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The discussion “Meditation
as a creative tool” provided some background as to why
meditation can be seen as a powerful creative tool. To use
meditation as a creative tool there are several things which should
be considered.
Something your desire, not that
of another
First and foremost is meditation
is a focusing of your attention and awareness. If you are desire to
gain some level of conscious control over what you experience in
life, then whatever on which you focus your attention and awareness
should come from within your own being. It should be something you
desire to create at each and every level of your being. Your focus
should not be based on anything given to you to by another or for
the purposes of another. This last sentence being up three issue.
The first and most important and most
influential on what you create is what has been given to you by
another. That which is given to you by another of which you are
conscious aware of them giving it to you is relatively easy to deal
with. You simply eat, digest and make what they give you your own
as discussed below.
However, most of us been programmed by our early care givers, our
society and life itself to create things which we would probably not
choose to create if we were aware of the programming.
The programming issues of the past are much more difficult to
address. In essence, we must make the subconscious conscious in
those areas that are influencing what we desire to create. To get at
this early and/or past programming we must
pull the string on the desires we have and the basis of our
decision to understand what lies at their root. The key to pulling
the string on our desires and decisions is to be mindful and aware
of the thoughts we have. One does not have to meditate to become
mindful and aware but mediation is a powerful tool to use to become
mindful and awareness. How to pull the string is discussed within
the topic “Pulling
the String.” It is something to consider doing on any desire you
may have in any area of your life in which you wish to gain some
creative control over what you experience.
The issue with past programming is not that it is good or bad. The
question is whether or not it serves or doesn’t serve us. Most often
the issue is that we have not eaten, digested and made what has been
given to us our own
as discussed below. Usually we have not discarded what is not
useful but kept aspects of what has been given that do not truly
serve who and what we are.
Two important points need to be made
here about using meditation for the purposes of another. One is a
variety of reasons have been give to meditate. However, all
those reasons are something another has said can be created and/or
experienced with meditation. It is their reason to mediation and
their experience. Meditation is their vehicle to create what they
desired to create. Although it is true that meditation has been used
by someone to create any one of those stated reasons to meditate,
meditation is the technique that they used for creating their stated
purpose. It may or may not be what serves you. The recommendation is
for you to use what your uniqueness requires.
A way to do
this is provided below.
The other aspect of using meditation for the purposes of another is
that whatever you use as the seed thought of your meditation it
should be what you, yourself, have written and chosen. Many teachers
give a mantra, a word or a phrase, on which to meditate. It is
either a thought held or a word or phrase repeated to create
a single point focus in one’s mind. No matter how noble, wise,
or profound a particular mantra is, it is not your mantra. It has
been created by someone else and given to you. It did not come from
within. If you wish to get conscious control over what you
experience in life, whatever you use on which to focus your
attention and awareness should come from within your own being. It
should not be given to you by another or taken from another.
If you are going to use something on which to focus that has been
given to you by another you will first have to eat it, digest it,
and make it your own by discarding what is not useful and does not
serve you while keeping the remainder within your being. It is like
any food we eat only here it is food for our spiritual, mental or
emotional needs. Then allow it to arise from within your being as
something on which you have taken ownership. Otherwise whatever you
use will not be yours.
Make what
is given your own (Return)
To eat, digest and make something
your own is to read/listen, study and contemplate a concept, idea, a
word or phrase as you would learn anything. You look at what you
understand or don’t understand about what is said. You look at the
positive aspects and the negative aspects. You look as to how what
you listen to or read makes you feel. You look to see if it provides
an excitement in your being or it is boring or causes fear to arise.
But whatever it is you do not choose to use it. Rather you take
whatever is given to you as an advisement and suggested action. You
take it within and allow the awareness of it to arise from within as
to whether or not you should use it.
How this is done is as follows. Study what is given. Eat it, digest
it, make it your own as described in the last paragraph. Go to your
intuitive guidance and inner knowing and ask it how to create what
you desire to create. If what is provided by another is something
that you should use, it will arise and come out as intuitive
guidance. For example mediation. If you say, “I choose to use
mediation to create...” that statement is a choice by your mind and
not necessarily something that is yours. Your are choosing to use it
based on what another has given to you. However, if you ask your
inner knowing, “How should I go about creating ...” and meditation
arises in some way as the answer, then meditation is your answer and
you should use it. It this case it is not something given to you and
you take it from another. Rather it arises from within your own
being as your own way. In doing so you are taking conscious control
over what you create. Although how you create comes from your
subconscious, it comes from within you from within the deeper
aspects of your being. It comes from that subconscious link with the
source/Source of your being
Using
meditation as a creative tool (Return)
To use meditation as a creative
tool to create what you desire, you must choose to use it for your
purposes and not the purpose(s) of another. But you must choose it
as a tool to create what you desire and not an end in itself or
meditation arises from within your own being as the vehicle to use.
