A spiritual approach to creativity

This is my first 'idea-in-progress' post, which from the name, is about an idea in progress. Actually, while all my ideas are ideas in progress, these posts are about ideas that are at a very primitive stage, meaning I could have just thought of the idea today, which for this one, I have. And to differentiate such posts from normal posts, there will be no picture to begin it.

So anyway, today I was viewing these youtube videos on this notion of a 'spectrum', of mental disorders. The spectrum was measured along the notion of love and fear, and on the fear end of the spectrum was schizophrenia. In the middle, of mixed experiences, is bipolar mania, and the love end, is a spiritual emergency.

So the video was going about how some 'bipolar' experiences are in fact, spiritual emergencies. And it prompted 2 questions in me. Is the link between bipolar disorder and creativity, pseudo? And, what if we approached creativity from a spiritual point of view?

The first question would lead somewhat to the 2nd question. Because I've noticed from the video, that the traits exhibited by people in spiritual emergencies, are similar to those of creative people. For instance, they become more intuitive, and the traditional barriers they once held on to begin to break down, and they see things more metaphorically. So creative people might not have bipolar disorder at all, but they are having a spiritual emergency. Just that if society does not let them develop their spiritual awakening, it becomes full-blown bipolar disorder. That is when the bad stuff really happens.

But this is just my deduction, remember it's an idea in progress.

Then comes the 2nd question, which is the main theme for this post. What if, we decided to break the traditionally held ideas of creativity and viewed it from a very spiritual viewpoint? Da Vinci did it, (or at least I think he did it). At the moment, many creative gurus are viewing creativity a bit like a machine, or process. To put it clearer, it's a bit like how many martial arts teachers teach martial arts nowadays. They teach the form, the technique, but not the philosophy, or the 'art' of the martial art. In my opinion, they might as well change the name to 'martial science'.

My point here is not to derail science, I am a science student after all, but what I'm trying to say is that we should not solely depend on science alone. True we need to know the form, but it is also important to know the art and the philosophy behind it. Because it is the art and the philosophy of a martial art, that we can use in our daily lives, outside our training, which enables us to understand what we practice better. It is through understanding this art that the science begins to change. For instance, if your martial art is based on compassion, then if you attack an opponent violently with a lot of anger, then you know that something is wrong with your training. If that's the case, then perhaps you should learn a more aggressive martial art, with which the philosophy is about securing victory at all costs. Either that or you can begin practicing compassion in your daily life.

This is like how martial arts meets spirituality.

Same with creativity, I personally feel we have been taught a lot of science about creativity, but we have yet to learn to appreciate it as an art, which is important. We know creative techniques, we know brainstorming, but other than the creative meetings we attend, how often do we use creativity anywhere else? If we only use creativity in that one or 2 hour session, then how are we supposed to develop creativity?

Da Vinci probably viewed creativity as a means of cultivating his soul. The thing about him is that he didn't use creativity to generate scalable business ideas, he used creativity simply because he enjoyed being creative. Just like great martial artists practice martial arts not to defeat everyone around them, but for health and leisure, and also a little bit of intellectual curiosity.

For me, I believe in being creative as a means of being happy, that's it. There's a certain thrill to taking risks and using your creativity to maneuver through the odds, just like how u maneuver a jet plane through a mass of falling rocks. Creativity to me isn't just about solving problems or generating new ideas, it's about enjoying life and being happy.

I think if a person wishes to be truly creative, he has to adopt this attitude. He should learn to enjoy writing stories, poems, and engage in art and music. A person who only knows creativity is important in his job but does not seek to live creatively, is like how many kids start to learn martial arts because they saw a cool move in a movie. The essence isn't there.

So this ends my first idea-in-progress post. Why I am still quite uncertain about it is because of the notion of spirituality. I've realised that spirituality is a bit hard to define. That's why I didn't use so much of the word here. Perhaps I will think along the lines of the 'mind, body, soul' concept I've thought of recently and do some adjustments from there.

Mind, Body and Soul, a more general perspective

Image source: http://www.lth-hotels.com/london_events/mind-body-soul.htm

We often hear this advice, that we are to take care of our 'mind, body and soul'. Most of us do it quite adequately, we take good care of our mental health, exercise regularly and maintain our spirituality through some form of religion. From a free-thinker's perspective, I was a bit concerned on how I should see the soul. I'm not the hardest type of free-thinker around actually, I do believe in a Creator, and I can fully appreciate the concept of the soul, but I feel our understanding of the soul should go beyond simply a 'ghost' or a 'spirit' living inside our flesh.

This was an intuition I had about a year ago, and today, I am going to reveal my insights into this issue, those that I have developed over one year.

The first question we should ask is "What is the soul?"

Initially, I drew a venn diagram, one circle for the mind, the other for the body, then I called the intersection the soul. So in this prototype model, the soul was essentially the link between the mind and the body

But them I began to see flaws in my design. I can think of many ways how the mind influences the body, but it seems like the body cannot seem to reciprocrate the powers of the mind. It was then that I was prompted to revise the statement.

So now, the soul is the "dominion of the mind over the body".

And having a healthy soul essentially means that your mind is in control of everything. Essentially saying that "whatever your mind thinks, you can achieve". And "the spirit is willing, and the flesh can do it!"

Now this may actually be something quite powerful. We're talking about super athletes, those who can perform amazing feats with the means of visualization techniques. We're talking about super observers, those whose 5 senses are in strong communion with the mind. We're talking about people who can force illnesses out at will, and perhaps in a more practical sense, people who can dream big and achieve big. Based on my definition, these are people with 'super souls'

So basically, what is this saying? It's essentially saying that we should first develop our mind and body before we talk about developing our soul. This is just my conjecture, but listen to the following logic. You can have a very fit body, but if you are ridden with mental illnesses and constantly plagued by stress, there's no way you can hope to develop the mind's control over the body. In fact, the body is most likely to get ill because of poor mental health. Likewise, you can have a very strong mind, but if your body is weak and you are constantly bugged by illness and fatigue, you wouldn't have the energy to develop the soul and your mind would also be in a vulnerable position.

Now let's say we've already taken care of our mind and body, how do we take care of our soul? This is actually something I'm not very sure of, because well, honestly, I have yet to take care of my mind and body. But what I think can be done is through the practice of certain skills. Meditation is one obvious example. Other skills would probably be ambidexterity (balance the body, balance the mind), observation with the 5 senses, active exploration of everything and anything (curiosity) with your hands and your mind, and visualisation with physical practice, as in sports or a physical stunt.

In fact, it may even be possible to develop the soul simultaneously with the mind and the body, and this may in fact, help to quicken the development of both entities. I'm not too sure. But the speed of development would certainly not be as great as if both the mind and the body have already been well-developed. But I guess for most of us, simultaneously developing the soul may be more practical. Good news though, the speed of development is likely to increase as our proficiency increases.

Yep, this was the insight I came up with today after a heavy lunch. Personally, I feel it is a good insight, because it caters to all faiths and beliefs, from religious church-goers to rationalists and atheists. As for myself, I have been self-inspired to take better care of my mind and my body (lose weight!) because now I am really curious as to how a powerful soul would feel like.