Artfully Mindful

REPLAY: Creative Intuition

• D. R. Thompson • Season 2 • Episode 33

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Can creativity be taught, or is it an innate gift that only a few possess? Discover how blending creative intuition with the rational mind can unlock unparalleled artistic expression and innovation. This episode features the groundbreaking research of Professor Teresa Jane Hardman, who delves into the concept of creative intuition as a bridge between our conscious and unconscious minds. We discuss how empathy and emotion play crucial roles in evoking this intuitive state, and how mindfulness practices, influenced by Zen Buddhism, can help individuals tap into deeper layers of their creativity. Drawing on Carl Jung's theories, we explore how intuition can enrich both our creative output and personal identity by bringing unconscious content to the forefront of our awareness.

Avoiding habitual patterns and fostering true artistic freedom is key to authentic creative expression. We discuss Hardman's insights on the importance of emotional engagement and mindfulness in nurturing creativity. By referencing Martin Buber's I-thou relationship, we highlight how deep, mindful connections to reality can inspire unique artistic work. The episode also touches on how educators in the creative arts can use a rational understanding to help students access their own creative intuition. Tune in to learn how being present and mindful can lead to richer, more innovative, and authentic creative endeavors.

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Speaker 1:

Hi, don Thompson here with another podcast for you today. What I'd like to talk about today is something you might call creative intuition, and there's actually been quite a bit of research done on this within academia and science, believe it or not, the result of the research of some academics has resulted in a better understanding of exactly what creative intuition is. It might seem a little bit for lack of a better phrase counterintuitive that one would want to look at creativity or creative intuition in an academic framework. Better might seem, in a way, to destroy in a way that creative process by categorizing it and demystifying it and making it something that could be understood by the rational mind, something that's mysterious, you might say, becomes understandable and through the process, becomes demystified or in a sense, you know, destroyed in a way. So what I'm proposing with this is that I believe there is a dance, you might say, between the rational mind and this creative intuition, which is helpful and necessary, because I do believe that the rational mind is valuable and required in the human world, but the human world also needs this creative intuition, and artists and writers and poets and all kinds of people tap into this creative intuition, and I have myself tapped into it and found it to be an amazing resource of creativity.

Speaker 1:

And I wanted to step through the writing of Teresa Jane Hardman a little bit. When she writes about creativity and the creative intuition and how she looks at it, I think it's informative to take a look at what Professor Hardman has to say. It helps us to understand creative intuition a little bit better and to shed light on it. And then you know, once you understand the process a little bit better at least according to Teresa Hardman, if you understand it through her perspective it can help, I believe, to engender or to evoke creative intuition. And oftentimes creative intuition is an inspiration that seems to be uncontrolled. It just happens I've certainly experienced this where you just get into sort of a creative reverie and you don't really know where it comes from. And so what Teresa Hardman is proposing with her ideas is that we could use an understanding, a critical framework, you might say a mode or methodology for understanding creativity that allows us to ideally understand how to tap into it.

Speaker 1:

So let's go through a little bit about what Professor Hardman has to say about creative intuition, and she says there are four principal aspects of creative intuition that come into play. So she talks about how creative intuition involves a state of expanded consciousness and that it is an open, fluid way of being. Also, it focuses on the particular rather than the general and it is an act of fusion or identification which occurs through emotion or empathy. Note this is Don talking that she jumps into at the end there, this idea that there's a relationship between creative intuition and empathy and emotion. Empathy is really the basis for compassion. It is looking at the world through the eyes of the other, of another person, from another perspective.

Speaker 1:

The word intuition has its roots in the Latin itinueri, which means to look at or toward, or to contemplate, and a typical dictionary definition of the words really, you know, reads the act or faculty of knowing without the use of the rational processes, in other words as an immediate cognition. And there is actually a view within Buddhism, within Zen Buddhism specifically Professor Hartman gets into this where the Zen view of creative intuition is that of an experience of enlightenment or heightened sense of direct knowing, which comes about by paying attention to the particular, through a way of being called mindfulness. And of course that's what this podcast is about. Is the art of mindfulness, artfully mindful. The other thing that she details is how creative.

Speaker 1:

Intuition involves an act of expanded consciousness. So intuition involves a state of consciousness that is not clearly defined because it exists in the realm of the so-called conscious and the so-called unconscious. The intuitive experience creates a connection between the conscious and the unconscious, giving rise to an expanded state of consciousness. So what Teresa Harbin goes on to explain is that intuition involves a state of consciousness that is expanded and these are not clearly defined, but they do exist in the realm of what is known as the conscious and the so-called unconscious. And she goes on to reference Carl Jung, the psychologist Carl Jung, in defining the unconscious mind, and we've talked about this in other podcasts. How the unconscious mind is defined by Jung, and also the collective unconscious is defined by Jung, is that which is below, or not necessarily below from a value perspective, but it's something that's underneath or hidden from the conscious.

