Creativity and Chaos
by Bettina Clark
Creativity and Chaos
“Chaos is recovering from being banished to the unconscious since around 2000 B.C. It has suffered four thousand years of repression.” ~ Ralf Abraham
The author and mathematician also states that, to this day in our culture, we think we must watch out for chaos and replace it with order.
This repression has resulted in inhibition of creativity and in resistance to imagination.
An intriguing approach.
There are a few origins of chaos and order. Ovid saw chaos as the original disordered and formless mass, from which the maker of the Cosmos produced the ordered universe.
What an unthinkable creative process with matter and energy in motion. But who or what decided when and how the end result would be order or, for that matter, perfect?
This might be food for thought for another article.
Creativity
Let’s go to creativity. To the process in-between. The hot and vibrant space/time of imagination, movement and complex possibility and outcome.
The world of discovery and invention, as Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi framed it in his book ‘Creativity’.: “(it) does not happen inside people’s heads, but in the interaction between a person’s thoughts and a sociocultural context. It is a systemic rather than an individual phenomenon.”
Creativity is not synonymous with the term “genius” nor with “talented”. And it is not exclusive to innovation.
The word "creativity" derives from the Latin creare: to make, and the Greek krelnein: to fulfil. It makes sense hence to assume that the Universe, as it was “made”, must have had a Creator. The one who was in charge of the space/time between chaos and order.
That again is a subject of its own. Big Bang or the Creator?
I want to stick to just that: the principal dynamism is similar in both aspects: the transformation from one state to another!
Fluid Intelligence
Steve Jobs states that “creativity is just connecting things. When you ask creative people how they did something, they feel a little guilty because they didn’t really do it, they just saw something.” After a while, it seemed obvious to them.
Just “seeing” something could mean following an innate impulse, a felt sense, that arises from the billowing mysterious unknown. Others call that source the Morphic Field, which cell biologist Rupert Sheldrake describes as a field that consists of universal “patterns that govern the development of forms, structures and arrangements”.
In other words: some new or creative ideas are born from an expanded mind, that is not based on knowledge but, rather, on knowing (see our article on that). It is not just our individual creative mind. Knowing is connected to a higher intelligence or power.
Csikszentmihalyi calls this ‘the fluid mind’. You cannot really put your finger on where the thoughts come from. “The important thing to remember,” he writes, “is, that creative energy, like any other form of psychic energy, works only over time.”
Relaxation and Reflection
He therefor recommends indulging and making time for relaxation and reflection. In this space the wildest, untamed and free thoughts have a chance to arise without filtering judgements.
In other words: the less we try to direct the process or the outcome the more creative we can be.
He also advises to establish an optimal space for our creativity, where we are not distracted, where we can focus with ease, so we can connect with where we love being most.
On the freely flowing and inspirational spiritual journey, liberating the creative energies of wonder and awe, while contributing to the improvement of the world!
In that exciting space between chaos and order.
P.S. “Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” – Pablo Picasso