Creative Synergy. Bunny Paine-Clemes

creators have contacted the “a-field,” the realm of all possibilities. Isabel Allende does a good job of describing the idea simply:

I think that we are all particles of some sort of universal spirit . . . It’s everywhere. You’re just a particle of something that’s beyond you. Then you understand the legends, the myths. You understand why so many people at a certain point do the same thing or dream the same thing or hope for the same thing or fear the same thing. Because you’re just part of the wholeness.¹⁵⁷

Feeling “part of the wholeness” is what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi would define as the Flow State. During “flow” you are so involved in an activity that nothing else seems to matter; the experience itself is so enjoyable that you will do it even at great cost, for the sheer sake of doing it.”¹⁵⁸ Here are some of his thoughts about “flow”:

      •It creates happiness.

•It is achieved by focusing your attention on some task and staying in the present, without regard for future rewards. You have learned “to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer.”¹⁵⁹

      The enjoyment created by “flow” occurs when

      your task is likely to be completed;

      you are concentrating;

      the task “has clear goals and provides immediate feedback”;

      you are immersed in the task and removed from “the worries and frustrations of everyday life”;

      you have a sense of control;

      “concern for the self disappears, yet paradoxically the sense of self emerges stronger” afterward;

“duration of time is altered.”¹⁶⁰

The activity should be challenging but not frustrating. You have the sense of operating at the peak of your powers. Abraham Maslow might say you are having a peak experience: a blissful, joyous moment in which you feel most alive.¹⁶¹

      We enter flow when we are mindful: when we place our awareness squarely in the present, detached from past memories and future hopes, detached from the ego, that persistent yammering voice in the head. It is ego that makes us worry whether we are good enough, whether the work will be good enough, whether it will satisfy the gatekeepers in our field or even ourselves.

      Eckhart Tolle has written a profound and delightful exposé of the ego’s machinations. One of its tricks is to resist the present moment:

To the ego, the present moment is, at best, only useful as a means to an end. It gets you to some future moment that is considered more important, even though the future never comes except as the present moment and is therefore never more than a thought in your head. In other words, you are never fully here because you are always busy trying to get elsewhere.¹⁶²

      For the creator, the ego is an irritant that interrupts the flow state with thoughts of me. Is my work good enough? Will the boss like it? Will the art gallery buy it? Will the publisher give me a contract?

Amabile’s research has shown that during complicated procedures, a focus on evaluation results in a less creative product for two reasons: it “can divert attention away from the task itself” and “make the individual reluctant to take risks.”¹⁶³ The explanation is simple. When we are focused on ourselves, we cannot possibly be focused on the product. When we are focused on me, the separate and little I, we cannot possibly be focused on the universal field that is trying to help us shape the work. We must let go in order to create. We must identify with a voice and a flow that is bigger than ourselves.

      But how?

One way is to practice mindfulness, or what Buddhist meditation calls “bare awareness.”¹⁶⁴ Place yourself fully in the present. This may be the hardest thing for anyone to do. I once took a retreat with Ram Dass, and he had us do a walking meditation. I don’t recall how long it was, but I do know that it seemed light years longer than it was. The practice was simple. We had to walk with excruciating slowness, taking as much as a minute simply to put one foot down and being totally aware of the foot in its slow descent. It is one of the hardest things that I have ever been asked to do. But at the end of the meditation, I was totally there. I had no chattering ego asking me what was coming next, ruminating over what had just happened, connecting my mind with everything separate from the here and now. I was simply there. The only other time when I have had such an experience has been during engaged writing or deep meditation.

In fact, practicing some form of meditation is the best way to make yourself receptive to the flow state. If you study with a Buddhist group, you may be asked to watch your thoughts, paying attention as they arise, noticing them while being aware that they are separate from you. The Chinmaya Mission, a Hindu group studying Vedanta, uses a similar method: watching your thoughts and thinking that you are not your thoughts, sensing your body and thinking that you are not your body. If you are not your thoughts, if you are not your body, what are you? You are that which watches the thoughts.¹⁶⁵ You are the Witness, the spark of the Unified Field internalized in a human body. When you identify with this part instead of the chattering ego, you are on the path to spiritual growth. You can also create.

Various spiritual traditions may cultivate receptivity in different ways. In Islam you are stopped from your routine five times a day to feel this connection. In the Christian tradition you may pray, do the rosary, or practice the presence of God as Brother Lawrence did.¹⁶⁶ You may wish to follow The Way of a Pilgrim, a Russian Christian who took St. Paul’s advice to “pray without ceasing” and lived in a state of divine communion by repeating the Jesus prayer.¹⁶⁷ In one Tibetan meditation you watch your thoughts flowing down a stream like logs. In many traditions you watch the breath. Who is breathing? You are not what is breathing; you are watching the breath. A method taught by Paramhansa Yogananda associates a mantra with the ingoing and outgoing breath.¹⁶⁸ A secular method taught in a popular 1960s book was called The Relaxation Response.

      Edgar Cayce’s recommendations are explained by Mark Thurston. Within us is the divine spark (“individuality”). In meditation we seek to join it to the divine (“universal Christ consciousness”) through techniques that raise the energy “through the spiritual centers, or chakras.”¹⁶⁹ We prepare the body through bathing; we prepare the mind through “intoning” (chanting), music, breathing exercises (pranayama), and focus on the third eye.¹⁷⁰ Cayce defines meditation as “emptying self of all that hinders the creative forces from rising along the natural channels of the physical man.” He defines prayer as “the concerted effort of the physical consciousness to become attuned to the Consciousness of the Creator.”¹⁷¹

      Ken Wilber writes often about identification with the Witness. He defines it as “The self that depends upon the causal line of cognition . . . the Self supreme that prevents the three realms—gross, subtle, and causal—from flying apart.”¹⁷² He explains it as the point where “Your very self intersects the Self of the Kosmos at large:”¹⁷³ i.e., your gem upon the net.

      Swami Kriyananda relates,

      Often I have found, by meditation-induced concentration, that I can accomplish in an afternoon what others have