The Creative Life [Paperback]

Review: The book is built around the metaphor of the seven days of creation in Genesis. The basic reading of that part of the Bible is also done in a literary rather than a literal way. Each chapter builds around one day of creation, and ties the lessons back to human creativity. Many helpful submetaphors are contained in each chapter, such as to the combining of minds on the Internet.

"Like God, our creative powers are infinite," says Dr. Peter J. D'Adamo in his introduction. The book isn't quite that strong. It basically argues that the unfilled potential that God has created can all be tapped by humans.

"Let There Be Light." This text is seen as an encouragement to look for inner illumination for the right path. "Love . . . is what we are." "Love is the awareness of light and you naturally project light in a kind of healing influence."

"Let There Be Firmament." "To the person with an unshakeable faith that something wonderful is going to happen, something wonderful is happening." You have to believe in the potential before your mind can take it seriously.

"Let the Dry Land Appear." " . . . [T]he dry land is the mental image of formed thoughts." You need to "see what can be." You are encouraged to create visionary views of what could be in practical detail. I thought that this section worked best of all those in the book.

"Let There Be Two Great Lights." "God can only will the full expression of your powers and capacities." This argument seems convoluted, rather than expressive to me. God can do anything. Any existing limits in humans can be changed by God.

I suspect that many readers, if they are like me, will find this book coming close to arguing that each human's relationship to God is closer to being a peer one than many believe. Sections like this one create that issue. I found all this exhaltation of humans relative to God to be unnecessary to improving personal creativity. The language quoted in this book from the New Testament rightly emphasizes that Jesus pointed out that His ways are open to us.

The best parts of the book are the submetaphors. For example, in coming into contact with your on intuition, you are encouraged to think about the light within as being able to be influenced by a rheostat or a radio tuner. Then, there are exercises to use those metaphors to inspire more creativity. Based on my work with hypnosis and creativity, these are exceptionally fine metaphors and superb directions for using them.

If you find the Genesis metaphor gets in your way (as I suspect it will for many), my suggestion is that you skip over those parts when you get to them. You will still find much solid information here about being more creative. For example, the material in the chapter on "Let the Dry Land Appear" is very similar to that in Think and Grow Rich, and will provide new perspective on those ideas for people who have enjoyed that fine book.

The exercises in each chapter are well worth doing, and you would get almost all of the benefit possible from this book if you simply did them. So if you read the book, be sure to take the time to do the exercises.

A fundamental flaw in the book is to act as though the reader lacks basic experience in being creative. In fact, almost everyone has been very creative many times in her or his life. The material here would have been much more helpful if it had built more on those successful experiences.

After you finish the book, think back to those times when you have been most creative. What did they have in common? Do you routinely try to recreate those circumstances? How can the elements that worked well be combined in new ways?

Aspire to perfection in some important area . . . and you may approach it closer than anyone has ever done before! Be sure to leave a map to follow your journey though, when you take that route.