Creative Integration & Inquiry

In this episode Dr. Sally & Dr. Jen explore creative integration and creative inquiry. 

Transcript

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0:15   Sally suggests the previous eight episode-hours have slowly unfolded todays special topic – creativity. Discussing evolution, the nature of emergence, and creative identity as a fractal of that creative emergence of the universe has led here - the nature of creativity itself, as a phenomenological ‘field’. Episode eight unfolded how creativity can heal trauma. Sally cites Bessel van der Kolk:  “Trauma is a failure of imagination. When your imagination dies, you are stuck with what you have. And opening the imagination is therefore critical to healing”. Creativity cannot exist in a vacuum - it's part of a field of interactions – an ecology. Ken Wilber’s map of the four quadrants is helpful - the bio, psycho social, and political factors of creativity. DNA is not enough. Biology and Psychology need social support, and the political ability to express that. And not being able to express your gifts can lead to a lot of repression and depression. This kind of rhizomatic intelligence that wants to move through us exists in our brain. We can maximize creativity by understanding how our brain works. Sally explains how the right and left hemisphere can work together, and how to make an object - a piece of art, a book, a play, piece of music - you need to be first of all receptive and inhabit your imaginative right brain. And the left brain executive function is needed to manifest and execute that idea. The second thing we need to know about the brain is that the theta brainwaves are the most creative. Sally explains how stress inhibits creativity. Creativity requires safety, being able to relax, and get into parasympathetic nervous system. We can learn how to harvest the most imaginal brainwaves just before sleep. The third biological thing to understand is genes. All kids are creative. But there is a hierarchy of talent and lines of intelligence. So talent or big “C” creativity is real. Then have to also understand the second quadrant, or the psychological aspect, and that’s personality. Sally lists the aptitudes and attitudes needed for optimal creativity. Having the courage to be seen and heard also helps. Every time you make a creative product, you're revealing something more authentic about yourself. And there's a risk in that.

10:35  Jen says the four quadrants are always influencing our relationship with creativity, or perhaps even getting in the way of our creative flow. Jen cites Alfonso Montori, and Creative Inquiry, which is about integrating experience with knowledge and information. We need to participate in playing dynamically with ideas, and there's a big difference between taking part in something, and just thinking about it. Creative Inquiry integrates the Enquirer and the Inquiry. It means being both an engaged consumer, and creator of information. It explores a topic, and it's an evaluation of what we bring to a topic in terms of our direct experience, assumptions, worldviews, biases, knowledge etc. This forefronts imagination, as we participate with the world, and we become more original, innovative, creative and think outside of the box. We're living in a time of fast, mass information, consuming more information in a day than our forefathers could ever have imagined. So it's really essential to be both a high quality consumer, and creative creator of knowledge and information. We can dynamically apply this to any topic in life, personal, social, ecological, on all the quadrants. It's better to look at anything from many different perspectives, rather than just sticking to one perspective. And this is how we tap into new possibilities and potentials, by embracing a spirit of curiosity and experimentation. We live in a society that really disapproves of failure. And that takes away from our creative energy when we're afraid to fail. Jen then Leonardo da Vinci as an artist, a scientist and inventor, who explored civil engineering, chemistry, geology, geometry, hydrodynamics, mathematics, mechanical engineering, optics, physics, pyrotechnics, and zoology. She also describes Albert Einstein, Steve Jobs and Maya Angelou, who were all creative Inquirers. These people continue long after they're gone to inspire us to think creatively and push the boundaries.

19:37 Sally agrees that emerging from these role models have come streams of novelty, which is how evolution works through us, with the “relentless movement into novelty”. So biologically, and psychologically, we can maximize our creative potential when we understand how. Creativity has interior aspects - biological, and psychological, and exterior aspects - social and political. Sally then describes the social impacts on creativity at home, school and the work place. Aspects of support are needed – can the creative live in a community that allows them to be who they are. Social and cultural support for the arts is needed and not just the STEM subjects. If the family, school and work values the imaginal, aesthetic and expressive, then those innate biological and psychological aspects can then flourish. Left brain work is rewarded financially, and with power and status, much more than creative jobs. So even if we have all the genes, talent, personality, dedication and hard work, we might not make it as creative without support. Then there is the politics, which has played its part in how female genius has been denied and silenced. We're emerging from millennia of patriarchal and religious beliefs that have shut down creativity and female creativity in particular. So we've closed off our creative expressive voices. Masculine genius was traditionally celebrated. But we're emerging from that era, and feminine genius can now be recognized. That long period of repression and the political aspect that repressed creativity is coming to an end. Sakly then looks at periods in our history when creativity has burgeoned - the Greeks in the fifth century BCE; in Florence during the Renaissance, and Paris in the 1900s, when there was a burgeoning of creativity. Studies show that when there's a lot of war going on we're too busy problem solving. We are not creating when our energy goes to fight, flight and survival. And the imaginal has to shut down to keep the body safe. We also need audience's that support the objects that are made - the plays, the operas, the exhibitions. So if the culture itself values what the artist is doing, it will be supported. Patronage too helps. One of the things that might support collective creativity is universal basic income, to liberate our attention enough from survival Harnessing our focus from survival needs, and allowing ourselves to relax, and have some leisure time to play and experiment, is a prerequisite. Creativity is not childish, or a waste of time. The whole community has to support and recognize creativity for us to really move forward and build this new world that we're talking about. Then creativity as a phenomenon can emerge. 

