A Springboard for Self-Examination

Based on my experience, I can say that the process of spiritual development can greatly increase a person’s creativity. In my case, it took the dissolution of my early marriage to start an intense period of personal development.

After a short marriage, I found myself separated from my wife and on the road to divorce. This experience kicked in a period of intense self-examination. Having worked with a counselor, I understood the principle that we tend to marry someone who is much like ourselves.

I decided if I wanted to remarry, I wanted someone who was more mature and loving than my former wife. To attract this person, I needed to embody the qualities that I was looking for in someone else.

I worked on myself to improve my attitudes. I wanted a more positive view of life, and a stronger self-image. As a result of these early efforts, I entered a period of intense spiritual development, which I consciously initiated.

My desire for spiritual improvement lead to a general awakening and significant personal growth. I began feeling more peace, harmony and contentment.

After months of work, the process took on a life of its own. I was increasingly receiving internal signals as what I should do, and what direction I should go. I found that as I opened up my spiritual side – my creativity erupted.

Flashes of Creative Insight

Below are two examples of the intense creativity I experienced during this period. After my separation, I worked at a position which cried out for fresh thought.

While sitting in an airport in a high mountain town in Colorado, I was letting my mind wonder. In a moment of pure inspiration, a solution to an engineering problem sprang forth as a fully developed idea. It came out of nowhere.

Over several months, I had reflected on my company’s earth scientists need for an analytic tool which would guide the overall direction of their work. But I gave no thought to how this tool might work.

All of a sudden, the ideas came spilling out, one after the other. I then spent the next hour or more writing them down; and after getting home, I continued to fill in the details for several days. I wrote up a calculation procedure and worksheet for our earth scientists, based on the intuited approach.

After that I trained our staff to use the procedure at a company-wide conference. And ultimately, I worked with our IT department to computerize the calculations, and trained our people to use the program on their personal computers.

In a moment of pure and unexpected revelation, I received the ideas and approaches of a tool that equipped our staff with an important capability. No other company in the industry had such an ability. It was cutting edge stuff for the time.

Later, I supervised a strategic, long range planning effort for the company. As my assistant and I studied the markets and alternatives for the company, I kept getting intense insights into what directions the organization should go. I was intuiting the end results.

As we reviewed the alternatives and supporting evidence, the ways to get to my intuited results fell into place in a strong, logical manner. When I presented the results of the work to company managers, they embraced the approaches; and thought the logic was compelling.

In both of these cases, and at other times, flashes of creative insight jumped way out in front of my logical mind. It was “quite a rush,” as they say, a lot of fun. Very exciting.

Moving Past Logic – Intuited Results

I spoke of these happenings with my spiritual teacher. He indicated that a person’s IQ often increased during spiritual development, particularly during a spiritual awakening.

This two-year period was a very creative time for me. My professional work required inventiveness and intuition. My position provided opportunities to express myself, providing me with defined needs and an outlet for my creativity. At the same time, I was undergoing a period of rapid spiritual growth, which seemed to provide the creative energy.

Because of the trauma of separation after a short marriage, and my strong desire to improve myself, I opened up as never before. In the process, my spiritual creative side blossomed; I looked at life in different ways.

I offer you my experience as a guide to what is possible, and what can be the rewards, if we open up and grow spiritually. As my example suggests, some times an emotional shock is required to get our spiritual unfoldment going.

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