Unlocking Creativity
(This is an excerpt from a University Of Metaphysical Sciences course at www.umsonline.org, please feel free to visit the school website)
Get a different
perspective. Without doubt, creativity hinges on and rests upon this primary
effort: the ability to move our mental perspective away from our current
position. We must be able to see new paths before we can walk new paths.
We must first acknowledge that there are other paths before we will begin
to see them. Granted, we may eventually come to the conclusion that our
own path is the best solution, but this is unlikely, or we would not be
stuck, beset by so many obstacles, or be so dissatisfied with our journey.
Test takers and test makers plague us by the idea of “right”
and “wrong” in an informational, data sense that destroys free
wheeling, associative, creative thinking. Rigidity is maddening to our natural
order of thinking (literally; think of the naturally imaginative, creative
child). Its eventual effect is to force a particular perception or way of
perceiving upon us. Granted, there are certain advantages to “not
seeing” the multitudinous possibilities in everything. It prevents
information overload and incessant stress. It has a practical application
in navigating through life and even through creativity. As one art teacher
says, “When you hear hoofbeats, think horses, not zebras.” However,
the key is to be aware of when we are acknowledging such thinking and when
we are blithely accepting such thinking as the only reality. This is especially
important in an era when we are barraged with messages both visual and audible
that are specifically crafted to insidiously engage our consensual response
by associatively bypassing the conscious filters. Advertising, marketing,
and news media are as dangerous as family emotional traditions when it comes
to numbing our alertness to creative response.
The principle of Separation is key to perspective shifting. You are not
your car. Advertisers and marketers and certainly car manufacturers would
like you to think so. You know that you’re not your car, yet they
promote the car as an image or extension of yourself. Though we may identify
with a particular car, what about when it’s old and run down, perhaps
crashed or in need of a paint job? Do we really look at the car and think,
“This is who I am?”
Most people are able to separate themselves and their identity from material
things and possessions. (If they can’t, they need to start somewhere
other than removing blocks to creativity.) Many people do believe that they
are their experiences. Think about it for a moment. “I am the sum
total of all my experiences.” Many will answer instantly “Yes,”
a few will answer “No,” and almost all will end up prevaricating
as they ponder the meaning and implication of the question. There is an
obvious advantage to knowing that you are separate from your possessions.
Yes, your possessions might be indicative of your emotional and mental weather,
but they are not who you are.
What is the advantage to separating yourself from your experiences? In a
word, perspective. To say that you are your experiences is to limit yourself,
passively, to what has already been, the past. If experience is all that
we are, then we would constantly be repeating the same thing over and over,
we would have no new experiences, and we could not think outside of what
has already happened and move into the possibilities of what might
happen. To put it another way, metaphorically speaking, the painter is not
the painting. You see a Matisse painting and you know that some part of
him, his beliefs or experience, went into the picture, but you are not looking
at a life map or a visual representation of the artist himself. Matisse
is much more than the painting. As for Matisse himself, he could never paint
if he stood only one inch from the canvas. His mastery required vision and
a vantage point, sometimes even distance.
Separation is key to creativity
because it gives one perspective, an objectivity uncluttered by the conscious
self. Having established that you are separate from the painting (the thing
you want to create), let us consider thoughts. If you have a thought, are
you separate from that thought? Again, the principle of separation applies
and allows for maximum creativity. The greatest thinkers have not held their
thoughts as personal possessions, but rather as separate from themselves.
This allows them to move in and out of these thoughts without judgment,
to analyze and change their thoughts freely as they consider them over time.
An idealogue is someone who insists on remaining bound to their thoughts
so that their thoughts become their identity. When the thought is challenged,
the identity is challenged and usually sets up an overzealous, overdefensive
response. The ideologue is not rational because they are not dealing with
thoughts as ideas, but rather thoughts as identity. To change or adjust
is almost impossible because it implies a need for change of self or identity.