Mydwynter:

I usually disregard the “new age for yuppies”- style blogs which tell you about how to increase your effectiveness, or about “hacks” for getting your life organized, or about the life-changing new method of dealing with your email inbox. For the most part, they seem like someone proselytising about some (either obvious or banal) thing which WORKS FOR THEM! and therefore WILL WORK FOR YOU! BUY MY BOOK!

But I was link-hopping this morning to see what the internet world had to show me, and came across a link for this page on a sidebar. Curious what some early-to-bed-early-to-rise nut (as I assumed the author, on spec) had to say about doing nothing, I was pleasantly surprised to read an article about meditation and its helpfulness with being creative.

http://lateralaction.com/articles/getting-nothing-done/

It’s not a new thing, really. Scientists have studied the brain patterns involved with doing specific activities and have found a similarity between those during meditation and those during jogging or ingrained activity, and artists have similar brain patterns when they’re creating.* If you’ve ever “zoned out” while working on a project, and then “came to” to realize that you’d made something awesome without really thinking about it, then you know what I’m talking about.

It seems to me that one of the main ways the author is using meditation in this instance is as a jump-start to creativity; he’s using the meditative state to help him get his brain into that zoned-out state during which great creativity happens. And when you’re in that particular state, the five recommendations he lists at the end of the article come naturally.

I like the idea of using meditation, sure. I myself find that my life is so much better the more I exist in that zoned-out state, and if I’m not creating or dancing, meditation works just as well. But I think there are other ways to achieve that state, and “doing nothing”—which is how he refers to meditation, I think because he’s directing his article at non-Buddhists, non-meditators—is only one of them. I know some people who achieve that state while running, while in the bath, while doing the dishes. People are, as we know, exceedingly different.

So while I enjoy meditating as means for slowing down my brain, getting it into “the zone” and open for potential “ah-HAH!” moments, I know it’s not the only way. It is, however, a nice way to reenforce my continuing efforts to extricate myself from that horrible Yankee mindset of “if you’re not busy doing something every moment of every day, you’re a lazy, worthless, human being.” (I know several of you are also dealing with that particular monkey on your back as well.)

I’ve posted this same write-up over here in the Mydwynter Studios Forum, hoping that you’ll wander over there and talk to me. What ways do you guys have for getting in that frame of mind/being? Have you had particularly good results from something? Are there new things you can do as well? Come on over, and join the conversation!

*Uncited, because I really can’t remember in which science mag I read the article.

Tags: creativity, forum, meditation, musings

This entry was posted on Friday, January 2nd, 2009 at 11:05 am and is filed under Tattoo Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.