pen and sketch her. Your mind at this point clarifies, focuses and defines its ideas, then uses will power to initiate action.

In the second phase in the process, the swing from mind-do to body-have, the goal is clear. You’re still coming from superconscious guidance as you launch into action and become industrious. You hardly know if it’s work or play. You’re in the groove, going the distance and applying yourself in a cause-and-effect process. The artist asks his friend for a pen and grabs a napkin to make his sketch. He scribbles furiously and loses all sense of time until he realizes the drawing is complete. We experience a buildup of intensity and focus during this phase, a threshold is reached and physical results manifest.

So the mind receives an inspiration, registers that bundle of energy conceptually as an idea and drops it down in frequency by imaging it with the senses. It drops the energy down further by defining it verbally and focusing it through will power. The energy then flows toward your goal. Action slows the original flow a step further, by using up some of the energy. Finally, when the energy becomes slow enough, it coalesces into a physical form and you have results! The entire process from Be through Do to Have is the concretizing part of the creation cycle. It represents the dynamic, expressive, manifesting power we all exercise daily.

ACTIVATE PHASE TWO OF THE CREATION CYCLE

1. List five activities in your life where you took action without hesitating.
2. List five times you lost yourself totally in what you were doing.
3. List five results that surprised you.
4. List five things you want to accomplish very much.

GETTING STUCK: DO-HAVE, DO-HAVE, DO-HAVE

Be-Do-Have. So far our intuition has been alive and well the whole way. If we would just follow the current in the direction it’s going and finish the cycle––but we complicate things. One of my clients, Chuck, is a good example of this whole process. He got a brainstorm for a new software application, developed, tested, manufactured and sold it, made quite a bit of money, and got a new car and house. It felt tremendously satisfying. But then he needed to maintain that good feeling, his ongoing venture with all its new employees and his material possessions.

Chuck’s awareness, at this point, was focused entirely on methods, results and security, on the task-oriented world. He worked hard and eventually forgot what it felt like to do anything else but manufacture software. “Being? What’s that? How could being be important? Sitting around on my duff sure won’t pay the bills.” At this stage Chuck recognized only what was tangible. Completing the creation cycle by returning to being was out of the question––because he associated leaving the world of doing and having with loss, even annihilation. His mind looked out at the realm of being and could only see: the Void! “Choose emptiness and lose the security of my job, marriage, house, savings? Give up the attachment I have to the identity I’m getting from my successful business? Question whether I want to keep manufacturing software? Open to the possibility of becoming a playwright or a race car driver next? No way!”

Even though Chuck was beginning to feel a little bored by doing the same thing, the idea of giving it up or changing it looked like sheer insanity. Yet he was starting to have doubts, and his intuition wasn’t as reliable as it used to be. As the pressure built, he experienced an array of reactionary behaviors in himself based on “a-voidance,” anxiety, distrust, frustration and hoarding. Chuck was getting bogged down in his fear-based subconscious world view. Like most people, when confronted with this kind of discomfort, Chuck took the least objectionable route––he turned around and went back to what worked before. Backward, against the natural flow; back to the mind, back to doing and thinking, back to familiar beliefs, thought patterns and habitual behaviors. “Manufacturing software got me a new house and a feeling of success, so doing more of it should solve my problem.” So he expanded his production facility and hired more people. Chuck was stuck now, going back and forth between Do-Have, Do-Have, Do-Have. He was no longer expressing his soul’s true desires.

To continue with more doing and having at the end of the descending phase of the creation cycle is actually unnatural, and it takes its toll. Eventually, since we’re using more will and less energy to manifest the results we’re accustomed to, the results reduce proportionately. Chuck continued to resist the inherent pressure to complete the cycle, to return to his being so he could be reoriented and renewed, and he experienced a depletion of his remaining energy, motivation and conviction. Repeating his original action was taking a tremendous effort now. What to do? Go backward again! But this time, to get the same results, he had to alter his original plan by doing things better and differently. “The business isn’t doing well and I’m not motivated, but my success has been in software, so I’ll just make them more efficiently, or repackage them with new graphics.” He cranked his will power up to high, applied more effort and glossed over the growing unease in his body.

As Chuck’s success rate continued to drop, panic built. He denied his desperation and started getting depressed; he was still afraid to face the unknown. He started having a few drinks after work and became embedded in the addictive process. Do-Have, Do-Have, Do-Have. Going against the flow had eventually resulted in a total lack of vitality and loss of connection to his true self. His intuition was totally blocked.

RUNNING ON EMPTY

What we see is what we are. As we begin the descending phase of the creation cycle, we are spirit; we are whole, wise and confident. The world therefore looks ripe with possibilities; we are confident and eager. We like ourselves. But as we manifest end results, most of our load of intention and fuel has been translated successfully into form and used up.

At this point, at body-have, looking ahead to the third phase of the process, we see through the filter of emptiness, because by then we are empty. Our personal reserves are gone and we’re not yet aware again of the universal supply. It seems nothing is ahead. We have a tendency then, more than at any other time, to think in terms of emptiness, to talk about what isn’t, to tell ourselves we are nothing or nobody and to project negative thoughts into the future. We seem to have no self-esteem.

This is actually the part of the creation cycle where we get to rest peacefully and recharge ourselves. It’s just that after so much habituated Do-Have, Do-Have, Do-Have, where life has become so totally concrete, not many people remember how to recognize the intangible, let alone how pleasurable emptiness, or spaciousness, is. Buddhists see emptiness as divine and actively seek it. But our Western culture places a negative value on emptiness, equating it with deficiency––and some ultraconservative groups go so far as to associate the unknown with evil. We need a new life skill: how to consciously recognize, welcome and use the second half of the creation cycle.

Read part 3 of this 3 part article in next month's issue.

Copyright 1997 by Penney Peirce, from The Intuitive Way

Visit Penney's website www.intuitnow.com