“Creativity is a discontinuous, non-algorithmic quantum jump from one pattern of thinking into a completely new one.

“It is a quantum leap – from one pattern to another without progressing through incremental steps in between. All great creative advances in the world’s of art, music, architecture, or science represent new leaps of imagination that could not have been predicted on the basis of the prevailing patterns.

“Once the creative leap is made, be it Einstein’s theory of relativity, Picasso’s cubism, or music by the Beatles, the world is forever changed…”

- Amit Goswami, author of “Quantum Creativity”

Of course, conceptual descriptions can only go so far in describing a process that is innately non-conceptual… perhaps even instinctual. Whether or not I happen to feel creative, none of us is ever far from the elemental creativity that created the universe, because each of us is a unique expression of this. Although this is perfectly obvious, this awareness can also be perfectly elusive sometimes. So whether or not we happen to feel creative at a given moment, the important thing for all creatives is to keep our creative tools close and to practice frequently, so that when the creative energies start to build, we’re able to grab our favorite tools and be carried off by them – beyond ourselves and our preconceived ideas and intentions – and carried into the the current of the creative force, off into the creative unknown.

Today’s post by Seth Godin neatly ties into this topic of the barrier- and category-leaping nature of creativity, although he shifts the focus from the creative process to the leap required to actually ship our creative products. This part of the equation is very important, and all creatives would benefit by paying attention to it… particularly those who are just getting into the swing of consistently shipping their creativity out into the world. I suggest checking out his post. He talks about leaping beyond the need for support to ship our world-changing art.

[One of my favorite lines from his recent awesome book (which I highly recommend), "Linchpin," is something to the effect of, "Don't just be an idea person. Be an idea-shipping person."]

Back to the quantum creative force. I openly confess to being madly in love with and passionately devoted to this. And so here’s an attempt to give visual expression to this force, which I feel created and sustains the universe, of which we are intimate and essential parts:

If you’d like to continue to explore the subject of creativity with me, check out “Creative Powerhouse.” Who’s a creative powerhouse? You are. [More about this after the jump.]

Sometimes the best results come when we’re not focused on getting any results at all, when we’re just playing around. This just happened for me when I was playing with my dog, Bodhi, and my iPhone. Here’s what happened:

This shot hasn’t been Photoshopped or manipulated in any way. It’s a result of the scan-rate of the iPhone’s camera combined with Bodhi’s perfectly-timed movement, which created this wormhole effect.

Play keeps us fresh and opens up a universe of unexpected surprises (some of which might just take your breath away).

We all knew this as kids. Some of us never stopped playing. And I’m writing to encourage everyone to keep up the good work… I mean the good play.

Our job as artists is to explore the unknown, to get out of the predictable comfort zone of what we know we can do, to get intimate with the mystery, to relate personally with it in somehow, and to find ways to share what we’ve discovered. So let’s all get loose and playful and forget about making mistakes or messing things up. There are countless reasons to be tight and afraid and stressed-out and excessively perfectionistic, but the net result of all of them is the constriction of our elemental creativity. So here’s a reminder (to myself, as well as to you) to loosen up, to get into the groove of things done for the love of it, and to just play with your creative tools, whatever they might be.

Go ahead. Play with it. Make fun of it. Get out of the zone of the known. Get funky with the unknown. And when you feel ready, share the love with people who support your creative spirit.

This inexpensive public service announcement from the UK (created by the Sussex Safer Roads Partnership) is more beautiful, creative, and emotionally rich than all of the expensive ads I saw on yesterday’s Super Bowl. A helpful reminder it’s not money that makes project great, it’s thought.

How do you use the power of simplicity and conceptual power to supercharge your creative projects? Are there ways to create more impact using fewer elements?

PS – Buckle up!

There are countless voices that pronounce the ego loudly to the world, that tell us the convincing and familiar story of our separateness, that define success in terms of material acquisition, that urge us to produce so we can consume, produce and consume, produce… consume… These messages are so pervasive in modern society that they’ve almost become undetectable, like the ever-present feeling of air passing through our nostrils.

Who speaks for that which is greater than ourselves, for that great mystery of our common origin? Who speaks for (dare I say it?) the Unified Field of One? The reggae prophet Vaughn Benjamin of “Midnite” does. [I got the phrase from one of his songs, called "Won" - one of my favorite songs of all time. And he most likely got the phrase from Einstein, who applied his genius for much of his life to the creation of a Unified Field Theory.] I feel that “Avatar” is another expression of this elemental, essential message for we who have become deeply and tragically convinced of our existential separateness from nature and from each other. This sense of separateness, this failure to recognize our interdependence on other life-forms with whom we share this planet has had drastic consequences both for ourselves and for our fellow inhabitants of this planet. We have entered an era that scientists ominously call “6 X” – the sixth major period of mass extinctions in our planet’s history. If this doesn’t serve as a wake-up call, if this doesn’t jolt us out of habitual patterns of global myopia and provincial complacency, what will?