To use meditation as the vehicle, you would essential do what you do
in any meditative practice but you would not follow any tradition,
teacher or prescribed path. Rather, you would follow the guidance
provided by your
intuitive guidance. In the end it may look like an already
identified path or approach to meditation. However, it will be your
path for it arose from within your being. The fact that it looks
like another path or an other’s path doesn’t matter in this case.
The issue is that you are not following or copying another. The
issue is you are following your own path and your path and that of
another are temporarily identical, or at least very similar.
In using meditation as a creative tool, we meditate to obtain the
specific abilities obtainable through meditation and the meditation
serves no other purpose than that. When used creatively, meditation
should not be use with the intention of creating anything other than
obtaining the ability to use the tool unless directed by our
intuitive guidance. To create what we desire we should clearly
state what we wish to create in and/or with our life. Then go to our
intuitive guidance and ask “what do I need to do, what do I need to
become to create what I desire?” and then follow the intuitive
guidance that has been given. If we are directed to use meditation,
then we go use it. However, more often than not, there are other
things we must do and use the mediation as a tool helps us doing
those other things, in particular, to become mindful and aware.
Meditation when used as a tool is to focus our attention and
awareness to become mindful to be able to recognize and follow the
guidance our
intuitive guidance and inner knowing provides. It also provides
us
a quick way calm, center and focus ourselves. To become mindful and awareness there is a
certain amount of calming of mind that does need occur. That ability
to calm the mind to be mindful and aware also allows us to quickly
calm, center and focus ourselves. It is a byproduct of mindfulness.
As a creative tool, the issue is not to make meditate as an end in
itself. To do so is only to take your creativity out of one
cage
of our own making and put it into another and risk using
mediation
as an addiction. No matter how creative you may become in using
mediation, we are simply giving up one cage for another. It looks
different but it is nevertheless a cage. From a creativity
perspective the intent is to create mindfulness and awareness of
what one thinks and what one feels. Then from that mindfulness and
awareness one can explore one’s inner world.
From a creativity perspective it was stated there can be four
reasons given to meditate and two side benefits. The four reason
were given as:
remove the disturbances of mind,
become a detached
witness,
develop a single point focus,
access one half of the
creative process. The
two sided benefits of a long term meditation
practice were calming the body and awareness of what is within to
see differently. You can achieve all of these by focusing on
developing mindfulness and awareness. Additionally there is the
added benefit of developing the discipline to hold focus needed for
any creative endeavor.
The key to use meditation as a tool as a tool is to use it to become
mindful and aware of the thoughts and feeling we have. When we are
mindful and aware, then everything else is open to us. Being mindful
and aware allows us to explore our inner world. It allows us to
become intimate with our thoughts to look as see where the thoughts
come from. It as thought we call look at the labels they carry as to
their origins. In
pulling the string as why we have the thoughts we
do or asking where any one thought comes from we can explore the
origins of our thoughts and our beliefs about ourselves and of
nature. Being mindful and aware open us to the infinite of our own
consciousness.
As stated above, when learning to become mindful and aware through
meditation one does learn to calm the mind. That in turn can be
readily accessed. One does not have to meditate or be one who
meditates to quickly calm the mind. However, an extended meditative
practice creates a habit of mind that makes it relatively simply and
quickly to get there. A sample
calming
technique and a
centering technique is
provided for you use.
Once we are mindful and aware and we can quickly calm ourselves by
learning a technique to focus our attention and awareness we no long
have the need to meditate as such. We can simply make our life a
meditation by being mindful and aware of what is in our mind and
make as many of the choice we need to make in life in the direction
of what we desire to manifest. .
Of particular interest that does arise in creativity is a way to
achieve any understanding that is primarily directed inward. This
can be achieved when we become mindful and aware. We simply needs to
ask a question and direct it inward. Over time either an answer to
the question will arise or we will be lead some where by a thought
or feeling to get the answer or we will be lead by a thought or
feeling to have an experience that moves us toward getting the
answer we seek. But we have to be both aware of the thoughts and
their origins. We have to be mindful to be aware of the answer when
it come. We have to be able to recognize it as the answer. We can
recognize it as the answer when we understand how to know the
origins of our thought for thoughts can arise from a multitude
of different sources.
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