Physical Skills
Movement. Time. The Creative Process wanders; it stops to explore, falls down and then gets up again. We move forward one step at a time. Physical movement and action, and the appropriate use of Time accelerate personal development. Certainly, our perceptions of Time change as we lose ourselves in close attention to creative activities. (9) Time is a vehicle of the Creative Force. For creative people, it's the boring everyday routine that's really the "altered state" of today's world. We may experiment with Time and Focus, setting time limits on creative exercises to boost our innovative juices.
Discipline. When we're painting or crafting just for fun, we can't wait to start. But every professional artist can tell you how the words, "have to" cast a dark spell. Getting up every morning, needing to execute an acceptable work of art to meet a deadline, requires tremendous discipline and commitment. The professional can't wait for the right mood; she has to produce in quality, in quantity__ and on time. When shifting from an ordinary day job to full-time professional painting, most artists spend a week or more setting the studio in order, clearing out cupboards and old art publications, searching for inspiring music__ but accomplishing little or no actual painting. The next two or three weeks__ with palette, brushes, notes and sketches neatly laid out beside them__ they stare at a blank sheet of paper or canvas, unable to bring themselves to place a single brush stroke on the surface. The realization that how and what they paint now determines their incomes brings on a paralysis.
For others, transiting gradually from full to part-time jobs and slowly gaining hours available for painting and marketing, a delayed effect may occur. When I first sold a painting for over a thousand dollars, I became almost paranoid facing each blank sheet of paper, realizing I must somehow transform it into a work of art worth that price or more.
At first it's hard, but after regularly applying ourselves to play piano, learn a new language, play chess or spend more time exercising, we soon reap the rewards and truly enjoy the discipline. But if we invest all our leisure time being couch potatoes, nothing happens. Even if we've visualized well, we can't create unless we get up and move. It's hard to be a Rembrandt if we can't find our car keys.
Mental Skills
Imagination: Every new project or idea begins with an inner vision__ we can create nothing on this Earth without first holding a vision of it. Imagination breathes life into our creations and must be exercised to stay vital. Whenever we Focus intently on a thought or image, we activate the energies necessary to manifest it into physical reality.
Universities experimented with students electronically connected to equipment measuring body processes. When viewing various pictures, their physiological responses were recorded. They would see a picture of a depressed person and their vitality level went way down. When the picture was of a vibrantly healthy animal, their energy instantly shot up. It makes you think twice about filling your mind with current TV, electronic games and film offerings. (11)
Visualization opens our minds to new possibilities, whether through unusual information, people and places or unexplainable events__ even traumatic incidents. In fact, the imaginative faculty of human beings is so powerful, that totalitarian groups feared it. Hitler and Stalin rounded up all the intelligentsia of Germany, Russia and the countries they invaded, imprisoning artists, politicians, writers, musicians, and inventors in concentration camps and gulags. Many were eventually exterminated. Visualization engendered hope.
Attention. Attitude. Any concentration is a gathering of energy. Energy__ earthbound or cosmic__ will flow according to the path of least resistance. If we only see the negative in every situation, then energy flows toward that negative and our life seems devoid of anything positive. Attention is always projected through our Attitudes, and Attitude__ positive or negative__ determines the quality of the reality experienced.
Creative work demands a Focus on one aspect of the work as well as attention to nature, people, objects and events. Unless we stay present in each moment, centered on the Doing of the project itself rather than on its Outcome, we lose the link to our inspirational source, making it almost impossible to break free of ordinary traits, to be original__ to be true to personal perspectives.
Attention is a psychological force. When turned toward inner realms, attention can propel us into unknown worlds. Continued focus on feelings activates our Inner Psychic Child. This subconscious self is automatic. It doesn’t need the five physical senses. It exists in a state of awareness apart from the physical, yet is acutely alert to the physical at all times because we have developed a consciousness more inclusive than ordinary awareness. (Chapter 4: Spirit Within) Both ancient seers and modern day psychologists have suggested that this expanded state of mind and feeling__ a lost art__ is imperative for a positive existence during the 21st century.