I know I wasn’t the only one who heard the ancient wisdom of the plant teachers, shamans, and of Gaia Herself in “Avatar.” [Here's an interesting article entitled "Aya Avatar: Drink the Jungle Juice," about the link between the movie and the shamanic elixir, ayahuasca.] Friends who have taken the time to sit, clear their heads of habitual thoughts, and listen to Spirit have shared with me that they felt similarly. Nor was I the only one who yearned to remain in Pandora once the credits rolled. It’s hard living in a world where the priorities seem so topsy-turvy, where creating profit is prioritized so highly, where the earth is viewed as an intert resource to be plundered, where animals are seldom treated with dignity (save a privileged few), where techno-infatuation supplants real human interaction (Facebook instead of face-time, for example). I’ll stop myself here, because I have something much more important to share than my personal sensitivities and challenges.

Perhaps you’re thinking that “Avatar” (which has already pulled in more than $1.1 billion worldwide) is itself an expression of the very profit-imperative that I’ve just criticized. This is true… on the surface. And I feel that this is part of the brilliance of the movie. Like “The Matrix,” the paradigm-shattering film that used the mainstream media to deliver a revolutionary message of consciousness-expansion, “Avatar” functions as a Trojan Horse. It’s wrapped in a big, glossy, pretty package, and gives every appearance of being a big chunk of entertainment (Pocahontas redux, as some have quipped). However, it’s packed full of messages, awareness, and archetypes that are both timeless and are also entirely relevant to this precise moment in time. “Avatar” encourages us to look upon Pandora – and by extension, upon the earth – as a living entity interconnected by all of the organisms and all the elements of our biosphere. Have we become too jaded to hear these messages with open hearts? I trust that we have not. “Avatar” also helps us look upon animals that are killed to be eaten with dignity, to truly see them and to acknowledge the ultimate sacrifice that they’re forced to make. Can we emerge from the fog created by the inhumane, profit-driven slaughterhouse industry and let this basic truth touch our hearts? [Check out animated short, "The Meatrix," if you haven't see it yet.] I believe that we can. Continuing the parallel with Pandora, “Avatar” suggests that every step that we take on our precious and only earth glows. Am I stretching the parallel too far to suggest that this may be actually true? Emerging scientific evidence substantiates this. It has been shown by mycologist, author, and planetary activist Paul Stamets that the forest floor is interconnected by a vast network of mycelium through which there is multi-directional flow of nutrients and information. He calls this “the earth’s natural internet,” and each impression upon this network – each footstep upon the forest floor – is sensed and registered by it. And so, as on Pandora, every step upon healthy soil here on earth does actually glow, in a very unique way that can be detected with subtle instruments and awareness. [It seems likely that this research about mycelial networks was sourced by James Cameron as has was envisioning the interconnected organic nature of Pandora.]

I don’t feel that it’s possible to overstate the importance of the messages that lie just beneath the surface of this film. And once we attune to and receive these messages, whether though “Avatar,” or as a result of a long walk through the hills, or sitting and listening to birdsong, or however we happen to connect with Spirit (each in our own unique way), I feel that the way we live our lives is naturally affected and enriched by this. However this message lands for us and assimilates into our lives – this message of connection with, and dependance upon, something greater than our separate little selves – what matters is that this essential message does land, somehow, and that it’s received, all the way into the fertile cores of our beings. What happens next is up to each of us.

With love for the earth, and all its inhabitants,
Shalom

PS – In this video, below, Paul Stamets, gives an amazing, lucid, compelling presentation at TED about how mushrooms can help save the world. I highly recommend checking it out.

If you have any thoughts, comments, or criticisms, I would love for you to share them in the comments, below.

I earnestly encourage everyone to watch this documentary and to form their own opinions about the crucial issues it raises. Below is the two minute trailer for the film, which speaks for itself:

Here’s a link to Manufactured Landscapes on Netflix.

Hats off to Jennifer Baichwal for creating what I feel is one of the most important documentaries of this decade.

