My Work Is My Play - The Journey From Survival to Creativity

"For the love a' creation!", my father was fond of expounding, when "Pete" and "God" had run their course. It was years later until I realized that sentence actually held meaning for me ? other than an expression of exasperation. It is, most literally, the love of my life.

For a remote viewer, creation is both the destination and the journey. It has a very real context, namely, the matrix. It is the void, the confluence of all things singularly rolled into one while simultaneously separated into individual parts made unique by a nuance of frequency. It is that vast and limitless outer expanse only reached by turning inward.

In my years of remote viewing, I've been on many journeys. The real goal of this process is to engage the consciousness of the matrix. In the advanced stages, the targets reflect this whether they be of a terrestrial or off-planet nature. There is no other way for me to describe my experience except to say that it is a direct interaction with the creative source and a distinct confirmation that we are part and parcel of this force.

As an embodied soul, I am both the creation, bound to a contract of safety and survival, and the creator, inextricably dedicated to risk and innovation. One way of describing survival is to say that it is the eternal quest for the mediator, the recognized other, regulator of our early bio-neurological processes. It is the search for the "savior", the one who can assure us that no harm will ever befall us as long as we remain faithful to the other's perceptions of the world.

Creation, on the other hand, is the direct experience beyond time and space. Creation is the personal responsibility of the individual to the collective and has no intermediary. Creation assumes survival.

A Biological Imperative

Survival is our biological imperative. No argument there. However, how we define survival for ourselves and others around us is a component of health and well-being of global proportions. We can, for example, be persuaded to go to war when we're convinced that our survival is threatened. However, resistance not only arises from an immediate life and death scenario but also out of a question of quality of life. Enter creativity. In the final analysis, we are not content to simply "survive".

Creativity then becomes the resourced state that sustains life. It is, in fact, an inseparable part of survival. The optimal word here is "resourced". Our greatest resource is our consciousness. Obviously, the more parts (i.e. pieces of consciousness) of ourselves we can convince to stay present in the moment, the more resourced we are and the more creative we can be. So what tethers us to the path of expectation? How do we mistake opportunities for opportunists, gifts for burdens, or vice versa? This is our survival mechanism in action; this is also our survival mechanism run amuck.

Past Tense or Present and Tense?

Does the past exist? My answer would be yes, it exists in the present. I have frequently had the experience of remote viewing events, places and life forms in the past. I absolutely know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is possible to focus on the signal line of such a target and experience that "past moment" in its sensory entirety. As a remote viewer, I am also trained not to take the experience back "home" with me. Consciousness helps me do that.

However, when an unconscious part of me is connected to the signal line of a past event, I don't have the benefit of that conscious resource. It's as if that particular part has no idea that a trained remote viewer also shares the same physical container. In that case, whenever some present sensory input amplifies the signal line (to which I'm already unconsciously attached), I experience that event all over again. And the experience registers in my body through the nervous system while my brain draws the same fearful, hopeless or delusional conclusion it's always drawn, based on the limited resources available to that unconscious part of me.

Of course, I'm just using my remote viewer part to make the point. The same thing happens when consciousness is brought to that current event by any other method of integrated awareness, as long as it includes the body. The body really needs to know it survived. Otherwise, it becomes impossible to return to calm and safety, the portal to creativity.

Survival In the Workplace

One place to easily view this in action is in the workplace. When we're growing up, choosing a career sounds like an exciting premise. We don't take into consideration that the unspoken part of our job description will be to fulfill someone else's expectations. The workplace, by its very nature, is an arena of external focus. That makes it a fertile field for the triggering of unconscious past wounds. We can use the experience to heal and grow (creativity) or we can use it to reaffirm our attachment to a certain level of survival.

What often occurs is that we measure success or failure by the amount of money earned, possessions garnered, and lifestyle achieved. When we speak of someone as "successful", we usually mean "wealthy. Somehow, this has come to mean that only the "successful", the "creative", have earned the right to play.

