A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2009 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

The following is a story from a copyrighted text. It is provided here for educational purposes. In particular, to bring the reader’s awareness how we are all equals and each play a role for another or others.

What needs to be fully understood about creativity is that it is an experience and anything we create is only the fruit or excrement of that experience. A short story may better explain this concept. It is the story of a wheelwright I first encountered in a collection of complied stories called The Heart of the Enlightened by Anthony De Mello. This story addresses this concept and that the essence of the creative experience is an experience and something that cannot be fully relayed or understood in any book or anything produced by mind or the human being. To truly understand creativity you will need to become creative and be the embodiment of creativity.

The story goes as follows:

"While a wheelwright was making a wheel at the lower end of the hall, Prince Huan of Ch’i was reading a book at the upper end. Putting aside his chisel and mallet, the wheelwright called to the prince and asked him what book he was reading.

"One that preserves the words of the sages," said the prince."

"Are those sages alive?" asked the wheelwright.

"Oh no," said the prince, "They are all dead."

"Then what you are reading can be nothing but the dirt and scum of bygone people," said the wheelwright.

"How dare you, a wheelwright, find fault with a book that I am reading"? Justify your statement or you shall die."

""Well, speaking as a wheelwright," said the man, "this is how I look at the matter: When I am fashioning a wheel, if my stroke is too slow it cuts deep but is not steady; if my stroke is too fast it is steady but does not cut deep. The right pace, neither too fast nor too slow, will not get into the hand if it does not come from the heart. It is something that cannot be put into words; there is an art to it that I cannot hand onto my son. That is why I cannot let him take over my work, so here I am at the age of seventy-five still making wheels. In my opinion it must be the same with those who have gone before us. All that was worth handing on died with them; the rest they put into their books. That is why I said what you are reading is the dirt and scum of bygone people."

What needs to be understood is the same is true about our creativity and our ability to create. This includes our ego that is a creation of our mind and the awareness within our mind. Creativity is an experience and the best part is in us and dies with us. What is left behind no matter how good or brilliant it is perceived is only the scum, excrement and waste products of the creative life that created those products.

This discussion is not to belittle or disparage the quality of work that has been written and the creation of those that have gone before us, including our own creation. Rather, that which is in mind or remains behind in any form, including our bodies and our mind and its knowledge and memories, is only a small representation of the magnificence of the being that created the work or inhabits the body and creative the mind. When we die, the best part go with death. All that is left is an empty shell to be eaten by another.

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