A warm-hearted monk (whose name escapes me) began the dharma talk by telling us that he had just returned from Korea, where August 15th is recognized as a very significant day, as “Liberation Day.” On this day, in 1945, the Japanese surrendered in WW II. This marked the end of decades of Japanese colonization of Korea. The monk spoke of meeting an old Japanese Zen master who, in his youth, had been trained to be a kamikaze pilot in the Japanese air force. His mission was scheduled for 2pm on August 15th, 1945… but because the Japanese emperor surrendered on noon of that day, his mission was canceled. Instead of feeling relief, the pilot felt immensely distraught. Why was he spared, when so many of his friends, who’d already flown their fatal missions in service of their country, were not? The question burrowed deeply into him, and multiplied. “Why do I exist?” “What is the purpose of a human life?” “What can I do that is truly of value and significance with my life?” Questions of this nature ultimately led him to deeply immerse himself in Zen practice, where he became more and more intimate with these fundamental questions.

Skipping ahead, to a point later in the dharma talk, Zen Master Bon Soeng followed up on the monk’s story with this comment:

“A good situation is a bad situation.
A bad situation is a good situation.”

We all hunger for heavenly experiences, but in the Buddhist understanding, the problem with being in heaven is that while we are there, we consume our accumulated good karma, as flame consumes a candle. Another problem with heavenly experience is that naturally, we yearn to remain there, which sets us in opposition to impermanence. As we all know, all things are impermanent, and attachment to the illusion of permanence is the cause of suffering. And so, when attachment, clinging, and resistance to change arises, heavenly experiences quickly crumble into bad situations. The good news is that this isn’t bad news… because “a bad situation is a good situation.” What a potent catalyst for change a bad situation can be! The unimaginably bad situation of the would-be kamikaze pilot, in which the entire meaning of his life was reduced to acting as a human bomb, blew away all the trivial concerns and fixations of his life, which keep many of us lost in a fog of vague, drowsy contentedness. It invoked a radicalness of awareness that culminated in the precious form of a Zen master. And so, the bad situation became a good situation.

The focus isn’t on getting from one to the other, from a bad situation to good one. Rather, it’s about working with what you’ve got, with what you’re given, with what arises, and meeting with openness and intimacy. Even the process of naming situations “good” or “bad” creates confusion and distance from what arises. The point, in my limited understanding, is to pull our experience close, whatever it is, however it shows up – good, bad, or neutral – and to become intimate with it. So intimate that whatever ideas we have about what “it” is are allowed to fall away. So intimate that, ultimately, all that remains is the great mystery… where descriptions no longer apply, where understanding dissolves, where words and thoughts echo into silence…

In addition to Empty Gate’s website, they can also be found online on their Facebook page and their Twitter feed.

This footage and the shallow set bring to mind Picasso’s quip that “Art is a lie that reveals the truth.”

Here’s the final image from the shoot (click on the photo to visit Profoto’s website):

© Annie Liebovitz

Music: “Rapper’s Delight,” by Dan the Automator

It took a village to create this head-bobbin’ piece. Here are the credits:

Director: Michael Gracey
Agency: BETC
Agency Producer: Fabrice Brovelli
Creative: Agnes Cavard & Valerie Chidlovsky
DoP: Alex Barber and Greg Fraser
Production Company: Partizan Midi Minuit
Executive Producer: Jaques Etienne Stein
Post Supervisor: Rahel Makonnen
Editor: Ben Harrex@ Final Cut
Post Production Company: MPC
Executive Post Producer: Vittorio Giannini
Post Producer: Paul Branch,
VFX Supervisors: Dean Robinson and Ludo Fealy
3D VFX Team: James Bailey, Anthony Bloor, Ross Denner, Ali Dixon, Daniel Elliott, Ahmed Gharraph, Andreas Graichen, Lewis Guarniere, Mark Harrison, Robert Hesketh, Jake Mengers, Alexandre Millet, Jorge Montiel, Jordi Onate, Vicky Osborn, Emanuele Pavarotti, Simon Payne, Dean Robinson, Wayne Simmons, Charlotte Tyson, Grant Walker
2D VFX Team: Dan Adams, Chrys Aldred, Mark Beardall, Mike Brazelton, Kelly Bruce, Stuart Bullen, Hayley Collins, Miodrag Colombo, Ludo Fealy, Olivier Jezequel, Vaibhav Marathe, Alasdair McNeill, Mikael Pettersson, Yourick Van Impe
Telecine: Paul Harrison and Jean-Clement Soret

Here’s some behind-the-scenes action:

Evian’s “Live Young” microsite features more info about the piece, and even links to some of the babies’ Facebook pages.

Filmed by Dowdenboy.

You can learn more about Dub FX and buy CDs on his website if this taste leaves you hungry for more.

[Hat-tip to DD for tuning me in to this virtuoso.]