Videos hosted by Michael Erlewine

I want to say something about creativity and where it comes from. Of course there are all kinds of ways to be creative, and each of us knows what that feels like for us. At the same time, we may wish to be more creative or creative all the time. How is that possible?

In my experience creativity comes from the inside, not often from the outside. In some respects my own creativity is linked to being aware of and taking advantage of the spontaneous flow of change within the mind; let's call it the "freshness of the moment." That is key.

Methodically thought-out and planned creativity can also work, but in my experience I look for the degree of freedom or spark in the moment to synch me into creation. Let me give you an example. Often I will write a blog to be posted the next day. However, when morning comes around and I read through the blog I plan to post for one final review, it is already outmoded, even though it is less than eight-hours hold.

Something has changed internally overnight in the mindstream and I am not quite the same person getting up as I was going to bed. In that case and it happens quite often, I have to synch into the moment right then, check my contacts, get my bearings, and write a brand-new blog. I have all kinds of blogs that never got posted because the change factor in time moved too quickly and the material was no longer fresh.

This freshness and natural sense of creativity of the present moment is part of the mind itself and it is available to each of us all the time. The problem is that our own distractions, obscurations, and habit of ignoring (ignorance) this moment creates what we could call 'White Noise', static that drowns out the subtle bubbling up of creativity so it does not register.

I first learned this when experimenting with caffeine, in particular my morning coffee. Now, I love coffee, and even have two very fine espresso machines sitting around here idle. I can explain why.

As you are aware from my blogs, I like to write, and I do write quite a bit. Long ago I discovered that when I had coffee in me, the stuff I wrote was, well, not as inspired as what I wrote when I was not drinking coffee. Hmmmm. That was a bummer discovery. And you can bet I tested that discovery hundreds of times until I was sure it was real.

It seems that caffeine, aside from making it hard for me to sleep at night, was acting like a drone or, as I said earlier, 'white noise' that along with the fact that caffeine is speed, managed to overdrive the mind, and drown out the more subtle and creative impulses that gently bubble up from within the mind. I no longer could feel them when on caffeine.

This was a real dilemma for me, but over time I found that I valued the creativity more than I did the caffeine, and, as I said, I really love coffee. To my surprise, I just stopped taking caffeine in any form and have been happily being creative (at least to my satisfaction) ever since.

We each have this incredible mind. It is sad that many of us cannot get in touch with our creativity to its full extent because of our own self-created (or imprinted by society) obscurations that dim out or drone and mask out this subtle creativeness.

It is not that we have no creativity within the confines of our obscurations, but that we are missing the tip of the top of creativity, which is what makes my writing fun for me to read and write. That very tip-top of the spontaneous moment brings space enough to shake things out of the ether and into a sentence in a way that is authentic. That authenticity is what makes writing real for me.

I am not the Lone Ranger in this. Without that degree of spontaneous freedom, it will always be slightly dulled for us until we take the time to, like the old game of Pick-Up-Sticks, carefully remove, one by one, that which is obscuring our ability to feel and see creatively. We may not be able to make a fortune in the stock market, but we all have the capacity to enjoy the richness and creativity of our own minds, with just a little work.

Life can be so hectic, and its pressures so constant that we are like a freight train hurtling through the night of time, quite far from being able to slow down and just smell the roses. In the rush of things, we continue to pile upon ourselves obscuration after obscuration.

To remedy this, we would first have to recognize and acknowledge the fact that we are obscured and (with kindness to ourselves) begin to carefully remove what obscures our vision and creativity a bit at a time.

I am amazed when I look around at all of the projects, therapies, remedies, medicines, etc. that folks are putting themselves through, often to little good effect, except perhaps for a short time. And with all that, there remains almost complete ignorance (ignoring) of the blinders we have on when it comes to these simple obscurations that could be removed.

I know first-hand what an obscured mind feels like and I also know what a mind is like once we begin to free it up from some of its obscurations. That is why I am writing this.

With our mind relatively obscured and unable to get at our own innate subtle creativity, we end up wanting so much that we feel we do not have. We become so future-oriented (hope) that we are hardly in the present much at all. And we are anything but content.

On the other hand, learning to remove some of the obscurations, taking the blinders off (so to speak), we can begin to see that we already have within us so very much to work with just as we are now, warts and all.

Once we can feel and begin to use our own innate creativity (that subtle edge), we see for ourselves that even OUR situation is in fact workable, and we are content to work it out. Notice the word "content."

I know this first-hand from experience and not just from intellectual speculation. I came out of the 1950s and searched through the 1960s for methods that actually work. In the 1970s I began to find those methods and, while I cannot say that I am out-of-the-woods yet, I can positively say that I do see the light at the end of the tunnel.

There IS a way out of Samsara (the viciousness part of cyclic existence) and anyone of us can learn the methods to achieve this.

Perhaps the difference between average creativity and this subtle and more refined creativity is very small. But for me it makes (and may be) all the difference in the world. My point here is that this living edge of the present moment presents a degree of freedom that is unmatched in my experience. It is worth the effort to get to this very fine edge and, once there, to rest in the nature of the mind that is exposed and laid open there.

[Photo: The last of the Morning Glories for the year.]