Creativity and the unknown

A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2009 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

To create by its very definition takes us into the unknown. To create is to bring into existence an experience or something not previously seen and/or experienced. It is to experience that which has not previously been experience.

In talking about hazards and any creative effort the first issue that gives rise to many real or perceived hazards is the fact that creativity takes us into the unknown and past what we know. Creativity and any creative endeavor, whatever it is that is done in any way, will be by its very nature will be an exploration of the unknown and takes us into the unknown and beyond our mind. A true creative process will always force us to step out of mind going beyond mind as we know and understand mind. That is the nature of creativity and what creativity is all about. Creativity will move into that which is different, that which has not been seen/experienced before. Conversely, if we cannot step out of our current thinking and beliefs, we will not find a creative solution or the creation we seek. Our current mind, that is our current way of thinking and believing, is what created our current condition. If it could solve our problem, it would have already done so. So one must learn how to get out of mind to be creative or manifest a new creation. Stepping into the unknown in order to create causes several problems to arise. One of which is the unknown and its nature.

When we are in the unknown, we can become lost in the unknown because we don’t know where we are going. It needs to be realized there are things we know and things that we know we don’t know. However, there are things that we do not know and we do not know that we don’t know. This is what the unknown is all about. It is to be where we don’t know with what we don’t know. Yet, even in this place, there are some principles that we can use if we enter the unknown in, or as a results of, a creative endeavor that keeps us from getting lost. The creativity perspective and holding our creativity sacred provides these principles and a way of viewing Creation such that we can routinely go into the unknown to get what we need to solve the problem we face and not get lost. Whether or not we wish to apply the solution we get within the environment in which we find ourselves another question.

A second issue is that because of the nature of mind, it is very difficult to understand the true actual hazards we may face without significantly biasing the creative effort with the past. As we will come to see, from a creativity perspective, mind projects the past. What needs to be understood is that any fear we have about our creative effort is only a projection of the past and may, or may not, have anything to do with the real hazard we face. We cannot fear the unknown for we don’t know what to fear. All we can fear is the past and situation that appear to our mind to resemble the past where our fear initially arose. So, if fear does arise in our creative efforts, we need to know its is our past haunting us and not the creative effort itself. We will need to explore these fears and probably their origin if we want to see the true hazards we face.

This leads to a third issue already introduced above. The mind, and what it thinks and believes, that created the problem we face can not get us out of the problem for it created it. We will have to change our thinking and what we believe and usually we cannot do that without changing our mind. What each individual will need to learn is to step out of mind. For some individuals stepping out of mind is a very dangerous prospect for there is a fear if we step outside of who we think we are we can literally and figuratively be "out of mind" and become crazy. Although we will come to see the process is relatively safe if we have the understanding to support what we do, it may nevertheless be perceive as hazardous and we will have to face the fears that we think exist. If there are real hazards, we can deal with the fear for we are doing nothing that has not been done by many others before us and they have lived to talk about it.

A fourth issue related to the unknown is that since energy can neither be created or destroyed, something in one’s existing world and life will have to be sacrificed and transformed. Consequently, any creative act cause something to be given up or sacrificed as part of the creative process. It is inevitable part of our existing external world and/or our current thinking and beliefs will have to be transformed. That is, die and be reborn or resurrected into a new form. Although we can anticipate some of the things that will be sacrificed, what actually needs to be sacrificed will be unknown because our creative effort is original and has not been seen before. So one will be unable to anticipate all that needs to be sacrificed and transformed by the creative effort. As a minimum it will cause us to give up something related to how and what we think about ourselves and/or the nature of the universe but how much we will need to give up internally or externally, here again, depends on what we desire to create whenever we need to do so.

All four of these issues, getting lost, projecting fears from the past, stepping out of mind, and the need for a sacrifice can cause one to consciously or nonconsciously back away from a creative endeavors and/or exploring the depth and breath of their creativity.

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