The Subtle Art of Recognizing and Cultivating Intuitive Creativity

A couple of months back, while walking in the woods, I had a rather unusual intellectual encounter with a man who, supposedly, owns a million dollars advertising agency in Europe and works with many renowned corporates across the region and the Americas.

As we made our way up the trail, alongside enjoying the marvellous wonders of nature, we started discussing various topics being creativity amongst one of them as that’s the paramount aspect of the advertising business.

To most of us, creativity means either composing a great piece of music, playing the guitar or the flute, penning down our thoughts and write poetry, painting a canvas, or perhaps even having as many as children one can have.

But this is not the creativity in a true sense.

All these are mere projections of our mind, expressions of our feelings and emotions, being expressed through various forms such as music, poetry, painting etc. using the techniques we have learnt or are familiar with in some way.

To express something does not mean to be creative.

Expressions may be the same as the creativity though it is not the whole creation. The wave is the same as the ocean, though it is not the whole ocean.

Expressing something is accumulated learning and not the creativity itself. All that we learn and all that we know is the accumulation and it is the accumulative memory which acts. Therefore it is imitation. And imitation is a mirror image and not the creation itself.

Creativity is so fascinating that when we are authentically involved in it, we feel that we are living more fully. The excitement and the joy we get from this simon-pure creative adventure is beyond words and incomprehensible.

“Creativity is a gift. It doesn’t come through if the air is cluttered.” ~ John Lennon

Know Thy Inherent Force

Creativity is something entirely different state of mind and is notoriously elusive. In its deepest and profound sense, it is the state of consciousness in which you enter into the treasury of your innermost being and bring out the beauty into manifestation.

Being able to train creativity or induce a state of creativity has therefore long been the aim of many artists, scientists and entrepreneurs.

Vincent Van Gogh’s painting ‘The Starry Night’ or Albert Einstein’s theories about ‘Spacetime’, both marvellous pieces of work are products of this same creativity.

“Creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something. It seemed obvious to them after a while.” ~ Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs, one of the most creative, passionate, and influential entrepreneurs in the history of business, is spot on when he said, “they just saw something”. This is what I am referring to.

A field of immense creative inspirations and possibilities, a place where there are no thoughts and you only see something exceptional which you can’t describe in words yet very much entitle to express through various forms.

Intuitively, Steve understood this phenomenon clearly and now research backs this up too.

Scott Barry Kaufman, psychologist and science writer, says that openness to a new experience is the strongest personality trait for predicting creative achievement. “Thinking outside the box” may more accurately be understood as “Drawing from different boxes.”

‘Openness to experience comprises intellectual curiosity, complex problem solving and reasoning, imagination, artistic and aesthetic interests, and emotional and fantasy richness’, Scott further says.

Creativity is a state of mind, either induced intentionally or experienced naturally, where the waves of thought have completely ceased and an individual now has access to the ocean of creativity.

It is the state of ‘what is’, and once you are in that state, creativeness comes into being.

“Creativity is arguably our most uniquely human trait. It enables us to escape the present, reconstruct the past, and fantasize about the future, to visualize something that does not exist and change the world with it.”, says Liane Gabore in one of her research work.

Cultivate Thy Innate Power

Creativity is a delicate flower in the garden of your being and if you don’t nurture it regularly, it may die leaving you alone with old ideas and pretending they’re fresh.

Regardless of background, everyone came into this world full of curiosity and an innate desire to create, to enhances the beauty of the world, to make the world a better place to live.

In today’s dynamic technological world, creativity is essential for entrepreneurs, Startup founders to guard against disruption and maintain relevance. While technology alone is not enough, the key is to not limit one’s criteria to what’s immediately practical. Rather, the aim should be challenging yourself to explore experiences that simply pique your interest.

Occasionally change your routines to explore the unknown territory, unlock new discoveries.

While we know, and research confirms too, that some individuals have a more creative personality than others. Yet research has suggested that creative imagination can also be boosted through our environment or simply putting in lots of hard work. For example, experimental studies have shown that when children engage with creative content or watch others be highly creative, they become more creative themselves.

In its very essence creativity cannot be taught but can only be cultivated.

Alan Watts, the British philosopher and the author, in one of his lectures said:

“You have to have an essential sense of life, but there is no way of prescribing it. This is very difficult for teachers because in all of our modern schools and universities we are attempting to teach creativity. The trouble is that if we found a method whereby we could teach creativity, and everybody could explain just how it was done, it would no longer be of interest. The mysterious, the dark black of lacquer, the impenetrable and profound depth out of which glorious things come, is always an essential element in creativity. “ ~ Alan Watts

And to experience this profound and mysterious creativity, the writer and transcendentalist Henry David Thoreau took to Walden Pond in the woods of Concord, Massachusetts. It was there he wrote his seminal work “Walden; or, Life in The Woods.”

“If you would not be forgotten as soon as you are dead, either write something worth reading or do something worth writing.” ~ Benjamin Franklin

Since creativity cannot survive in the field of your conditioning, to cultivate and experience creativity, you must step out of the field of your conditioning and enter into the field of nothing(ness). Once you purify yourself of all conditionings, once you drop all of them and once you are in the field of nothing(ness), suddenly you will experience the immense power of creativity. Suddenly you will become creative. Here the mind does not depend on mere expression. The expression is of secondary importance.

“I never made one of my discoveries through the process of rational thinking” ~ Albert Einstein

While there are plenty of ways to cultivate and ignite the spark of creativity, to begin with, walking and meditation are the two most effective ways I would recommend to unleash thy innate power and step into the realms of creativity.

I, personally, prefer walking to connect with my nothing(ness) and to boost my creative impulse. It not only helps me in unlocking my creative insights but also in experiencing the ‘Aha moments’.

Brent Schlender, an author of the book Becoming Steve Jobs, wrote that Steve Jobs often took brainstorming walks with others and was known for walking meetings. According to Stanford research, walking can boost creative output by an average of 60 per cent.

And for those, who are not fond of walking, by sitting and just observing your restless monkey mind would give you creative insights.

“If you just sit and observe, you will see how restless your mind is. If you try to calm it, it only makes things worse, but over time it does calm, and when it does, there’s room to hear more subtle things — that’s when your intuition starts to blossom and you start to see things more clearly and be in the present more.”, Steve Jobs told his biographer Walter Isaacson.

All this sounds obvious to those who have cracked the creativity code. Often, though, I hear people asking how to paint, or play a musical instrument and I know that they are asking a much bigger question: “Can I create something?” The answer to this question is “Yes, you are creative with the same juice that flows in all of life. Just permit yourself to see the seeds for what you are and who you are.”

Creativity is a quality that you bring to the activity you are doing. It is an attitude, an inner approach — how you look at things. If you have something growing within you, if it gives you growth, it is spiritual, it is creative, it is divine.

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” ~ Martha Graham

A creative act enhances the beauty of the world. It gives something to the world, it never takes anything from it. Hence, go forth and own your creativity.

Create with thy heart, build with thy mind and do not seek to express.