Eight Keys to Enhanced Creativity Aunty Edith chanting. She titled this photo, Ulu A'e K Welina A Ke Aloha, Franco Salmoiraghi which translates to "the growth of love is the essence within the soul." Creativity lies in the realm of mystery; Like the finger pointing towards the moon, it should not be confused with the moon itself; Yet, we strive to find an approach. The Creative Response “Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once we grow up.” —Pablo Picasso Matthieu Ricard: Interview Excerpt Very often creativity is confused with a spontaneous expression of one’s habitual tendencies and conditioning. The artist says, “look at me.” It is selfish and narrow-minded and can be confused with knowing the nature of your own mind. Sometimes with nature or with art, you experience greater insight, a real moment of enlightenment, or a luminosity that connects you with the world or nature or others. … So intuition or inspiration is really the experience of your own wisdom. It is like seeing a small patch of blue sky amidst the David Ulrich clouds – and you try to widen that patch through personal transformation. Brain science Two sides of the brain + Four Quadrants How do we access the right side of the brain? Trauma Psychotic states Drugs Great emotional stress Damage to brain; autism, savants Sufering Medical conditions Are these the only ways . ? Meditation Open to creative parts of brain Play Yoga Drawing Contact with Nature Guided visualization Imagery Journaling; writing Creative art Dance Movement Exercise Memory Living with ambiguity; Discomfort: Mental, physical or emotional Sexuality I. Who am I? • Lifelong quest: Self inquiry, the examined life • Authenticity: What is my own? • Search for what one needs to do / one's deepest responses or heartfelt questions • Inner necessity (Kandinsky) • Transcends commerce or rationality: What do I really care about? Blind boy by Charles Harbutt “I have things in my head that are not like what anyone has taught me - shapes and ideas so near to me - so natural to my way of being and thinking that it hasn't occurred to me to put them down. I decided to start anew, to strip away what I had been taught . To accept as true my own thinking. I found I could say things with color and shapes that I couldn't say any other way - things I had no words for.” — Georgia O’Keeffe, Painter “Finally . A Woman on Paper.” — Alfred Stieglitz 1918-1959 Expand Expose Examine Exalt Experiment Excavate Experience Excite Exceed Exclaim Explore Exchange Excise Exercise Express Exhaust Exhilarate Exhibit Exist A time to play; to take risks; to find what you resonate with What medium, which style, what form of expression suits our temperament and capacities, that grows naturally out of our lives and experiences, out of our very being? Tadashi Sato Toshiko Takaezu Devotion to an Ideal . Ansel Adams Ai Wei Wei II. Going within; Entering the body • Relaxation needed to open to authentic voice or vision • The body is always in the present moment • Wisdom of the body and feelings . Combined with rigor of the mind. • Neurological changes / heightened awareness / Entering the flow • Staying open • Lie on the couch; it’s a good place to begin. • Entering the Flow, the zone Hengki Koentjoro This leads us to the second element in the creative act—namely the intensity of the encounter. Absorption, being caught up in, wholly involved, and so on, are used commonly to describe the state of the artist or scientist when creating or even the child at play. By whatever name one calls it, genuine creativity is characterized by an David Douglas Duncan intensity of awareness, a heightened consciousness. —Rollo May, from The Courage to Create Mind Senses Lends depth, substance, and meaning. The meaning of a line, Communicates personal shape, volume or observations or highlights rhythm. Drawing, social or natural typography, design, conditions. composition. Feelings The meaning of color, the sense of light, the inner meaning, the knowing of emotion Contemporary art: performative and conceptual; installation Zhang Xiaogang has symbolically clarified memory, reality and experience. 