Creativity isn’t a prerogative of supreme beings. Why you may well ask. Simple. We are all, individually and collectively, riding the crest of evolution today, thanks to our in-born craft and appetite for inventiveness, not to speak of the emergence of great machines and harnessing of energies.
While modern technology has transformed the face of our living planet, earth, human proclivity is at present more than a revelation, a revolution. Yet, the paradox is: one cannot be too sure, or too uncertain, whether this transformation can help our race, or cause its downfall.
Yet, the best part is — for better or worse, our future is closely and increasingly tied to human creativity. The inference is obvious: the outcome of it all, in any which way you think, is being determined in large measure, wholly and substantially, by our own dreams and struggles to make them real.
Now, the all-important question: what is creativity? Answer: it is the cultural equivalent of the process of genetic changes that result in biological evolution, below the threshold of consciousness.
It’s just the opposite of cultural evolution. To understand creativity is, in essence, not within the framework of straight-line thinking; or, studying individuals who seem most responsible for a novel idea or a new thing. Yet, the spark, whatever this means, is always necessary, because without air and wood there would be no flame.
Yet, it would be wrong to accept the popular belief that creativity is some sort of mental activity, or an insight, that occurs inside the heads of some special people. Rather, it is a spin-off that evolves by way of interaction between a person’s thoughts and any given, or not given, sociocultural context.
This is also reason enough why creativity is a much confused, misunderstood word. It is being used to cover far too much ground. It would actually make sense to understand our creative quest as a trinity, so to speak, that can be legitimately called — brilliant, personally creative, and creative.
What about the genii, you may well ask. A genius is a person who is both brilliant and creative at the same time — but, so are others who have it in them to do well in a given task, or a job they like, or pursue.
Creative persons differ from one another in a variety of ways, yes, but in one respect they all seem to be unanimous: they love what they do, not with the hope of achieving fame, or making money, but for the opportunity creativity fosters. In other words: they love doing what they enjoy doing. Most of our creative fellow beings would quite readily agree that they do what they do primarily because it’s fun and also spiritually fulfilling.
So, the next big question: does creativity expand or wane with age? Age is no yardstick to measuring one’s relationship with creativity. But, creativity has got something more to do with physical and cognitive capacities, habits or personal traits, relationships, and so on. It also takes the domain of the word, or some creative urge: of something that is released by style, a joyful responsibility. It places as much emphasis on both convergent and divergent thinking, and the primal idea, or even instinct, of choosing a special domain for oneself.
Yet, there could be a few dangers. You could do away with them if your domain does not lie with the extremes. As one wise soul put it, “As you learn to operate within a domain, your life is certainly going to be more creative.” This may, of course, not be something that would be recorded in history books, but it’d sure be something that denotes that you live, and lead, a full and creative life.
In like manner, the emergence of new ideas, including therapies, has been a boon. It has also led to the re-humanizing of medicine, or other options — which is again a creative analogy. Though there’s still a long way to go before this broad idea becomes a reality, the blueprint is, in its entirety, totally contemporary, thanks to the sound, image, spiritual and emotional dimensions of our own respectful sensitivity to the most hidden virtues of our humanness. Put in context, it, quite simply, means this: most of us want to surface… into the light of the day, in spite of our tendency to live in our heads rather than in the fullness of our entire being.
In other words, the fullness of our being, in its essence and spirit, relates itself to mind and body, head and heart, heart and soul — elements we can all hear, and see, if only we learn to dwell in silence, or in the expansive ‘stillness’ inside the incessant activity of the mind and the body. It is a method that is sure to take us a long way into the vast precincts of our expanding understanding of what is truly meant and promised by the ever-expanding fields of natural, holistic, or New-Age disciplines, thought to be good medicine.
Holistic healing revolutionizes such dynamics, including the relationship between the patient and the physician. In so proposing, it shows us how to introduce mindfulness into the nucleus of the healing alliance. In realistic terms too, it is a major contribution to the furthering and deepening of turning things from the inside out… and vice versa. It also gives us the opportunity to participate in our own philosophical healing in extraordinary and unimagined ways.
Take for instance, stress management and medical education. They delve into the realms of several interwoven themes that form ‘that’ seamless whole. The outcome: a clear and compelling tableau of human dignity, suffering, and uplift. Besides, it also takes an in-depth look at meditation when life is breathed into it — and, life when meditation is breathed into it. It is also about healing relationships between people brought together for a purpose, including the intelligent virtuosity of mindfulness and wakefulness.
Holistic healing explores the physics of mindfulness as a way of life — an inner discipline for learning to meet and enter with awareness the challenges inherent to taking care of ourselves and serving others. It also has a commensurate sprinkling of true parables, and mind exercises, culled not only from the fascinating world of New-Age medicine, but also ancient philosophy. It looks at mindfulness as an open inquiry — an inner discipline in the basic, or advanced, fabric of our life.
Mindfulness has the potential to turn healing relationships within our being into an international sphere of lively collaboration and mutual transformation — a way of exploring the universal and independent nature of our own well-being, and of others. It is akin to a willingness to travel like Dante or Persephone into and through the dark unknown, and only emerge into a previously unsuspected fullness.
Agreed that meditation, or awareness in our own being, is the source of our blossoming. It is, however, no snake oil, panacea, or feel-good exercise. It is a wholesome method, a means of beginning to contact and cultivate our latent, already existent, qualities, or talents. It is much like the sextant — a tool for navigating uncharted seas, the surface turbulence, and the deep grain of our creative being, living or existence, including healing and spiritual relationships.
Photo Credit:
Piazza di Spagna Rome Italy by gnuckx via Wikimedia Creative Commons
Recent Rajgopal Nidamboor Articles:
- Let Keats Be
- The Pursuit of Happiness
- The Wodehouse Effect
- Cricket Odyssey - A Book By Rajgopal Nidamboor
- From Slosh To Wellness
Please Share Your Thoughts - Leave A Comment!