I have been following a process internally for the last 3 weeks to be creative. Sharing it everyone so that we can have a conversation and improve it such that it scales for everyone. Creative tendencies are still seen as a stroke of luck of pure genius! I think its a science yet to be discovered. So, we can have schools of creativity! Schools that can teach you to be creative in general 😉 Would love to do a PhD in this field and possibly start a ‘Department of Creativity’ 😉
Here is the simple 3 step process:
- Keep your conscious mind blank or empty or silent (one step process for happiness! enjoy the silence!)
- Do something new
- Repeat step 1 and 2
At a fundamental level lot of people find that keeping the mind blank is difficult. Suggestions to make that a process – write down thoughts that come to your mind in paper and assure your self that you will think about it later 🙂 Possibly use technology (mobile?) if you cannot have paper and pen always! Better if you can read Getting things Done by David Allen
Next, when we keep our conscious mind blank (which I do naturally!), we are very sensitive to emotions. Especially destruction emotions. The book by Daniel Goleman – Destructive Emotions helps to give you an insight a lot! A quick summary – the three core ‘poisons’ from a destructive point of view are anger, craving and delusion!
On the delusion angle, basically ego, the book by Eckhart Tolle – A New Earth gives you an insight.
The first week, I was doing this actively. Now, I am passively in this state without any effort and I am experiencing pure bliss 🙂 Filled with energy in terms of mind, body and spirit! Is this awakeing or nirvana or the buddha moment? You feel very child like with lot of empathy.
Just thought will blog it into Ether and see what people think! This is true spirituality with no religion. A process to be creative in all aspects i.e. love, curiosity and strength (my model of life – some time to be blogged later! already did that!! LoCuSt Theory) Have a good day all!
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Yes you can teach creativity, but point two should be about doing something you love… a creative person is essentially a very passionate person, who is very clear on what he will not do… and focusses himself on stuff he loves!
I can only agree with the last point, the one where you say a creative
person does only what he loves. My view is, creativity does not
necessarily come in a calm silent mind, atleast its not a
prerequisite. It is a form of subliminal expression of the background
noise that’s always present in the unconscious mind & out of which the
conscious mind actively tries to make a ‘melody’. The people who learn
to channelize this noise (latent energy) end up to be the most
creative people. If the conscious is kept silent there is no noise.
There can be no melody without that. Lets take the example of one of
the greatest painter ever, Van Gogh. He was mentally ill, had a lot of
hallucinatory experiences during his life ( extreme kind of mental
noise) these are clearly depicted in many of his creations with
psychedelic color patterns. His creativity was a result of his brains
attempt to do away with that noise (a defense mechanism described by
Sigmond freud as sublimation). Creativity unlike logic comes from a
very different part of the brain. It is def influenced a lot by
emotion. But it doesn’t necessarily require a calm mind.
Hey Vinu,
Thanks for sharing. Sounds like it’s working well for you. Having spent a lot of time thinking about and studying creativity I think it depends very much on what your intended outcome for creativity may be. In most of the recent places I’ve read by people who study creativity, in not just the artistic realm, I think most people report a much more mundane development of creative ideas characterised more by hard work, persistence, immersion, and then perhaps a small amount of the ‘mind blank’ state you talk of when maybe people go for a walk. Often, in very creative companies, creative ideas are the result of interactions between people playing around with a problem or situation they’ve been thinking about deeply. For instance, the step to do something new is generally best directed towards some aim rather than picked out at random. If you’ve been working on something hard then your ‘new thing’ will likely be aligned in that direction.
I think your references make a lot of sense, it’s great that it’s leading you to interesting things, and I think it really depends on what your intention is for what sort of creative process you may want to follow also.
Just some thoughts. Jono
have u guys heard about Poken? Its a cool little gadget to connect with anyone you meet in real life. I recently bought one from http://www.PokenIndia.com . Really cool gadget. Hope to see a post on Poken in your blog.
hi vinu
i liked your post
just short and sweet and simply said