Mandalas

Here are two ways to work with mandalas that will help you to get past conscious, logical, analytical thinking and delve into your unconscious and creative intuitive thinking.

Mandalas are symmetrical geometric designs, in which patterns radiate from the circle symmetrically and the circle encompasses duality and the whole. You can find many mandalas online that you can print for your personal use. One website which has many mandalas for you to download is http://www.free-mandala.com/. There are many other free sources online (including the two from which the images in this post are taken).

http://www.bizquests.com/free-download/coloring-mandalas-free/

If you want to create your own mandalas, start with a circle with a dot in the middle, then divide the circle into four equal sections. From the central point, draw symmetrical designs using whatever shapes and colours inspire you.

This exercise* will switch you over to intuitive thinking, so it is useful to do it before you do a creative thinking exercise.

Sit comfortably, breathe slowly and regularly and let your body relax. Hold the mandala about an arm’s length away from you. I find that my arms get tired doing this exercise so prop up the book on something.

Look at the centre of the mandala and focus your attention on the centre, while being aware of the rest of the mandala with your peripheral vision. Your mind will try to analyse patterns (make sense of them) but keep relaxing and bringing your focus back to the centre. Don’t worry if the pattern starts moving or moves in and out of focus. Just keep relaxing, breathing slowly and regularly and bringing your focus back to the centre of the mandala.

Do this for 15 minutes. If you can't maintain this practice for 15 minutes, then try to do it for 5 minutes and then increase the time each time you do it.

Another way to work creatively with mandalas is to colour them in, and surrender to your inner child or spiritual guide or creative self in terms of choosing colours. The results may be amazing! If your inner child tells you to use black or lime green or purple with orange, try it and, as I discovered, you will love the results.

Either draw your own or download some free mandalas. First, do the meditation practise described above, then colour in the mandala. It is a fun way to develop creative thinking.

http://www.marcels-kid-crafts.com/mandala.html

* I discovered this exercise in The Right-brain Experience by Marilee Zdenek (1983 Corgi Books).

© SD Vahl, 2012
S D Vahl hereby asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work.
All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

The Unconscious and Creativity

In the creative state a man is taken out of himself. He lets down as it were a bucket into his subconscious, and draws up something which is normally beyond his reach. He mixes this thing with his normal experiences and out of the mixture he makes a work of art. (E. M. Forster)

The library of your unconsciousness, and its connection to group consciousness, is a labyrinth.

Rather than consider the neuroscience and/or psychology of the personal and collective unconscious in an academic way, think of your unconscious mind as containing all that you have perceived in your life. If you had to be aware (conscious) in every moment of every bit of information that you take in through your senses and process in your mind, you would be overwhelmed, so much of what you see, hear, feel (physically and emotionally), smell, think and experience is stored in your unconscious mind.¹

In every moment of your life, you are adding to your individual, unique library, which is your unconsciousness.

Subconscious is a synonym for unconscious, and the latter is perhaps the more correct term to use because what is in our unconscious is simply that of which we are not aware of (or conscious of). As I said above, if we were completely aware of every bit of information we were storing in our unconsciousness (never mind analysing, categorising and interrogating all those bits of information), we would be so preoccupied with that task that we would be paralysed, incapable of acting, of living.

What is unconscious can be brought to your awareness by triggers, such as when a sound or scent vividly brings to your consciousness a childhood scene that you have no awareness of experiencing or have forgotten. There is thus a rich store of impressions and connections in your unconscious that you can access through dreams and creative practices. It is through dreams, creative practices, creative exercises, meditation, and so on, that we access that library in which every moment of our lives is stored.

Of course, your unconscious is also where your personal impressions and connections create phobias, neurosis and automatic behaviours/responses. However, for the purpose of discovering and developing your personal creativity, however, consider your unconscious thoughts and memories and feelings as inspiration rather than material to be analysed. When you go into the library of your unconsciousness, you are simply looking for information. What you do with that information is a conscious choice, a choice of free will.

Have you had that ‘aha moment’ when you have grappling with a problem without finding a solution, so you put it aside and ‘sleep on it’ or busy yourself with something else and a solution suddenly comes to you? The solution comes from your unconscious mind and the process is called incubation. You consciously input all the information and consider all different aspects of the problem and then when you put it aside, your unconscious mind continues to search for and work out a solution. You use creative practices and exercises to go into the library of your unconsciousness and look for information.

In terms of the unconscious mind and creativity, intuition (that ‘gut’ feeling) is the thought processes that happen unconsciously. When we know something intuitively then we are drawing on information and connections in our unconscious memories and thoughts. In other words, you automatically go into that library of unconsciousness and look for information. Creative exercises and practices will help you do this.

