creativity
Portrait of the Artist
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008In the end, we arrive at a kind of model of the artist’s world, and that model is that there exist other, higher planes of reality, about which we can prove nothing, but from which arise our lives, our work, and our art. These spheres are trying to communicate with ours. When Blake said Eternity is in love with creations of time, he was referring to those planes of pure potential, which are timeless, placeless, spaceless, but which long to bring their visions into being here, in this timebound, space-defined world.
The artist is the servant of that intention, those angels, that Muse. The enemy of the artist is the small-time Ego, which begets Resistance, which is the dragon that guards the gold. That’s why an artist must be a warrior and, like all warriors, artists over time acquire modesty and humility. They may, some of them, conduct themselves flamboyantly in public. But alone with their work they are chaste and humble. They know they are not the source of the creations they bring into being. They only facilitate. They carry. They are the willing and skilled instruments of the gods and goddesses they serve.
– Taken from “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
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The Artist’s Life
Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008Are you a born writer ? Were you put on earth to be a painter, a scientist, an apostle of peace ? In the end the question can only be answered in action.
Do or don’t do it.
It may help to think of it this way. If you were meant to cure cancer or write a symphony or crack cold fusion and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, even destroy yourself. You hurt your children. You hurt me. You hurt the planet.
You shame the angels who watch over you and you spite the Almighty, who created you and only you with your unique gifts, for the sole purpose of nudging the human race one millimeter farther along the path back to God.
Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It’s a gift to the world and every being in it. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you’ve got.
– Taken from “The War of Art” by Steven Pressfield
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How to unleash your creativity
Saturday, December 23rd, 2006
We all have tremendous creativity within us. In fact, we are born creative and spontaneous - just look at kids and you see how many crazy ways they can think up just to get what they want. A kid laughs, talks and behaves spontaneously as he wishes without feeling any inhibition or caring about “should-do’s” and “should-not-do’s” like adults.
As we grow older, we are tainted by social programming and lose the creativity and spontaneity that belongs to us all. How do we reclaim and rediscover our inborn genius ?
Firstly, you have to immerse yourself totally in your area of interest. Secondly, you have to read as widely as possible on all other topics which are not within your area of interest.
I learnt this from Jay Abraham, one of the top marketing gurus in the States. I heard him speak at a seminar and was impressed. He was focused and intense, apparently in a state of flow. Although he claimed that he suffers from attention deficit, I guess it was meant to be a joke. If you have experienced “flow”, you will know that it is a highly focused state of mind. The person is so focused on the topic at hand that he will sometimes forget the less important things. It is the state of optimum performance where one immerses totally in the topic. Most people don’t experience flow, because their minds are often scattered and distracted.
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