Being creative is as natural to being human as eating, talking, walking and thinking. It has always been a process that we naturally prioritize; our ancestors somehow found time to carve their pictures and stories on the cave walls. But we’ve mistakenly grown to take it as some kind of luxury – you’re lucky if you have the means to express yourself.
In fact, it is a means of education, communication, and ultimately, self-evaluation, and we always show it. Mediums have changed from particles of rock to pixels, but we can all see that there is something innate about wanting to print, impress, craft, sculpt, mold, paint, write and more that shapes the invisible into something that someone else can imagine.
So, surprisingly, it seems that the most effective creative process is the one that follows the art of zen – meditation, mindfulness, intuition, non-denial, non-judgment, etc.
I didn’t start writing because it was something I loved. It was how I thought my way out of the pain. It didn’t take long to realize that I didn’t want to spend my life creating or exacerbating problems just to think and feel my way out of work. I wanted to be able to write and create just because. Just because I live and breathe and know it.
I had to learn that my speech did not need to be justified – it works because I am a working person, like you, and everyone else.
But for now, I tried all the classic writing methods of the greats, the promised formulas for consistent, rhythmic creation. I tried to be organized, I did anything to induce “flow,” I deliberately probed into my untouched dark corners, I was routine even if I didn’t want to, and I found that every part of it was gone.
I was trying to create a structure where it doesn’t have to be structured. It did nothing more than destabilize the process.
The reason is that, for the most part, we do not change and do not flow in and out of creation. It is something that is always invisible, from the clothes we choose to the phrases we say to the way we arrange our desks at work.
It comes down to thinking about writing (or painting, or singing, or whatever you do) as coming as naturally as breathing: it’s a difficult process, it draws on what’s outside of you and changes it as it goes through you, and it gets stronger, compressed, narrowed and made harder when we try to do it.
In fact, anything creative is often heavily influenced by end goals. It’s almost imperative that you pay full attention to the moment, creating from a place of letting whatever comes through you come out.
Because if you have a pre-defined path in mind, then you are trying to conform to someone else’s. It means that the inspiration you got is creating your own version of something that made you notice and flow.
You will not be inspired by work that comes from the core truth, and that is because it shows something about you. Not just something, the real truth – that’s what makes the process so unbearable.
And that’s why we get to design, that’s what makes us set up a plan. That is why we seek inspiration and validation and external support.
In the true essence of true zen, more creativity can be developed when you learn to do so without judgment: it’s like how looking at your thoughts and feelings objectively is the path to peace too. [cw-mark]
