Marya Mann : Blog : Earth Day Gift - How To Be A Creator

Earth Day Gift - How to Be a Creator

The creative process is as individual as it is universal. And yet there are keys to unlocking its secrets that are as natural as life itself. The first key is meditation, which cleanses the mirror of the mind and validates your real experience – your Creative Spirit — and the instrument you have to create with – your body.

Try this: Meditate for a moment on your vision for world peace. See the elements of a peaceful society. What’s there? Organic farms, friendly people, free health care, happy families, swimming with dolphins? Examine it closely. This is your true vision for peace. Now feel your body as the peaceful presence. Be this calm, peaceful world in your very own center while you work and play. Sense truth, beauty and goodness in everyone and everything around you. See like the Creator you are.

All the research shows that the creative process is basically the same: motivation, focus, generating ideas, evaluating them and executing them, with many creative sparks, over time. The role of collaboration may be more obvious in the performing arts and business than in painting, say, or writing, but even solitary creators like writers read constantly and talk to one another.

For example, in the 1920s and 1930s, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis batted around religious and literary ideas with the Inklings, a group of unfashionably Christian professors who met weekly at an Oxford pub.
An improvisation group, a writers’ club or another ensemble makes creative work easier, less stressful and more fun. Develop a network of colleagues, and schedule time for freewheeling, unstructured discussions.

A Creator takes risks. If you want to be creative, expect to make lots of mistakes, because creativity is a numbers game, says Washington University psychologist R. Keith Sawyer. “Work hard, and take frequent breaks, but stay with it over time. Do what you love, because creative breakthroughs take years of hard work.”

Most of all, forget those romantic myths that creativity is all about being artsy and gifted and not about discipline and devotion. The romantic notion may discourage us because we’re waiting for that one full-blown moment of inspiration. And while we’re waiting, we may never start working on what we could someday create.

Right now, in the middle of your life, even in the middle of a toothache, you can find a joyful creativity, asking the important “What if….?” questions that stir fresh air, shift the field and make lasting change. Imaginative solutions that last and help others far into the future may appear. How do you think somebody first thought up the Tooth Fairy? Faced with the problem of how to negotiate the ordeal of a child losing a tooth, painfully, somebody got creative and found a solution that’s still serving children today.

We cannot solve the evils, difficulties and destruction in the world with a Tooth Fairy (Don’t you wish we could though!?)

However, Ordinary World problems often have Sacred World solutions. Creativity is the complete opposite of destruction. If we want to stop destroying our world, seeing as Creators is a good place to start. See world peace, and so shall it be.

——————More to come soon in the forthcoming book, Quantum Leap Creativity: Anxiety to Ecstasy with Miracle Physics by Marya Mann.