Harmony: is a science, and its generators are the true artists, for by imprinting their harmonious feelings and impressions into tangible artworks, they engineer resonance between Earth and higher realms, transmitting data from one level to another. (10) Most of us have such short attention spans we seldom achieve higher insights for more than a few moments. Sometimes, listening to inspirational music vibrates us in harmony with expanded levels.
Discernment: One of our most valuable Creative Skills is our freedom to choose. To abstain from choosing is itself, a choice. Matured artists detach themselves from formulas or standard techniques, balancing simplification and complexity, recognizing what is or is not in the best interests of each project. They include enough complexity to keep things dynamic, but simplify according to a wider perspective, distinguishing what is or isn’t necessary to express the message of the project. Rather than choosing to do a thing "exactly like that", they choose to do it from within a broader range of possibilities. They accept mistakes gladly, learning to honor them as outer signals of inner attitudes.
Detachment: It’s mostly our self-imposed mental rigidity that limits our creativity because we are afraid to change, afraid to differ from our peers or from those we have empowered as our authorities. This attitude stems from problems with sharing our creativity. When artists observe from detached points of view, they can drop defensiveness about their work. When I first sought to place art work in galleries, it felt as if exposing my work to critical strangers was like walking naked into their offices. Even though I’d earlier sent slides, had a firm appointment and drove hundreds of miles to keep it, at the last moment I’d become so nauseous I’d have to cancel out. This continued until I learned to detach my personal identity from my art. Once the works were framed and sent out into the world, they began a life of their own. Guided into the proper channels, each determined its own destiny. Innovative individuals examine disturbing phenomena from a Detached Point of View.
Organization: Through artistry, we develop a schedule, find similarities in the dissmilar, and create order from disorder. Even organizing some household drawer, cupboard or closet before beginning a new painting can entrain the proper frame of mind for structuring artwork.
The universe is often likened to a complex machine. We feel at home with things we can touch or see, and the machine notion allows us to grasp new concepts from a materialistic viewpoint. An artist or athlete, however, must harmoniously organize mind, body and emotions to trigger both inspirational insights and skillful performances. Mind and heart must be combined in that peculiar Unstable Equilibrium where harmony of emotion and thought teeters.
Re-patterning: Both spirituality and art require a balancing of relationships. Both the spritual student's and the professional artists' basic tasks are to find common patterns and similarities in the relationships between objects and people__ perhaps between everything contacted through the physical and psychic senses. The creative engineer looks first at all possibilities, adjusts what doesn’t harmonize, then chooses what creates the wholeness he seeks.
Intention: We all have a deep sense of purpose__ a will to birth, to change, to transform or manifest something. Intent opens us to a different or broader viewpoint than we might have had before the present situation arose. "As the spiritual musician creates he can consciously intend the effects of the sounds he is creating or using. Intention creates an effect, not only when you are creating sounds yourself, but even when you are re-playing sound recordings created by others." (12) The musician’s intent, negative or positive, affects the listener of the CD or the MP3 even years after its making. Intent touches everything. Even the intention in the mind of the doctor when he calls in or writes out a prescription can affect the patient’s healing process.
Perceptual Flexibility: It’s not so much what we see or what happens, as how we choose to view it and feel it. Logical planning and skillful, decisive action may not be enough to bring forth our masterpieces; we need to hold an appropriate attitude as we take action. Perceptual Flexibility and a willingness to observe how others operate can replace mental rigidity and self-limitation.
Emotional Skills
Joy: Emotion electrifies our life force and brings hidden seed thoughts into being. As artist, teacher and friend Lalene Cargill Meyer remarks: “No Heart__ no Art.” Focusing on the years of study and struggle necessary to be able to fully express our creative urges and forgetting about the ecstasy inherent in the creative process, we can turn our talent into just another daily job. We become robotic, and both our work and our life soon lack sparkle.
