The decision to develop your creative capital is yours alone. However, a positive response to that decision depends on whether you accept yourself as an integral part of the universe. On one hand, that's an empowering thought. But it can also be frightening, depending how you think about it.

Dr. Edward de Bono reminds us that intelligence is a potential, but that thinking is a skill. As such, thinking can be learned, practiced, mastered. In chapter 9, I outlined several thinking styles and how they can be used for fun and profit. Try them as you would a recipe, and then practice them until you can shape your consciousness and transform your mind so you see your own potential. Imagine an alliance with the creative forces in universe and then actualize it.

Biologist Lyall Watson says our next jump in intelligence is full consciousness. He identifies three levels of organization of consciousness in living systems:

1. A system can be relatively unconscious - like a jellyfish that carries on complex biological functions without seeming to refer to anything but in here.
2. An organism can be relatively conscious - a child floating jellyfish-like in an embryonic sea inside its mother can distinguish between in here and out there, between self and non-self.
3. An organism can be fully conscious and it can exercise its consciousness in deliberate interaction with other life forms. This state involves discrimination and selection, in other words, choice.⁸⁰

80. Lyall Watson. Gift Of Unknown Things. Rochester: Destiny Books, 1991.

Choice implies subjective will and the potential for creative growth.

Will is the wonder ingredient that makes higher evolution possible. It is creation's transpersonal force now made personal. Will is how we participate in the world, it is how consciousness connects with l.o.v.e - the limitless oscillating vibration energy - of life, or not. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin suggested that superiority over our primitive origins begins with self-knowledge, which then becomes an ability to project a better image of ourselves in time and space. ⁸¹

We can put the past aside, think creatively in the present and will ourselves a better future. A magical paradigm perfects this to the point where we are fully conscious of our co-creative role in the universe and our responsibility to it. And that supplies magicians with passion and power.

Over the years, I've had the pleasure of meeting many people who discovered, each in his and her way, their reason for being. One who impressed me greatly was a woman named Nora who is very severely disabled. She is so afflicted that she can do very little for herself, can barely speak and doesn't move except with spastic gestures. Yet I've only seen her radiate the warmest good humor.One day, when her husband and constant caregiver and I were engaged in a conversation about fate and destiny, I turned to Nora and asked her, "How do you see your life? What's your 'higher calling'? How do you serve the creative plan?"

Her husband set a large sheet of paper in front of her and put a pen in her hand, then laughed and turned to me, saying, "You've given her a good one there. It'll take her twenty minutes to get an answer down, so come out to the garage and I'll show you something I'm working on."When we returned, she was in her wheelchair beaming. On that paper she'd written, "I help keep people kind! Most see me and want to help me!"

Each one of us evolves from a different perspective. Our background determines our beliefs and how we understand ourselves, our world and, in large measure, how we determine goals and how to reach for them.

For some, accepting the creative imperative to form a new relationship with the

cosmos may not be so easy. We share a collective consciousness that is strongly influenced by the zeitgeist - the credence of our times - and today's media has an enormous influence but is unfortunately focused on selling us sensational headlines. As such it may be difficult for some thinkers to break away from their limiting habits. Even if the good news about your awesome potential is broadcast daily on your inner radio, how will it help if you're tuned to another channel?

It may be difficult for you to actualize your uniqueness. All the same, mind expansion is both a personal and a global need, so let's get past the slogans and create new memes, new replicating ideas.

In the same way that Marxism, like Christianity, was driven by a scant few memes over a very short period in Earth history, so can a new creative ethic emerge from a few good people. It takes work, but a good idea can change the world in a flash.

If we limit our creativity to biology, our genes might need several million years to complete an adaptive mutation and hardwire our brain with the idea of good. But a meme can be produced, reproduced and multiplied to electrify the collective mind in less than ten years.⁸²

To actualize real potential, we must stop and listen. The future is asking each and every one of us to creatively increase our passion for life.