28:56  Jen says our own creative renaissance may be the use of technology to bring forth our creative gifts. And this podcast is just a tiny slice of what is budding right in the collective which has such creative potential. Creative transformation especially, often starts with an inquiry and inner inquiry, asking ourselves hard questions, digging deep to figure out what's going on, and also facing our discomfort. We need both introspection and participation, in order to change. And in our podcast, we want to transform consciously, moving with transformation, rather than against it. And our goal is to explore beyond our current boundaries. Then we're able to break free from those old patterns, old questions, old assumptions, and discover new things. We get fresh insight and new perspectives. Creative inquiry is about challenging us to think differently and embrace transformation. We might realize that we have biases and beliefs and behaviours that are holding us back. So when we recognize those patterns. So transformation and creative inquiry are working together in tandem, to help us grow, both as individuals and within our socio cultural, political, ecological realm. Transformation and creativity helps us form connections, rather than focusing so much on our disconnections. Jen then cites Dr. Alfonso Montori who says C.I. helps us understand the entire universe is not a giant machine. The modernist mindset thinks everything can be reduced, that we're in a very mechanical world. Creative inquiry however embraces the idea that the entire universe is a creative process that has been happening throughout the history of the universe. That's the impulse of the creative transformation in the universe. We are fields of transformation operating within a larger field of transformation. That's a holonically nested orientation. Being creative inquirers helps us get in touch with how we create meaning, especially in a time of a meaning crisis. Creative Inquiry helps us to understand our motivations, and passions. In a 2008 article, Dr. Montori called it ‘The Joy of inquiry’. Jen cites him and then suggests if we find the wonder, we find creative transformation. Welcoming the unknown helps us experience the world in new ways. 

37:47   Sally says we can be deeply creative, without a level of consciousness, without any ethics. She doesn’t want to romanticize creativity because without a level of consciousness, it can be badly abused. During World War Two, the Nazis would spend the day gassing people in chambers, and sit through the most elegant, wonderful operas by night. They also found out which Jews had the most beautiful art collections, and they would send them to the gas chambers, and heist their art, for their own love of beauty. This is a nation that had a deep aesthetic and a love of beauty, and yet their consciousness at the time was lagging in ethics. Being deeply creative doesn't naturally come with an ethic. The Americans created the atomic bomb, killing millions. There's a lag between being creative until our ethics catch up with the implications, and develop some rules of engagement. And we're looking at that right now with AI. We have to be really careful with our creativity because it is powerful. Consciousness has to catch up with our creativity. Rollo May sais “Consciousness, receptivity, absorption, integration and ecstasy and encounters that bring some new reality into being are posited as a potential nexus for transformation”. So that's a possibility that exists. Creative people also really suffer too, because of extra sensitivity. The more creative you are, generally speaking, the more you experience pain and sadness, because you happen to have that bio psycho propensity for awareness, that also has to be managed. Yet some people would posit that creativity is our sacred gift. Sally cites Ken Wilber. Then she says we have a responsibility to potentiate that sacred gift, to bring our source into visibility. And you don't have to be part of a particular religion to believe that evolution itself is creative and generative. You can read as many books as you want about creativity, but your have to participate. You can look at all the perspectives of the phenomenology, but it goes nowhere, without physical engagement - with your brain, body, DNA, openness, curiosity, and passion. Once you engage, you will be transformed.

44:00   Jen says the ethical view is essential. We have a whole show about transformation and ethics, because it is so important. One of the best ways that we can engage with creative transformation and creative inquiry in our daily life is by asking what are called ‘I wonder’ questions. She wants to bring that back to the forefront of our minds and hearts. She asks : “If I forget a thought, Where does it go?”. “Can anything really be objectively experienced?”. “Where do dreams come from?”. “How do I define freedom?”. “What makes me, me?”. “Who am I? And why am I here?”. “What is the point of existence?”. “What do I know? What do I think I know. What don't I know? And what do I want to know.” Our next episode 10 will again be about creativity. Jen then says Thank you, and Bye.