Joy comes when we are so intent on what we're doing, we forget everything else__ even ourselves. This happens when we have clear objectives from moment to moment, whether playing golf, singing in the choir, crafting a new gunstock, designing a new website or forming a new lesson plan.
Willingness to Risk: Creative individuals love challenges__ riddles, puzzles, mysteries. They immerse themselves in imaginative literature and open their minds to unique feelings, thoughts or perspectives. They know that creativity sprouts from disciplined, critical thinking and from self-examination of the motives behind their worn-out ideas, beliefs and expectations.
Creative people are open to taking risks, even to being outrageous at times. The intuitive-intellectual watercolor painter risked when she asked herself, "How successfully can I change my mind again?" or "How else can I express this idea?" We can change our lives smoothly by honoring our Inner Psychic Child while standing firm in our personal integrity and allowing all else. Our striving will certainly, at times, bring a resistance that carries disappointment. These difficulties can be devastating to the ego, fostering resentment and a sense of being a loser. But when we perceive these consequences as a sort of "neutral feedback from the universe”, they keep us honed in on a course toward greater understanding of our personal missions. We feel a deeper contentment with our chosen activities.
Trust: Eventually we come to trust in universal feedback and then we can align more precisely with more expanded aims. Loving the working process, trusting in the difficult and having the courage to explore new territories pushes us beyond the status quo. If a new idea doesn’t work, we analyze what went wrong, then simply start a new project. Couragous Creatives don’t give up, knowing that sooner or later it will work__ or, at least they’ll discover why it didsn't.
Spiritual Energy Skills
Resonance: "Becoming As One" with the subject matter of the work in progress enhances creativity. As we vibrate in tune with trees, elk, apples or a cowboy, we attract insights about the subject formerly hidden from us. Patience and acceptance of periods of non-action allow for deep probing of the inner self, bringing forth fresh perspectives on subject matter and techniques.
Attracting Force: When we live from the heart, radiating joy in all we do, our feminine, holistic nature activates an attracting force from deep within. The Intellectual-logical and Intuitive-emotional aspects of the subconscious are like automatic magnets, attracting ideas, things, people and situations according to whatever we strongly focus on. We make decisions intuitively. We sense pieces and patterns inherent in the whole and choose from a wider perspective. This divine magnetism resonates with our higher personal missions.
Trust in Spirit: Conflicts between spirituality and science have often left us trying to live either a “religious” life apart from what we perceived science to be telling us about reality, or a “scientific” life, often fearing we were denying our faith. Worse, many of us tried to live both. A price tag was attached: neither science nor organized religion fully satisfied our hunger for higher realms of creativity. Creative activities require both Trust and Faith. "Faith is something we experience or don't experience. We can't fake it and we can't fool ourselves".... "Without faith, fear wreaks havoc on consciousness" (14)
Credits
(9) Murphy, Michael. The Future of the Body: Explorations Into the Further Evolution of Human Nature. pg. 120, pg. 562
(* footnote, pg. 581). 1993. Jeremy P. Tarcher, Inc., 5858 Wilshire Blvd., Suite 200, Los Angeles, CA. 90036.
(10) Arguelles, Jose’. The Mayan Factor: The Path Beyond Technology, pg. 55. Inner Traditions * Bear & Company, P. O. Box 388, Rochester, VT 05767- 0388. www.gotoit.com
(11) Diaz, Adriana, Audrey Flack. Freeing the Creative Spirit: Drawing on the Power of Art to Tap the Magic and Wisdom Within. 1992. Harper Collins Pub., 10 East 53rd St., New York, NY. 10022.
(12) Iasos. Inter-Dimensional Music, 33 Varda Landing; Sausalito, CA 94965. 415-479-0700.
(14) The Mountain Astrologer. Aug/Sept, pg. 17. 1997. P.O. Box 970, Cedar Ridge, CA 95924
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