Jung coined the term collective unconscious,² which he described as containing universal memories in the form of archetypes and symbols. In other words, there are experiences that we all share that do not come from our personal experience but from collective memory that is present in our minds at birth, and is augmented by every experience we have with the world outside ourselves. This is why archetypical themes and characters are so often used in stories and paintings – we can all relate to them. Archetypes thus represent patterns of behaviour or a type of characteristic that we all recognise, such as the ‘quest’, the ‘good mother’ figure or an ‘innocent child’ or the ‘hero’. This is the big library, beyond your personal library, and through creative practices and exercises, you can find a way to access the information in this library.

http://morguefile.com/archive

1  In The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works, Volume 8, page 185 (as quoted in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, page 420) Jung says: ‘Everything of which I know, but of which I am not at the moment thinking; everything of which I was once conscious but have now forgotten; everything perceived by my senses, but not noted in my conscious mind; everything which, involuntarily and without paying attention to it, I feel, I think, remember, want, and do; all the future things that are taking shape in me and will sometime come to consciousness: all this is the content of the unconscious.’

2  ‘… we also find in the unconscious qualities that are not individually acquired but are inherited, e.g., instincts as impulses to carry out actions from necessity, without conscious motivation. In this ‘deeper’ stratum we also find the … archetypes … The instincts and archetypes together form the collective unconscious. I call it ‘collective’ because, unlike the personal unconscious, it is not made up of individual and more or less unique contents but of those which are universal and of regular occurrence.’ (The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche, Collected Works, Volume 8, page 133, as quoted in Memories, Dreams, Reflections, page 420)

© SD Vahl, 2012

SD Vahl hereby asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

Follow On Free Word Association

This is a basic exercise that builds new connections in your thinking, and is good training for letting go of analytic reasoning and switching to intuitive thinking. Spend 15 minutes a day doing the exercise for at least a week.

Free word association is about letting your imagination roam freely wherever it wants to go, so this kind of activity is great practice for getting creative ideas to flow. The exercise also trains your mind to new ways of thinking (i.e. surrendering to following your thoughts instead of trying to channel them along a path to a predetermined goal). An additional benefit of this exercise is that it teaches you how to observe and record your thoughts without analysing them. If you want to discover the creativity within you, you need to overcome channeling and analysing your thoughts to align with a predetermined goal.

Paradoxically, there are a few rules for this exercise:

1. Don’t censor or analyse your ideas in any way as you are doing the exercise. Just write them down.
2. Try not to have any repeated words in your list.
3. There must be an association or connection for you between the word you write down and the previous word on the list. Of what does the word remind you? What do you immediately think of when you read the word? Practise capturing the first thought that comes to your mind.

So, this is how you do a basic follow on word association exercise:

1   Choose a primary word from the following and write it down on a piece of paper.

• Art
• Bells
• Book
• Chair
• Concert
• Jade
• Mountain
• Painting
• Ring
• Salt
• Sugar
• Tree

2   Underneath it, write down the first word that you associate with the word, and then underneath that word, a word that you associate with it, and so on.

3   Keep adding words to the list for five minutes, and work as quickly as you can. You should aim to write a list of 25 words in the five minutes. (The technique of putting yourself under the pressure of achieving a goal within a certain time limit means that you are forced to get past analysing and write down all your thoughts. This is a simple trick to force you out of logical thinking and into the creative chaos of creative thinking!)

You can do more word association exercises by choosing a random word from a book (or magazine or newspaper). Simply close your eyes, open the book and place your finger anywhere on the page. Use the word your finger is pointing at as the primary word for this exercise.

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful. Strive to be happy.

Max Ehrmann, Desiderata

© SD Vahl, 2012

SD Vahl hereby asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.

What is Personal Creativity?

We all derive from the same source. There is no mystery about the origin of things. We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up to discover what is already there. (Henry Miller)

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/DSS

What is creativity? As I discovered in my quest for an answer to this question, it all depends on the context in which creativity is defined, and, beyond what you will find in dictionaries, there are various and numerous definitions for the concept.[1] Among all the definitions for creativity, I found some consensus that creativity essentially consists of at least two aspects:

1 A creative idea or product must be novel, original or new.
2 It must also be of value according to some kind of external benchmark, or appropriate in a context or useful in some way to society.

