IV. RESULTADOS Y DISCUSIÓN
4.7. Del peso de 10 frutos de pepinillo
CHAPTER 21
Practice, Practice, Practice
In the familiar anecdote, a pedestrian in a busy street of midtown Manhattan asks another pedestrian, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” The man he asks happens to be a musician, so instead of replying with directions to the famous music venue he says, “Practice, practice, practice.”
The same holds true for finding the way to creativity. When novelist Natalie Goldberg suffered from writer ’s block, her Zen master told her, “Make writing your practice.” After all the dedication to process, there is still that question of practice.
Both inner and outer creativity are about freedom. Engaging in inner creativity is the way to access greater and greater freedom by cleaning up your inner being; outer creativity should become the expression of your inner freedom in the outer world. Carl Rogers said creativity requires keeping an open mind. Can you practice keeping your mind open? The problem here is the paradoxical role that ego plays. You cannot be creative without a strong ego to manage the uncertainty that comes with any creative endeavor. Creativity also requires that you continually take the risk of changing the character of the ego. You become afraid: What if changing my ego affects the very strength that makes me creative?
Until now—with a few exceptions like William Blake, Walt Whitman, Rabindranath Tagore, and Carl Jung—inner creativity has been used primarily to achieve spiritual liberation from the world. But spirituality does not have to be world-negating. If, as we discussed earlier, the world is evolving spiritually, why not become attuned to that movement of consciousness?
Let’s consider seven practices that can help you break through the patterns of ego to allow more participation in your life by quantum consciousness. You can think of these practices as a purification of your creative sattva. You can also think of them as vehicles for awakening your supramental intelligence—a more integrated mode of being and identity from which to create, and from which to fulfill your human potential. The practices are: 1. Intention-setting 2. Slowing down—allowing openness, awareness, and sensitivity 3. Concentration, or focusing 4. Do-be-do-be-do—alternating action and relaxed incubation 5. Imagination and dreaming 6. Working with Jungian archetypes and creating positive emotional brain circuits 7. Remembering your dharma
The Practice of Intention-Setting
The truth is, our mind is comfortable, although not always happy, to reside in the cocoon of the ego. Intention-setting is our way out. Remember, we can set an intention with our ego, but what actually happens depends entirely on our degree of attunement with quantum consciousness. The following practice is set up accordingly.
Sit comfortably. Engage in a body-awareness exercise to banish tension. Become aware of your toes, and breathe into them so they relax. Do the same for the tops of the feet, then the undersides of your feet, and the ankles, moving up your legs, torso, arms, neck, and head. Repeat this process with any part of the body still in need of release. Now that you’re relaxed, remember that an intention must start with the ego, so use your will to manifest it.
Now, at the second stage, recognize that you can have what you intend in two ways: You can have it all for yourself, or in such a way that everyone (including you) enjoys the fruit of your intention. Choose the latter, expanding your intention to include everyone in your immediate vicinity; then let your attention extend outward like a ripple in a pond, including everyone in your town or city, in your county, in your state, in your country, on this planet, and finally in the whole universe. In the third stage let your intention gradually become a prayer: If my intention resonates with the movement of the whole, then let it come to fruition. In the fourth stage, allow the prayerful mind to become silent, meditative. Stay in silent meditation for a few minutes. Use this practice whenever you wish to support an intention with all your creative power.
The Practices for Slowing Down: Open Mind, Awareness, and
Sensitivity
Underneath all creativity lies a paradox. How can we know so much and yet not know? A professor went to a Zen master to learn about Zen. The master offered the professor some tea. As the master was making the tea, the professor began to show off his erudition, expounding on his knowledge of Zen. When the tea was made, the master began pouring the tea into the professor ’s cup. He went on pouring even after the cup was full, spilling the tea onto the table and the floor until the professor cried, “Stop! My cup is full.” The Zen master said, “So is your mind. How can I teach you if your mind is so full of your own ideas?”A creative mind never fully identifies with what’s in it. A creative mind retains a certain amount of naiveté, always ready to ask the basic questions. Nobody told a supposedly not-so-bright boy named Albert Einstein that aspiring researchers of physics are not supposed to ask basic questions; so the child approached questions about light, space, and time with “beginner ’s mind,” and eventually discovered relativity.
But the situation is more complicated for an educated adult who has to learn a lot of other people’s opinions about a lot of things. This person has to remain open to new possibilities and yet have a large repertoire of knowledge to draw upon. How does one have both mastery and beginner ’s mind?
Buddhists and Jains in India sometimes debate about what it means to know everything, to be omniscient. The Jains tell a story of two artists competing for the king’s favor. One artist has filled one wall of the art gallery, and the king is very pleased. “How can you beat this?” the king asks the second artist. “I can’t. So I have painted exactly the same thing,” replies the artist, opening the drapes on the opposite wall, and the king is amazed. Indeed, the same painting shows up in dazzling beauty, replicating the original piece of art in every intricate detail. And why not? The second wall is a
mirror. So, say the Jains, be like the mirror and reflect perfectly all knowledge. That is omniscience. But Buddhists see it differently. Why be burdened with all your knowledge when you don’t need it all the time? Let knowledge come to you as required. In this way of thinking the creative person develops mastery, but does not dwell on the information gained. If, after mastery is attained, we want to keep it available for instant recall, we have to practice retrieving it, and in the process we come to identify with it. In this way we develop a Jain fast mind, always thinking. But if we practice in such a way as to give up speed, we won’t identify with our reservoir of knowledge. But how do you practice this slowness of mind? In some spiritual traditions like Zen, a slow mind is also called, somewhat confusingly, an empty mind. Can our mind’s space be really empty? Of course not. Memories are always generating thoughts. But a slow mind does not identify with the thoughts, it does not own them; in that sense it is empty—empty of ownership.
The meditative practice for cultivating beginner ’s mind, or emptiness of mind, is called awareness meditation. As thoughts arise in your awareness, you watch them parade like clouds floating by in a tranquil sky, without attachment or interference. If and when you recognize that you are paying too much attention to a particular thought, bring your awareness firmly back to dispassionate witnessing. Practice this choiceless awareness 15 or 20 minutes a day; don’t overdo it, at least at the beginning.
Since awareness doesn’t take place in isolation, but always comes in conjunction with the physical and subtle body, it helps to slow down the physical organs and also their correlated energy fields. You can practice a slow version of hatha yoga or stretching techniques for the former, and breathing practices like pranayama for the latter. There are also martial arts techniques such as tai chi and aikido for slowing down the movement of vital energy.