Creativity

Thinking on creativity ranges from the very academic to the mystical, and there are rest stops dotting the long road between. The scientific materialists tend to focus on the problem-solving aspect of creativity, while downplaying the “dreamy stuff” that seems to surround the creative process. For them, identifying patterns of behavior and thinking styles that lead to creative solutions—a lot like reverse engineering some computer code—is the approach. Even the most reductionist approaches, however, can’t seem to escape the enigmatic aura that tends to envelop the process of creation, and when the old guard gets caught up on their reading of quantum physics and its implications, I personally believe they’ll begin to see that this mysterious, unknowable space is the essence of creativity.

Author Julia Cameron emphasizes the spiritual link to creativity:

 “If you think of the universe as a vast electrical sea in which you are immersed and from which you are formed, opening to your creativity changes you from something bobbing in that sea to a more fully functioning, more conscious, more cooperative part of that ecosystem” (p. xxvii)

Sounds very quantum to me! Remember “What the Bleep Do We Know?” I believe we must stop considering creativity as a discrete, isolated act of creating “something.” Instead, creativity is the communication point between us and the universe. The “something” we are creating is ourselves—with every action of body, speech, or mind we are producing a resonance that acts on the universe, which reacts upon us. Creativity, then, is the process of self-evolution.

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Sources:

Cameron, J. (2002). The artist’s way: A spiritual path to higher creativity. New York: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Putnam.