In this pass/fail world, survival can become a hook synonymous with drudgery, boredom and bitterness. Notice how "successful" people are often touted for their creativity. Ironically, you have to be really creative to survive. It's just that when the majority of your focus/energy is on a picture of survival alone, you don't always acknowledge the creative part of the endeavor. Unfortunately, that brand of creativity rarely gets translated into the quantum-leap realm of "success". We tend to stop at survival instead of peeking around the corner or taking those few extra steps toward a new picture. I must say that one of the major things remote viewing teaches you to do is not to stop at the first picture you think you see. Once again, it's integrated, perceptual training that makes the difference.

Work and Play Go Hand in Hand

When exactly did 'work' and 'play' become the Cain and Abel of sound economic theory? In many cultures they used to go together. In some, they still do.

How ironic is it that the biggest innovation in the world of corporate training today involves improv theater techniques and game design technology? No doubt about it?play is a primal imperative. Look around in nature. Play sets the stage for life.

Stress management in the workplace is really about people learning to work and play together for the creative good. Team building skills are all about that very concept. When the company prospers, then everyone benefits. All work and no play makes Jack? a survivor in my book and that's really only half the story. Life needs creativity to thrive and the creative process needs acknowledged space to happen.

I once attended a week-long meeting of advanced remote viewers from all over the world. Approximately twenty-two nations were represented in a group of about 75 people. We came from all walks of life from teachers and ministers to doctors and lawyers. For three days we struggled to agree upon a list of prime imperatives for human survival. The question was "What drives the human race?"

Some were easy, like 'love' and 'fear'. Others did not flow so glibly off the tongue, like 'greed' and 'competition'. I was a member of a contingent who tried in vain to introduce the word 'play' into the mix. In the end, 'play' was nixed from the top ten because it was not deemed a powerful enough imperative. What amused me the most was that the group could not sit there for a whole day deliberating on this list without someone starting to play. People either began to joke about other people's words or just act out and laugh. Some of the group began to devise their own game for picking words. But 'play', as visible a driving force as it was, never made the cut.

How does our quest for survival sometimes end up being the death of us? It's when our biological history keeps insisting that we're fighting for our life when, in reality, the actual threat in linear time has passed. Our brains have a habit of holding onto strategies that have proved themselves stalwart weapons in the moment only to turn into shackles impeding the march of progress the next day. Humans do it; corporations do it; nations do it.

Taking the Leap

How do we make the move from survival to creativity? Well, first we have to recognize that we're stuck on survival level. That's usually the hardest. That's when we want to look around for someone or something to blame ? past or present Many of us are reluctant to move off the "?but you were supposed to take care of me" piece of the healing process. Becoming aware of the fact that "where you are" is more likely "where you've been" is an essential first step to witnessing objective truth in the moment.

Remote Viewing calls these scenarios analytical overlays or AOL's. It's easier to understand the concept of what needs to be done than it is to actually train your brain not to close off the creative process of inquiry. That's what we do when we insist on naming or labeling something or someone too quickly. I've found that Remote Viewing actually trains your informational processing system to behave differently. We really don't realize how quickly that conscious part of us wants to draw conclusions. Not every embedded strategy is bad, of course. It's the ones that don't work any more but keep on going like the Energizer Bunny of survival mechanisms that we want to address and resource.

On a recent remote viewing journey, I was taken into a part of the matrix that is an energy stream. I saw myself lying there on the mat. The object was to surrender to the energy and have the experience. I suddenly realized that the creative force wanted to "play". I "returned" with a feeling that creation demands a rebate. The message seemed painfully obvious and terribly simple but it was the experience of it, the embodiment of it that drove the point home: It's not enough to be someone's creation. At some point, you have to realize that you're alive ? you've made it ? and you must give back in order for that creative source to survive. Making a conscious decision to move your perspective from survival to creativity is a spiritual experience that grounds your creative power in the three dimensional world.

Talia Shafir, MA, C.C. Ht. is a regression therapist and co-founder of the Center for Integrated Therapy in Sebastopol. She divides her time among a practice on both coasts which specializes in trauma and long term PTSD, teaching Remote Viewing throughout the country and running a corporate training consultancy using Improv and a variety of experiential techniques called Bizprov International.

For information about Remote Viewing lectures and trainings or therapy inquiries, call 707 829-7904 or visit the web at http://www.soulview.com

For Bizprov International inquiries: 707 829-3757 or Gobizprov@aol.com.

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