10 May 2013

Creating Your Own Path

Creativity is a habit, and like any habit it can be encouraged and reinforced.  One of the first steps that I think is involved in finding your own way is engaging in your own pattern of creative flow. When I write, I write about twice as many ideas as I actually end up posting.  Half of the time I just come up with a better idea, or the direction I was going in was too tangential to the core idea. But that's only something I focus on when a better idea comes out and conflicts with the power of an old one. Until then, I just leave my half-baked ideas and hope they get the point across.

The paradox with creativity is that we must affirm these half-baked ideas, even if better ones are not on the way. This can be better understood when you understand that the source of your creativity is your unconscious. But the unconscious is lazy and only does what it knows what to do. If you've never made music and you ask it to come up with a great sonata, because you want to be a great musician, it will probably only give you back a few notes. As you sit down with an instrument and start using these random notes it gives you, however, you'll notice that some sets of random notes sound better than others. You piece together those random notes, and with a bit of time and dedication you've got a melody.

But your unconscious isn't going anywhere you don't; it's just tagging along with you. If you sit back and imagine yourself as a great pianist, your unconscious will gladly embellish that imagination for you. Of course, that won't actually get you any closer to being a pianist if you don't sit down and try to be one (with all the crappy ideas and effort that will require along the way). It's only by taking your melodies, listening to the great musicians that inspire you, and drawing upon everything you've got that you will give your unconscious the resources to turn basic melodies into passages and passages into concertos.

However, you must keep encouraging your unconscious. Your activity of generating solutions is a habit. The moment you criticize or judge your ideas is the moment your unconscious shuts down and stops making them for you. Critique is an important part of producing a great work of art, but it must wait until after your creative binges. Think of your unconscious as a child that only responds to positive reinforcement. Your unconscious produces a great idea? Yay! Take it as far as it'll go. Your unconscious produces a dud? Guess it's time to work with what you've got.

In my opinion, you can take this same practice and apply it to paving your own path of spiritual growth.  Think of it like a painting.  If you want to make a painting, presumably you have an idea in mind of what you want it to look like when you're done.  So you ask yourself "what are my criteria for a good work of art"?  Same thing for spirituality.  What's your criteria for a good spiritual path?  If you have an idea in mind already, build upon it.  Whether it's a thought or a feeling or a vague sense of something, write it down.  You can worry about whether it's worthwhile once it's developed enough that you plan on acting upon it.

That said, your idea of spirituality may be primarily concerned with the actions you take.  If that's the case, take action that is in line with your sense of what is spiritual.  Eventually, once you've observed yourself taking this action for a while, you may come to a deeper understanding of what you're really trying to do and why it's spiritually moving.  Or it may even be that you find that knowing what you're doing is not important, as you already can feel that you're in alignment with your own inner guidance.

If you find yourself without any inner guidance, it may be that you're suppressing it.  Even if you think you don't have a good sense of how to direct yourself, shutting down your own ideas will only stop the flow of your own sense of direction.  There's a lot to be learned from turning to others, but if you want to walk your own way, at some point you must choose to listen to yourself.  The more you encourage that process within you, the more you'll have to work with in the future.

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