CREATIVITY, SPIRITUALITY, LOVE
Dr Khalid Sohail
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Human beings are born free. They express their freedom in their creativity, spirituality and love. Unfortunately traditional, families, communities and cultures put restrictions and try to kill those freedoms. Creativity is killed by monotonous and mindless work, spirituality is killed by organized religion and love is killed by loveless and sexless marriage.
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Like the seed of a plant every child is born with a unique temperament and potential that I call Natural Self. Depending upon the social, religious and cultural conditioning of the family, school and community, a part of that Natural Self becomes Conditioned Self that is guided by what the child must do, have to do and should do. On the other hand the other part of Natural Self is transformed into Creative Self that is guided by what the child likes to do, wants to do and loves to do.
Children express their creativity in their play. That is how they explore their environments and learn lessons of life. That is how they grow and mature. When children go to schools, their teachers and principals prepare them for work. When children graduate from schools, colleges and universities, they are ready for work but along the way they lose their creativity. One of the studies showed that grade one students had 85% creativity while grade ten students had only 15% creativity. That is why the musical group Pink Floyd in their Album The Wall sings:
We do not need no education
We do not need no thought control
Teachers leave the kids alone.
When my niece Afifa started school, on her first day I gave her a button as a gift that said, “I hope your school does not interfere with your education.”
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Soren Kierkegaard, in his diaries, highlights the importance of freedom of thought. He states that many people who fight for the freedom of speech and action do not realize that most important freedom is the freedom of thoughts for which human beings do not depend upon anyone. It is expressed in human imagination. Human beings can be mentally free even when they are kept in a prison. Many poets and philosophers, writers and scholars wrote their masterpieces when they were incarcerated for long periods of life. Nelson Mandela of South Africa and Bacha Khan of Pakistan spent more than a quarter of century in jail but came out stronger as they kept their spirits high and did lose faith in their ideals. They did not lose their inner freedom. Similarly Victor Frankl kept his spirits high even in concentration camps and wrote his masterpiece Man’s Search for Meaning when he was released.
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Creativity is expressed in spontaneous activity. Work is very organized and regimented. At the work place human beings become cogs in a wheel. They work in factories and industries where they do mindless jobs. Gradually they start losing their creativity and start living and acting like robots.
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Human beings have two brains. The Left Brain, that is logical and rational, is used to solve day to day problems of life. On the other hand The Right Brain is used in the process of creativity, spirituality and love.
When Temporal Lobes of the Right Brain are stimulated human beings have very unique experiences that are known as spiritual experiences. Human beings feel very calm, quiet and peaceful. In different religious traditions those experiences are created by meditations and prayers. Traditional people associated those experiences with organized religions, angels and God. Now, with neurological and scientific discoveries, we know that even atheists and agnostics can have those spiritual experiences if their Right Temporal Lobes are stimulated. That is why I say that spirituality is a part of humanity not divinity.
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Love is a natural passion that exists when two adults are inspired by each other and are attracted to each other. They want to enjoy each other’s company. Many want to express their love in a sexual way. Unfortunately many religions associate sex with sin so they demand that people who love each other marry each other. When two people who love each other, start living with each other, within a short time, the honeymoon period is over and they start irritating each other. Since they live in the same house and sleep in the same bedroom they cannot have their private space. Gradually they start frustrating each other. All of us have seen couples who fight like cats and dogs. There are so many couples all around us who lead sexless and loveless marriages as their monogamy has turned into monotony. In my opinion, for spouses, to maintain their love, they need to have a healthy mental alongside a physical relationship. I usually say to my sweetheart that in an intimate relationship friendship is the cake and romance is the icing. Other people believe in falling in love, while I believe in growing in love.
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In the Western world marriage is becoming a legal contract between two adults in which both parties are treated equally. They can keep that contract as long as both parties are happy. If one or both are unhappy they can end that contract with each other and have that contract with another person.
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Human freedom is expressed in many ways. Creativity, spirituality and love are three ways to express that freedom. For human evolution, we need families, communities and cultures that respect those freedoms and do not put unnecessary restrictions on those freedoms because such restrictions can make people unhealthy and unhappy.
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Date: March 27th, 2016