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Additional Wizardry |
Accessing Your Inner Creator:
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Figure #1 illustrates these fixated positions. Imagine, if possible, being solely at either the yin or yang pole. The experience at either extreme is chaos.
 | If you fixate in yang, everything projects and moves away from you without constraint or return. It is like staring into the void. |
| From the yin pole the opposite would be true. Everything is drawn in, introjected. It is an onslaught from which nothing escapes. |
Within the physical universe, one might think of quasars (yang), "stars" that seem to project matter endlessly, and blackholes (yin), gravitational fields that draw matter in without escape, as metaphoric examples. Chaos has a distinctly different face at either extreme.
If chaos exists at both poles, then form and order must inhabit the territory between them; accordingly, form (whether a poem or universe), arises in the interactive tension between the two extremes.
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Figure #2 illustrates this range where order is created and suggests that varying degrees of balance are possible between the poles. A contemporary creation story - chaos theory - may be a metaphor to explore this range of tension. Chaos theory addresses the multi-dimensional aspect of creativity, but for simplicity's sake I will discuss only the original pair of opposites, the receptive and projective principles. I will first detail the stages of the creative process and then relate them to the projective/receptive duality.
Graham Wallas began a model of the creative process in The Art of Thought. The stages in this model are: Preparation, Incubation, Illumination, Verification (see Figure3).
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| In Preparation, everything draws together with intention. If the product is artistic, you formulate an idea, equip yourself, and try combinations of the collected parts. Nurturing, research, and continuous input characterize this stage. |
| During Incubation, input of information, nutrients, or ideas becomes difficult: all is satiated to the point of compression. Incubation is the mysterious "black box" stage in which the creation forms but remains inseparable, unknown and unable to survive independently. It is symbiotic. |
| The aggregate gestates and concludes with sudden Illumination or output. Ripened and settled, the accumulated resources thrust into a new state of being. It is independent and takes on a "life"of its own. Illumination is glamorous, appearing easy, as if the creative product springs forth effortlessly. |
| The final stage, Verification, reviews, refines, and adjusts the product of
Illumination to the realities of reason: it must actually work in its applied field. This
stage separates fantasy from creation. |
Unencumbered, creativity is a natural process that flows through the stages repeatedly like a rhythmic pulse.
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The wave form in Figure #4 shows the rhythmic pulse of the creative cycle overlaying a simile of the Tai Chi, the Taoist symbol of the interplay of yin-yang. This portrayal suggests the quality of the interplay in each stage of the process.
The I Ching (Book of Change), further illustrates the qualities of this interplay. The I Ching uses lines depicting yin (-- --), and yang (-----) to build hexagrams (six lines stacked vertically), that show the pattern of change applicable to a specific question. The lines are either young (as shown above), or old, shown as follows: yin(--O--), and yang (--X--). Old lines change into their opposite.
In Figure #4, preparation and incubation dip into the lower hemisphere: yin most strongly influences them. Preparation is like young yin; that is, it is in the seductive "flower of receptive youth." Incubation, like old yin, has matured and begun to lose its attractive power. Illumination and verification arc into the upper hemisphere which represents yang. Illumination, like young yang, is active, aggressive and projects the ripened product outward. Verification then, like old yang, seeks validation as its strength wanes until it reverts into yin.
The cycle requires both yin and yang: neither principle dominates exclusively. Form dances on the border between the two faces of chaos.
Mystic teachings refer to this narrow path along the border. It is the terrain a creator must traverse . . .
Experience Carlisle Bergquist's creativity in his current book - "The Coyote Oak: Burgeoning Wisdom." Available here, at Amazon.com, and booksellers worldwide.
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