However, there are subcategories of creativity that are defined, such as ‘small c’ (or ‘everyday creativity’, which is to produce something new and meaningful, such as in problem-solving) and ‘big C’ (or ‘eminent creativity’, which is to produce something that achieves social recognition and serves a wider social purpose).[2]  Beghetto and Kaufman define a further category: ‘We define mini-c creativity as the novel and personally meaningful interpretation of experiences, actions, and events’.[3]

So, it seems that mini-c creativity helps us to find personal meaning in our individual lives. I suppose it is like looking within to the experiences of our own lives for meaning rather than looking outside to a belief or organisation to supply that meaning.

Mark Runco, well known for his work on personal creativity, says: ‘… creative potential is a part of the basic human tendency to construct (personal) interpretations and assimilate information as we experience it. Everyone does that, and sometimes we can use these interpretive capacities to construct original insights. These may remain personal and simply help the individual to understand or appreciate his or her experience, or they may be shared, applied, elaborated and so on, in which case they may eventually become an objectively creative product or performance.’[4]

I agree that we all have the potential to be creative. Also, once again, it seems that creativity seems to have something to do with finding meaning in our individual lives and experiences by looking within. However, I like to focus on how much creativity can help you to enjoy life, and I think that pleasure and excitement are important aspects of creativity. Have fun on the journey of exploring, discovering and developing your personal creativity and the deeper experience of finding meaning in your life will emerge from within.

Look for synonyms for creativity, and you will find concepts such as originality, imagination, inspiration, ingenuity, inventiveness, resourcefulness, creativeness and vision. These concepts reflect both essential aspects of creativity – the novel, original and new of ideas, and the value or appropriateness of the product of creativity.

Overall, my approach to personal creativity is closest to Mark Runco’s explanation, and thus I define personal creativity as the expression of your unique and individual ideas, which are novel, original or new in some way, in some concrete form. Whether this manifestation of your distinctive ideas is of value to, appropriate for or useful for others is not excluded, but is not a necessary criterion for personal creativity. To put it simply, you do not have to produce award-winning art in order to be personally creative as the act of producing a unique and individual artwork is creative in itself.

In the materialistic market-driven world of today, what is the value of producing something that will not result in some kind of fame and/or fortune or is not useful to others? For an answer to this, I am inspired by the creativity of Nature and the universe at large. When I consider such wonders as birds of paradise, peafowl, cartwheel and spiral galaxies, and angelfish, I sense that beyond scientific explanations for their splendour, there must be infinity and joy in the creative impulse. Surely there must be something more than a functional or evolutionary reason for a peacock to have such an extravagant display of plumage? As humans living on Earth, we are a part of Nature and the universe, so surely it is thus in our nature to be creative and to experience sheer joy in doing so?

Yet, I also believe that if you discover and follow your passion, recognition and reward (and satisfying meaning) will naturally fall into place, which is why I say that they are not criteria for personal creativity, yet it is not excluded from the personal creative endeavour that what you create has value for, is appropriate for or useful to others.

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ESA/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA

1 I found a summary of different definitions and theories at the California State University, Northridge site (http://www.csun.edu/~vcpsy00h/creativity/define.htm). See also ‘Creativity: An Overview’ by Mohamed Taha (http://www.mohamedtaha.net/My%20Scientific%20Works/Articles/Creativity_An%20Overview.pdf).

2 ‘… there are two kinds of creativity that we often talk about in creativity research. There’s first of all “little c creativity” which is creativity in everyday life, solving everyday problems. And that kind of creativity is very closely related to intelligence because intelligence includes, as part of it, problem-solving abilities. So creativity overlaps with intelligence when you are talking about little c creativity. But when you are talking about “big C creativity”, you’re talking about being able to generate new ideas, generate some kind of product that’s going to have some kind of impression on other people. I may be a poem, it may be a patent, it may be a short story, it may be a journal article or whatever. But it’s something that is a concrete, discrete product that is original and serves some kind of adaptive function. And that kind of creativity, that big c creativity, involves a whole bunch of other characteristics besides intelligence. It involves motivation, it involves expertise in a particular domain, it involves certain kinds of abilities in regard to imagination, free association, remote association, and so forth. So it’s a much broader construct, and much, in a sense, rarer in a population, than when we talk about something like little c creativity.’ (Dr Dean Keith Simonton, http://www.indiana.edu/~intell/simonton_interview.shtml)

3 Ronald A Beghetto and James C Kaufman (2007) ‘Toward a Broader Conception of Creativity: A Case for “mini-c” Creativity’, Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, Vol. 1, No. 2, 73–79.

4 Mark A Runco (2003) ‘Education for Creative Potential’, Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, Vol. 47, No. 3, 321‑322.

© SD Vahl, 2012

SD Vahl hereby asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work.

All rights reserved. No parts of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the written permission of the copyright holder.