In Search of Creative Impulses

A close friend wrote his perceptions about art in the Facebook today ( Realiti tak Mistikal lagi- Hasnul J. Saidon).and it was about the removal of one's ego or the thought of self from the equation of the act of creativity. Not identifying with the work and enjoying the process or rather submerged into the prcocess with no doer only the act of doing. He wrote it in Bahasa Malaysia which i am weak in but I coud understand most of it as it seems like an echo of conversations I used to have with him in the past whenver we had the opportunity to share our thoughts. These are the echoes of J.Krishnamurti's philosophy and those of the Zen tradition of Buddhism and Islamic view of void or 'Fana'. I am not the artist, I am not the brush nor am I the canvass, I am the dance of creation, the act of creativity itself or being creative and when it is all said and done I am no more!
Herein is the idea that thought has no place in spontaineous action just as there is no one viewing the sunset but just the act itself and any following act of discussing, or describing or trying to capture the beauty of the sunset insatantaneously ends the act, it is no more. In essence the act is corrupted by the desire to cling on to or make it last this act of wiewing the sunset or in our desire to share it with others in the form of photography or a painting, it is no more the same sunset. The actions that follows immediately in the form of thoughts is the involvement of the ego in trying to benifit from the actual thing like a photographer who desires to be well known for taking great pictures of sunsets. It is not a matter of right or wrong for the ego to be present in these moments of creative happening but with its prescence the direct experience of what is, is gone or as my friend said in his article, it is veiled.
Creative individuals have a nack for experiencing these moments of syncronicity, moments when the person merges into the realm of being one with whatever it isthat they are working with and so does the woodcutter or the cobbler. However the artist in his or her effort to create what is out of the ordinary often finds himself having to break free from the conditioned state of mind where before he finds himself in the flow of energy that is in sync with the whole. Often the process happens through long meditative working condtiton that allows for the mind to be gradually subdued by the flow of energy from the physical into the psycho-emotional state and culminating into the 'mystical' or spiritual state of one-ness of being. This is the state often called Satori in Japanese Zen tradition or Samadhi in the Hindu tradition and Tafakur or Kushuk as in Islam and it is in this state that the mind ceases its egotistical wnaderings and predilections, yearnings and cravings, it becomes still and in this stillness is silence and in this silence is creativity born.
Most of us live our lives while being veiled from the abilty to see Truth by our own self thought ego, the conditioned state whereby the world is seen through preconditoned ideas and belief. However we also know that if and when these thoughts beliefs and ideas are being challenged and found to be faulty or weak become threatend and defensive, we seek justifications and resort to comparisons often ending with blames and excuses for our shortcomings or worse yet we take refuge in drinking and drugs in order to silence our mind. But it is next to impossible for the mind to become silent not even for a split second, this is our lot for we have been conditoned through the thought processes since day one and all these years of our existence we have been exposed to a thought generated world of illusions which is ever dominating our own self perception so much so that we have come to not know who we are much less what we are capable of. Our search for the essence of, the originality of our creative impulses will always be thwarted by our inability to become one with silence.

”It is only through creative understanding of ourselves that there can be a creative world, a happy world, a world in which ideas do not exist.” A world in which ideas do not exist would be a happy world, because it would be a world without the powerful conditioning forces which compel men to undertake inappropriate action, a world without the hallowed dogmas in terms of which the worst crimes are justified, the greatest follies elaborately rationalized."
Aldous Huxley