Creative Attention
There are things we know. There are things we know we don’t know. I know I don’t know how to speak Chinese. And there are things we don’t know that we don’t know. So we can’t say much about those. But there is another category of knowing how to do something without knowing how to do it. We just do it.
We know how to pump blood through our veins, and how to inhale and exhale. We can be aware of these things. We can influence them by our actions. But we don’t really know in the sense of “how-to” do these things. Yet we can observe them.
In mythology the muse whispers in the ear of the creative person. The creative mind listens and observes. I don’t believe creativity is an act of will. But you can use willpower to form habit likely to put you in the creative state of mind. This is fundamentally what slow is about for me. What do you think?
Julia Cameron says, “Refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.”
Here’s my blog post on that:
Wow. Refusal to be creative. An act of self-will. Is this different from Nachmanovitch’s take that our task is to unblock the obstacles to creativity’s natural flow? I suppose self-will is one of those obstacles. It is empowering, though, to see it as an act of self-will and not unseen forces acting on us. And how does that fit with the egolessness of Buddhism? If I can truly accept the dissolution of the self, will creativity resume its natural flow? I think so.
What did the Buddhist monk say to the hot dog vendor? “Make me one with everything.”
Lyn,
Certainly humor is creative. It’s a way of looking at a situation differently, or seeing more than what one first sees.
How does a person refuse to be creative? I can imagine someone can be so busy being productive and then plunge into passive entertainment to avoid it. But is that the same as refusal?
I shall have to look up Nachmanovitch, but this sounds right to me. It’s not uncommon to fear boredom. I’ve been guilty of carrying around more books than I can possibly read because I don’t want to get stuck somewhere with nothing to do. But doing nothing is no mean feat. It’s work. It’s a skill. I am practicing it, but I haven’t got it right yet.
As for the egolessness of Buddhism. I can’t talk to it because I haven’t had that experience myself. I have managed to be quiet and tranquil, at least for a time.
It seems there are two people when you talk about self-will. There is the one who is willing the other one. One is in charge. I wonder if this is about the two halves of the brain we are talking about, or cortex and neocortex? I am a little fuzzy on brain anatomy.
My experience is that creativity happens if you let it rather than will it. Trying too hard (at least for me) has the opposite effect.