Speaker 1:

The ego becomes really, you might say, an intermediary between the conscious and the unconscious. It's sort of like the messenger between the unconscious and the conscious, or can be messenger between the unconscious and the conscious, or can be. Once the unconscious, through the intuitive process, becomes revealed to the ego, it becomes a conscious thing, and Carl Jung's theories about consciousness really provide a lot of insight into the nature of intuition. And he says here I'll quote from Carl Jung by consciousness I understand the relationship of psychic contents to the ego Insofar as this relation is perceived by the ego. Relations to the ego that are not perceived as such are unconscious. Consciousness is the function or activity that maintains the relation of psychic contents to the ego, or activity that maintains the relation of psychic contents to the ego. So again, there's this process through which the unconscious becomes conscious, and this is really the intermediary flow of the unconscious to the conscious mind, through a process that's called intuition.

Speaker 1:

Now Jung defines the ego as part of ourselves which gives rise to a sense of a distinctly personal identity, and I've talked about this in other podcasts at length, where you know, the world of the, the relative conscious mind, is the world of the ego, and it's a world of identity. It's a world of a sense of I, a sense of self, and this is very important. I mean, this is very important to people. It's what really distinguishes them from other kinds of mammals, the unique way that human beings experience a sense of I. Now Jung's theory of the unconscious gives us insight into the nature of intuition. Really, he says that the unconscious is the quality of life that is lived but is not reflectively known. It's an area of unexplored and unappropriated lived experience which is beyond our understanding until it moves into the consciousness. Now, in Jung's view, the unconscious does not obey the laws of time, space and causality that govern conscious thinking. This is the nature of the unconscious, according to Carl Jung.

Speaker 1:

Now, because reality cannot really be reduced to fixed concepts, reality cannot really be reduced to fixed concepts. It is regarded by people, philosophers who think about this, as well, as in Zen, buddhism, as a kind of emptiness through which the impermanent states or processes flow in time. So ideas, processes, mental states, they flow in a continuum through time. And we've described this you know, when we talk about mindfulness how time is a continuum. There is no sense of really there being a fixed state of the future which hasn't yet occurred, or a fixed state of the past. These are all ideas. Really, time is a continuum and we observe thoughts as they pass through us in this continuum of time. Now, this does not mean that there is a literal nothingness I'm going back to Professor Hardman here but rather this emptiness, or sinyata, refers to the fact that nothing in itself can exist. In other words, things cannot exist as separate things. They can only exist in relationship to other things and they can only result of interdependent arising. As they say in Buddhism, we can reach an expanded state of consciousness that really takes into account this sense of emptiness.

Speaker 1:

You reach this state of emptiness, this state of intuitive knowing, by meditation. That's how it's reached, at least in my experience. That's certainly how it's reached If you want to consciously evoke intuition. That's why you want to practice mindfulness meditation. It's really a way to evoke or tap into this intuitive world, this unconscious mind, and by doing that you just allow it to be, you allow it to flow through you, you allow it to percolate up, you might say, from the unconscious mind, this intuition. So I would say the best method that I know of is to use meditation as a way to evoke creative intuition. It requires an open, fluid way of being. This is what Dr Harman is telling us.

Speaker 1:

As intuition becomes a way of knowing, you're able to tolerate ambiguity and uncertainty. So part of the process of mindfulness meditation is you go through this meditative process. You can become a little bit less attached to the idea that everything has to be known. You can let go of the fear of the unknown and allow, you might say, the unknown to be, and by doing this you're being a little bit less, you might say, fixed in your opinions. You're being a little bit less fixated on reality in that it has to be a certain way or have certain outcomes. That isn't really so important within the world of mindfulness.

Speaker 1:

As we become more mindfully aware we're not necessarily so attached to outcomes. We become more mindfully aware we're not necessarily so attached to outcomes. It's not to say that we don't have the requirement to attempt to do things in a certain way, or to make things happen, so to speak. But once we set our intention out on the world, we don't necessarily get so attached to the outcome. So the ego consciousness, according to Dr Hartman, is a very limited and false sense of self and therefore is an obstacle to the experience of creative intuition, as it inhibits and restricts consciousness. It dampens consciousness. In a sense, it dampens the ability of ourselves to tap into this intuitive sense. So by becoming more fluid, you allow for the creative flow to work through you more readily. And by doing this, you know, you become in all intents more creative, you become more, you know, you have an increased ability to tap into this intuitive, creative side of yourself and, again, the way to do that is through mindfulness meditation, or a way to do it is through mindfulness meditation.