16:9 format. He found a collection of old family photographs that would serve as the inspiration for a long running series of paintings set during the Cultural Revolution. The series of works, which he would later dub "Bloodlines: Big Family," now constitute some of the most sought after paintings in the world; and 48-year- old Zhang Xiaogang is considered one of the country's pre-eminent painters. Critics now say Zhang pointed Chinese contemporary art in a new direction; he fused old charcoal-like portraits with modern pop art to create iconic images of the troubled Chinese family. Henri Matisse Alan Arkin’s Butt Theory In improvisation workshops: “I have an almost infallible guide that tells me when somebody’s being truthful or whether they are showing off — and that’s my rear end. My rear end tells me. If I find myself sitting forward in my seat, something is really happening and it’s interesting because it’s out of ego control. If it’s smart ass stuff, then I find myself sitting back on the chair and saying, ooohh he’s clever, but he’s not smart. It’s a gauge that I have that I feel I’m good at because I pay attention to it.” David Ulrich III. “Try to love the questions themselves” — Rainer Maria Rilke • Living the question. What if I try this? And this? • Not knowing; Beginners Mind • Living with ambiguity. Mystery. • Asking questions; allowing for gestation • Need to extend beyond one's own current viewpoint — beyond the known. • And what else? Hengki Koentjoro “Have patience with everything unresolved … and try to love the questions themselves. Don’t search for the answers … the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.” A 1902 portrait of poet Rainer Maria Rilke by Helmut Westhoff “Everything is gestation and then birthing…” — Rainer Maria Rilke, as translated by Stephen Mitchell Working from questions . not answers — Harry Callahan Painting is an investigation of being. Squeak Carnwath Anna Marie Hamilton Ad Reinhardt Art is inquiry: Let go of what you know. Discover something new. Live with ambiguity and mystery. IV. Natural Wisdom: Opening to the Unconscious • Trusting instincts and intuition • The depth mind: the unconscious • Search for inspiration; new understanding • Put question in back of mind / allow to gestate / activate unconscious • Open to unconscious / deeper layers of response beyond conscious mind • Heightened consciousness and awareness / need to be open and flexible Kaho‘olawe by David Ulrich Unconscious (or Subconscious Mind) Seat of Insight, Creativity, and Intuition No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it. — Albert Einstein Natalie Goldberg recounts How to get to the depth mind . attempting on a number of occasions, without success, to write about her father’s death. Preparing the ground, hard work She describes this effort as The quiet mind exploring and composting the Taking artistic risks material. Allow for gestation Dreams Then suddenly, and I can’t say Letting go of dominance of surface mind how, in December… a long poem about that subject poured out of me. All the disparate things I had to say were suddenly fused with energy and unity — a bright red tulip shot out of the compost. … “Just lie on the couch; it’s a good place to begin” —Natalie Goldberg, Writing Down the Bones Isamu Noguchi “I don’t think that art comes from art. I think it comes from the awakening person. … It is a linkage to something flowing very rapidly through the air, and I can put my finger on it and plug in.” Be simple, but go deep. The exquisite "cutouts" of Matisse and elegant line drawings of Picasso came late in long careers of painstaking work and wild experimentation. In writing as in painting, simplicity often follows considerable torment. —Constance Hale in Sin and Syntax From where does inspiration spring? Differing beliefs: The unconscious / depth mind Sources beyond oneself Voices of ancestors that live within Energies that pass between us: cultural conditions or collective mind Transpersonal Forces: the muses Maciej Duczynski … the most amazing fact about it is that every time we went to sit down -- and it was normally about a three- hour writing session -- we never came out without a finished song. So that was like 200 days that we sat down to do that. And never had a dry moment. RD: You've said that "Yesterday" emerged fully formed from a dream. What is your personal understanding of inspiration? McCartney: I don't understand it at all. I think life is quite mysterious and quite miraculous. Every time I come to write a song, there's this magic little thing where I go, "Ooh, ooh, it's happening again." I just sort of sit down at the piano and go, "Oh, my God. I don't know this one." And suddenly there's a song there. I find the magic in it so -- it's a faith thing. … With creativity, I just have faith. It's a great spiritual belief that there's something really magical there. And that was what helped me write "Yesterday" … I don't quite know what it is and I don't want to know. V. Creative Courage • Overcoming fear, insecurity, doubt • Courage to become who you are. • Learning to see what is • Going against the grain of established ideas • Seeing what is needed and finding the courage to proceed • Taking risks — go beyond oneself Olivia Harris Malala Yousafzai, 16, the Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by Taliban fighters, signed a copy of her memoir, “I Am Malala,” the cruel radiance of what is — James Agee David Ulrich I have a dream .