Creativity Manifesto
Some handy points of practice for opening up a more spiritual and ecosensual creativity.
Creativity Manifesto
(adapted from E. Paul Torrance by n. patedakis)
Find the courage to fall in love with something greater than yourself & pursue it with intensity. Go to the places that scare you; approach what freaks you out. Forget about “success,” and follow the path of Love, confronting your fears and shadows. Create as an Act of Love, in Service to Life, in Service to all sentient beings, in, through, as the commons, the common ground of sentience, the common ground of Wisdom, Love, and Beauty.
Know, understand, have reverence for, practice, develop, make wise and compassionate useless use of, & deeply enjoy your greatest strengths. Think globally, act joyfully. Love this World, this Life—Wildly. The Wildness of Nature is your Wildness. Enter it.
Learn to free yourself from the expectations of others and to walk away from the games they impose on you. Trust yourself; trust the deep sources of WisdomLoveBeauty within you—which means in Nature too, in the vast Cosmos.
Help those you think you cannot help—including yourself.
Anything you are attached to, let it go. Meet each moment with open eyes, open heart.
Find excellent teachers and mentors who will help you, and study with them wholeheartedly, but without ever giving up your discernment. Let Life be your teacher, in ceremony and celebration every moment.
Mind and Nature are not two things. Thinking means self-liberation into larger ecologies of mind.
Don’t waste energy trying to be “well rounded,” but never make excuses for ethical failings. Live a life of active learning-teaching.
Practicing what you love means practicing LOVE. Every moment is an opportunity to train the heartmind, to bring your values to new realization, and to see into the nature of reality, the true nature of yourself and your world, to help the Cosmos unfold its mysteries, and to help all beings.
Do what you love and can do well, but don’t think you have to be a “natural”. If you love something or someone, give yourself over to the graceful and gritty work, the joyful perseverance needed to make that love real. Keep a skillful, spacious, nurturing, joyful mindset.
Cultivate the skill of mutual arising, trust the nondoing of life. See the interbeing in all things, honor the many beings who give themselves over in countless ways to support your life. Make your love a gift in return to them, to support them. Revere and take care of this vast network of living relationships. Let all actions have one aim. Cultivate synchronicity, luck, dream, and dialogue (including with Nature) as practices of interbeing.
See your work as demanding the practice of the 6 facets of Love, the 6 Virtues of Life Itself: 1) Generosity, 2) Inclusiveness/Patience, 3) Wholesomeness/Ethical Consciousness, 4) Creativity/Joyful Perseverance/Diligence/Energy, 5) Concentration/Well-put-togetherness of mindheartbodyworldcosmos, and 6) Wisdom. Six facets, one Cosmic Jewel. Its brilliance illuminates the world and all beings. Its radiance is the radiance of Beauty, mind of Beauty.
Cultivate the deep skills of Life first and foremost: Awareness, Acceptance, Connection, and Nondoing. There are no other skills, and everything we do merely expresses these.
Gain intimacy with experience. There is nothing other than experience, and experience has three interwoven aspects: What we do, How we do it, and Why. Cultivate these, which demands a contentious use of the mind-heart-body-world-cosmos. It demands some practice of meditation—compassion (including tonglen) and the Four Foundations of Mindfulness are the best places to begin that practice. Always return to Awareness, the Mind of Beauty.
“My experience and research have increasingly made me aware of the dreadful importance of falling in love with ‘something’—a dream, an image of the future. I am convinced that the driving force behind future accomplishments is people’s image of the future . . . . The autobiographies and biographies of many of those who have produced the ideas that have changed the world and made it a better place to live in reveal that the wellspring of the creative energy that produced their achievements was their being in love with something, usually at an early age and persisting throughout their lives.” E. Paul Torrance
“On the great road of awakened ancestors there is always unsurpassable practice, continuous and sustained. It forms the Circle of the Way and is never cut off. Between aspiration, practice, enlightenment, and nirvana, there is not a moment’s gap; continuous practice is the Circle of the Way. This being so, continuous practice is undivided, not forced by you or others. The power of this continuous practice confirms you as well as others. It means your practice affects the entire earth and the entire sky in the ten directions. Although not noticed by others or by yourself, it is so . . . . The effect of such sustained practice is sometimes not hidden. Therefore, you aspire to practice. The effect is sometimes not apparent. Therefore, you may not see, hear, or know it. Understand that although it is not revealed, it is not hidden.” Dogen
“When, even for a moment, you manifest the gesture of wholeheartedness with your entire body and mind . . . everything in the entire world becomes the gesture of wholeheartedness, and all space in the universe completely becomes Wisdom, Love, and Wakefulness.” Dogen
“At the centre of positive creative activity is the desire to bring health and enrichment into the lives of others. To create change mindlessly invites the risk of the kind of destructiveness which could reverberate far into the future. In Native philosophy, creative activity is a deep spiritual responsibility requiring as full an awareness as possible of its sacred nature and the necessity for pure love to be at its centre.” Jeanette Armstrong
“The question is: How are we going to organize our life so that we can afford to produce beautiful things, not at the expense or the suffering of others? That seems to be the basic point from a practical point of view. Then there is something beyond that, which is the concept of art altogether, or dharma art . . . . dharma art refers to art that springs from a certain state of mind on the part of the artist that could be called the meditative state. It is an attitude of directness and un-self-consciousness in one’s creative work. Our message is simply one of appreciating the nature of things as they are and expressing it without any struggle of thoughts and fears. Genuine art—dharma art—is simply the activity of nonaggression.” Chӧgyam Trungpa
“If you do not perceive the sincerity within yourself and yet try to move forth, each movement will miss the mark.” Zhuangzi
“Every day is a journey, the journey itself is home.” Basho
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