CREATIVITY - PART 4

We live in a universe of Law - that means of cause and effect. We see things as a chain of effects which have causes, and each cause is the effect of a previous cause. Going backward this way from effect to cause, we arrive at First Cause. First Cause is another name for the Thing Itself, the Primary Cause, that which we call God. All other causes are secondary. (Of course we only assume it works from effect to cause; it may be that time is only our illusion, and that effect and cause are two portions of the same event. That is how it looks from a higher level of looking at things, and there are several such levels.)

About 'Things':

All things, whether real, imagined, or still unthought of, exist in POTENTIAL. Those things which are permitted by natural laws and by our prevalent belief systems are brought from POTENTIALITY to POSSIBILITY. Those things which are POSSIBLE, and which fit with the pattern of causes and circumstances, become PROBABLE. Those things for which the PROBABILITY becomes a certainty, (p=1.0) become ACTUAL.

All these states of being, from potentiality to possibility to probability to actuality, all these make up REALITY.

The conscious and sensory side of our life is dominated by Actuality, so that we often are not aware of the Potentiality, which is known only in the unconscious. The thinking side of our life is dominated by Potentiality. Creativity for us is drawing new and different things out of the unconscious, and moving them from merely potential to actual.

What is the best way to do this? Well, we make decisions which bring about our future in three ways:

1) historical trend extension (rearview mirror)
2) gestaltic reaction (crisis management)
3) teleological (future vision)

Decisions made from past data, whether accounting, engineering, or legal precedent, is of the first type. Most business decisions are made this way, by extrapolating the past into the future.

The latter is the most creative. It involves a vision of a desired future, and that involves imagination, or picturing.

I had a good example of imagination as picturing the other day - I watched a man at a payphone in an airport..... everything time he said something, he used his hands to illustrate his point- waving, measuring, pointing. He also nodded his head and shook it, waggled it and ducked it to punctuate each sentence. He clearly imagined the presence of the person he was talking to, and acted exactly as if the other could see him!

Where do new ideas come from? How did we get from cave man to quantum devices, like computers?
The subconscious mind is our link to the infinite potentiality. We imagine, we dream, we envision things that do not yet exist around us. How do we do this?

We tap the great unconscious by getting our conscious mind out of the way temporarily. Why do we mainly dream while asleep? It is because our conscious is set aside and the unconscious has free reign.

In brief, here is the process:

1. Have a silly session. Suspend your logical, conscious mind to generate ideas (some silly, some sublime!)
2. Use MOVEMENT methods to alter the weak or strange ideas (could they be made practical?)
3. Engage logic to classify, categorize, weed out and sort ideas. Now you can reject what doesn't fit.
4. Use Pro & Con analysis to rank and choose the best ideas to pursue.
5. Develop a plan of action.

Have some fun being creative.!!