Somewhere, uh, Musically, Beyond Grunge

Creativity is the most fundamental level of subjective development in mammals--including those that walk upright. Isn't that something? Chuang Tzu woke from dreaming that he was a butterfly and wondered if he might not actually be a butterfly dreaming himself a man. We are so fundamentally creative that we can even imagine ourselves to be uncreative, uninterested, and boring. Frankly, I prefer butterfly dreams to L'Estranger, but Camus certainly did have his moments.

For most adults I've met, disinterest is a bigger problem than an excess of wonderment. Most of them rarely ask why it is this way. We're a little TOO certain that we are not the multi-colored living art fluttering by, living on sunshine and kisses. (Luckily for me, I'm dating a butterfly.)

I've addressed in other places why creativity is fundamental to mammalian life. That leaves the questions--if we are fundamentally creative--then how do we come to see ourselves otherwise and what do we do about it all anyway? How we get this way is a sad story and I feel too celebratory today to tell it, although it is a good story. The "what can we do about it" part is a good story too.

WHAT CAN BE DONE? We probably all know people who blithely or beautifully respond, "Dance, sing, love." And many of us tack onto that a, "...for tomorrow we die." (I guess I'm letting some of my internal Eyor show.) There is something to be said about being stuck here, something to be said for being there (dancing, singing, fluttering, etc.), and something to be done about getting unstuck in order to allow our inherent singing out. (You know you like hearing Elton John's "Tiny Dancer".)

One of the first things to realize is that the fountain of youthfulness (because a Fountain of Youth is just a fairy tale) is not a triple espresso, an adrenaline rush, a hot affair, or a vacation away from anything. Youthful creativity--vitality--comes from living, never from avoiding the actual circumstances of one's life. The struggle is only about recognizing creative playfulness as the most fundamental aspect of who we are and being able to touch and express it. I'll leave how you're going to express it to you, and--at the risk of seeming the frotteur--stick, for now, with the touching part. Once we find out how to get in touch with that aspect of ourselves, that aspect becomes more interesting, fun, and convincing than any explanation of why creativity is fundamental. So I like hows, how it happens.

A friend of mine recently sent a link to the Mental Bank self-hypnosis site. In the introductory 2-hour talk, the speaker emphasizes the importance of entering a suggestible state and then utilizing that state by including goal-directed affirmations and structured measurement of progress towards specific goals. The program itself is not really exciting but it may be effective, and if it is, the results can be exciting. Part of this speaker's point is that one naturally enters a relatively suggestible or receptive state in the last half-hour or so before falling asleep. By utilizing this time, we don't need someone else to implant suggestions for us, we don't need to try any extreme cultish groups or techniques, and we can essentially--with no special skills--begin to interact with our ongoing unconscious flow.

This idea of utilizing more receptive states holds a lot of promise. Dream yoga is a somewhat more intense or radical way of interacting with one's streaming subconscious. We find something similar in being part of a crowd that we are moved by, aroused physical states (in which the arousal is above average but not so intense as to overcome intention and memory), relaxed states, novel situations in which we don't feel threatened, etc. Basically, if we aren't just acting habitually within our comfort zone, something interesting happens; we let the wonder in. Rhythm can set us up to be receptive, narrative, art, you name it.

Part of what amazes me is that anything that you can imagine is part of your subconscious subjective universe. That's a lot of stuff. Based on personal choices and social pressures, we create a sense of how we want to be and try to carve out part of that universe as "who we are". And then, in order to maintain that construction/facade/self-image, we have to build psychological resistance-walls against all of the material in our imaginative universes that is "not me". Is the man "not-Chuang-Tzu" or is the butterfly "not-him"? In this conscious construction, every thing or form has its foil, its opposite. When we identify with our conscious constructions to the exclusion of the rest of our imaginative universe, we give up our psychological power, we decide that all of that creativity is "not me". Interesting, neh?

The trouble with that set-up is that the conscious construction is only a small part of the bigger universe. The more exclusive our psychological walls are, the less fluid can we be, the more we have painted our selves into a corner. We might, then, invest a great deal of energy in maintaining our walls. There is a very interesting psychological law that is similar to time. Time always moves; you can never step in the same river twice, as Heraclitus put it. Dreams are a great example of how this psychological fluidity works. Timothy Leary got high on LSD's ability to open up conscious access to this "fluidity". Artists search for moments in which they can bring a degree of fluidity to their craft and mix it with some sort of excellence. So what happens when we believe in solid walls? Napoleon comes along and kicks our ass or Hitler blows through the Maginot line; life moves beyond our walls and eventually moves US beyond our walls. We end up investing increasing amounts of energy into maintaining certain forms and denying others, and since it is the nature of mind to move, any form that we want to maintain takes a great deal of effort. Like trying to fight the flow of a river. Only you are trying to fight the flow of your own mind, of your psychological universe. Then we look around and wonder why we feel tired, why we don't feel creative. It's mostly because we've decided to keep investing in stability when that is an interesting idea that has little bearing on the way minds actually work. Mind moves.