Speaker 1:

The next thing that Dr Hardman talks about is that we have this ability to focus on the particular, and that is a way to evoke or see this creative intuition. Now, in some of the podcasts I've talked about really the specifics of how to focus on the particular, and really it has to do with moving the mind, moving your attention to something very specific, something very particular. In meditation, this is often done through meditating on a candle flame. It's something very specific. It's something very specific. It's something very particular. It's something very simple, really, and what you're trying to do by doing this is really allow yourself to relax and let go of all of the mental chatter that is defining reality as it takes place in your life. You're focusing on the particular. You're focusing on something specific. It could be a candle flame, it could be the way that the light is coming through the windows, it could be the, you know, the look of a flower in the garden or something like that, and through bringing you know, bringing your consciousness to the particular. You can let go of the mental chatter which really blocks you from this intuitive mind, which is what we're trying to get to in this practice.

Speaker 1:

What we're trying to avoid is to get into habitual patterns and we've talked about this in other podcasts habits and how to get around them or break them or look at them mindfully and really what you're trying to avoid is to get into habitual ways of writing and drawing and thinking, which ultimately results in cliches and generalizations. You usually end up borrowing from somebody else. You usually end up not being so creative. Really, when you borrow from tropes and other memes and other artists that have been successful, you're trying to copy them. That's not really the way to artistic freedom, in my mind. What you want to do is you want to try to be unique, and you want to be unique by tapping into the creative mind, the creative intuition that is uniquely your creative intuition. It's yours specifically. There's no one else but you that can tap into it quite the way that you do, and therefore you can have your own unique expression of creative intuition in your life.

Speaker 1:

And that's an amazing thing, and I think that Professor Hartman is doing us a favor by going through these categories and the last thing I'd like to mention that she does discuss is really how creativity, or creative intuition, is an experience of the fusion through emotion. She specifically references the philosopher Martin Buber, who describes the relationship to reality as it evolves into an I-thou relationship, in which we truly see and listen to what is around us and this includes animate as well as inanimate things. We become more awake, we become more awake to our present surroundings, to what's around us, we become more aware, we let go of again the mind chatter and we look at things as they are and this is an incredibly important thing for both mindfulness and creativity and through emotional engagement with a particular, as mentioned before, the conceptual ways of looking at life really dissolve, they disintegrate and we're able to enter into a deeper and more direct relationship with what is around us and experience a state of interconnectedness, non-duality or, as Professor Harbin says, fusion. This is a beautiful thing and I really appreciate the fact that she's gone through and gone through and developed these categories, because it does help to clarify the nature of the intuitive mind. It really helps to clarify what the intuitive mind is like, where it comes from, how it evolves, how it grows, how it becomes something real to us as individuals, as creatives, as artists. So the idea behind this podcast, artfully Mindful is to find techniques and ways to tap into this creative intuition. And one of those ways ironically again, counterintuitively, you might say is through the rational mind, by really using the rational mind to look at these processes, so that we can, you know, like the psychologist does, like the philosophers do, like Professor Hardman is doing in her paper, we can look at reality through the rational mind and it helps us to evoke these creative moments of intuition rather than just let them happen spontaneously. If they happen spontaneously, that's wonderful, and they will still happen spontaneously, even if you, in quotes, understand them a little bit more through some kind of academic framework or philosophical framework. They still will exist, believe me, as intuitive inspirations. That won't go away. It has it with me and it won't with you, believe me.

Speaker 1:

Just to return a second to how Dr Hardman sums it up. So she says An understanding of creative intuition is particularly valuable for educators in the creative arts writing, music, visual arts and dance who may know how to be creative in their own right but may not know how to encourage and coax the freshest and most authentic creativity from their students. So this kind of rational explanation you might say academic explanation, explanation is really valuable for teachers. So for those of you who are listening on this podcast, who are teaching others about creativity, this kind of information that's laid out here is really invaluable. And I encourage you to look up the work of Professor Harmon and to take a deeper dive if you'd like to. And I also encourage you to go through any of the mindfulness practices in this podcast, which will, by design, they are really intended to help you to tap into the creative flow, the creative mind, and just simply by being mindful of the present moment, by being open and fluid in your outlook, you can tap into the creative mind, the creative intuition, more effectively. So I'll leave it at that.

Speaker 1:

I really appreciate you listening. I'm going to talk about this more. I think this is a fascinating field to take a look at. Of course, that's what the podcast is about, but specifically, you know, taking a look at some of the academic writing about mindfulness related to creativity, because there has been some recent writing about this area. It's really become something that's, you know, really important to some people in education and I think that's a good thing because it will help our children to be more creative and more intuitive and to deal with the problems of the world in a creative and intuitive way, which is really important. So thanks again for listening and I'll look forward to talking to you on the next podcast. Thanks a lot, bye-bye, thank you.