the double helix: “If either of us suggested a new idea the other, while taking it seriously, would attempt to demolish it in a candid but nonhostile manner. This turned out to be quite crucial.”209 Like Lennon and McCartney during their great creative period, the DNA team all but lived together:
Over a period of almost two years, we often discussed the problem, either in the laboratory or on our daily lunchtime walk . . . or at home, since Jim occasionally dropped in near dinnertime, with a hungry look in his eye. Sometimes, when the summer weather was particularly tempting, we would take the afternoon off and punt up the river.210
They also “tried it out” by building models. (See Chapter 7 for the value of creative pairs.)
Ghiselin advises that our first response to our work may not be an accurate measure of its quality:
A work may seem valuable to its creator because of his sense of stirring life and fresh significance while he was producing it. After that excitement is dissipated, its intrinsic value is its only relevant one even to himself. He must find out if it will serve to organize experience in a fresh and full and useful way. To that end he tests it critically.211
In other words, the work must be valuable as well as novel. A sympathetic critic can help.
10.Make adjustments.
Despite the example of Kriyananda, few works are created whole in a single burst of inspiration. The development of the fax machine began with a patent in 1843. The technology engaged Edison for a while and utilized the telegraph infrastructure for many years because AT&T, a monopoly, wasn’t interested. Widespread use of the fax couldn’t occur until deregulation of the telephone industry.212 The search to discover longitude spanned many years and engaged many seekers. Walt Whitman spent his period of creative maturity rewriting Leaves of Grass.
Edgar Cayce stresses “patience” as one of the three dimensions in which The Divine works: “Time, Space, Patience!” (262-114). Ghiselin says, “Among the conditions to which every inventor must submit is the necessity for patience. The development desired may have to be waited for, even though its character may be clearly intimated.”213 When you’ve taken a break and received feedback, make the necessary adjustments and begin again—either on this project or on another. You may have to wait if the time is not yet right. The bikini was invented in 1946 but didn’t enter the mainstream until the freewheeling 1960s!214
Conclusion
Repeat all steps as often as needed. This method is recursive, and at any time you may need to return to an earlier step while you are working on a later one. (Admittedly, such persistence is difficult to accomplish in today’s hurry-up world.)
Rollo May says that creation takes courage,
But if you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also you will have betrayed our community in failing to make your contribution to the whole.
A chief characteristic of this courage is that it requires a centeredness within our own being, without which we would feel ourselves to be a vacuum.215
Swami Kriyananda often quotes Paramhansa Yogananda’s dictum that the universe is “Center everywhere, circumference nowhere.” The center of creation is here, now, within you.
Exercises
1.Have you ever felt that something outside of you (like “The Force”) ever helped you, especially when you were creating? Explain an example or two.
2.Explain an experience or two when you have been in “the Flow State.” How did you get there? Can you think of a personal ritual that will help you get there again?
3.Try some form of meditation, concentration, or visualization. Write a report of the results.
4.Use this method when you are creating something. Center yourself, and then relate to the center of “what is trying to happen though you.” Report on the results.
5.Use the Jungian technique of Active Imagination to dialogue with parts of yourself, such as the Inner Critic, who seem to be blocking your creativity. Estés explains how:
Preferably, sitting up, relaxed . . . [I] imagine . . . what the Critic might look like . . . Now I decide I have to ask him for some information . . . I’m going to ask him why he comes to me like this; what does it mean that he’s dressed like this . . . The first thing that comes to my mind (and this is how active imagination works: the first thing that comes to your mind, even though your ego might try to negate it) . . . [is] ‘You need to be more earthy.’ So I say to him in return, ‘Well, why do I need to be more earthy?’ . . . He says, ‘You’ve had some ideas lately that are really not in the direction where you’re best.’ . . . . . . He’s saying, ‘I really would like you to do what you’re really good at.’ . . . Okay, I have a piece of information now . . . When you do active imagination, you do the same thing. You start out with an idea, a question, an issue, and ask one of the inner characters that lives inside you to come to you and help you or talk to you . . . Ask a question like, ‘Who are you? What is your name? That’s a good place to start. What have you come to tell me?’ If there’s an adversarial relationship, you can say, ‘Why are we enemies? Why are we not cooperating? Is there some history here that I don’t know about?’ And then the first thing that comes to your mind is the response. It’s like a real, true conversation, only with yourself, parts of yourself that are autonomous . . . in and of themselves. Their value systems may be different than yours. Even their way of speaking may be different than yours. The point is, that they are very rich in information, and this is how we make a transformation and an amalgamation of ourselves and our inner complexes. We do that by talking to them. Jung said that active imagination was even a more profound way of knowing the unconscious psyche than dreams because you’re awake when you’re doing it; you’re conscious. . . . The only problem that people talk about, that they have with active imagination sometimes, is that they don’t believe what they’re seeing, thinking, or sensing. They say, ‘I think I’m making it up; I think I’m making the answers up.’ . . . They probably are not. The rules of thumb I have is, If the responses make sense to you and are enriching for you, then let them stand as is, regardless of where they might be coming from . . . Lots of times in active imagination, more than just dialogue occurs . . . It’s not only information; it can be a sensation of rest, peace, and reconciliation.216
6.Have you ever experienced the value of incubation or dreams in creativity? Explain some examples. If you like, do a bit of research on the subject and summarize what you’ve found.
7.Start asking for creative help before you fall asleep, and keep a notebook of your dreams. Write a brief report on anything useful that may have come to you in this way.
8.Have you ever experienced or read about synchronicity? Explain specifically. The idea comes from Jung’s psychology; if you like, do a bit of research on it and summarize what you’ve found.
9.If you’re working on a creative project right now, ask for feedback from someone whose advice you trust. What adjustments will you make? Write a brief report on the results.
10. List some of
