The Creative Moment

While there are currents of positivity and currents of negativity that cross our path and we sometimes feel subject to these forces, we actually get these critical moments where we can choose to perceive something as fundamentally positive. I sometimes feel these brief moments of ambiguous meaning that occur right before I attach meaning to something. Sometimes if I’m paying attention I can stop myself from attaching meaning and back up one step, to alter my perception of a situation, and thus become the co-creator of my reality. By catching these creative moments more often, we can take a more active role in life itself. It’s a form of alchemy, improvisational music, or doodling in a sketchbook. You perceive something changing or emerging and then you decide to apply your artistic hand to bringing that thing to life. “Whoops I heard a Bb and we were in C, ok, now we’re in F Major!” “That scribble looks like a platipus. lemme try to make it more like a platipus.” “I’m stuck in traffic. Hmm… ah! Perfect time to put on my favorite podcast.” If we think of these choices as creative acts, everybody becomes an artist.

Meditation can really help us recognize these moments of ambiguous meaning that occur right before we attach meaning, because we become more aware of the sequence of thoughts in our mind at a finer level, and we can tell when we’re returning to a familiar sequence of thoughts, and once we become aware of that we have the option to re-draw that pattern. As a visual artist I have a lot of fun with that analogy.

Edit: Shortly after writing this, I heard a Tara Brach interview in which she talks about the “sacred pause” where by taking a moment to process and return to presence we can improve our response, I would guess by increasing the consciousness behind it. It was really affirmative for me to hear her talking about this.

(Artwork: Harmony of Dragons by Android Jones)