The Marriage of Receptivity and Presence

I promised to share more on how inspiration plays a pivotal role in innovation and conceiving unique marketing ideas. This post isn't instructive as much as one that puts you in the mood to inquire about inspiration, receptivity, and the font of creativity yourself. In last post's comment, Bob C shares the etymology of the word mystery which is a big clue: from mein, to close the eyes, initiate. So yes it's an initiation of sorts.

In the beautiful book Poetic Medicine, John Fox writes:

Receptivity and presence are like a tree. Imagine yourself as a tree. Become that tree. Roots, sap and trunk are your voice, body and life force that coalesce into your presence in the world. Branches and leaves represent your receptivity. Branches extend their leaves out to receive sunlight in the best possible way. The thin moon-shaped leaves of a eucalyptus turn broadly to the sun in moderate weather but when it is hot and dry show only their thin edge to the sun.

Receptivity catches what is given to you. Presence gives shape and substance to what you receive.

I drank a fertile alphabet and spoke a whole green pasture. - Cori Olinghouse, seventeen years old

Four things will strengthen and fine-tune your receptivity and presence. The first two are oriented toward the heart. They are part of your preverbal experience, and are universal feminine capabilities:

* sensing and feeling

The second two are linked with mindful witnessing and are universal masculine capacities:

* noticing and naming

The first group are flowing and open and the second establish shape and expression for what you receive. These work together.

The scientists have their say - the marriage here is only languaged differently and described as one between inspiration and elaboration stages, relaxation and corralling of activity, the right and left brain. This snippet is from New Scientist, "Creative Minds: Looking for Inspiration", October 2005:

One of the first studies of the creative brain at work was by Colin Martindale, a psychologist from the University of Maine in Orono. Back in 1978, he used a network of scalp electrodes to record an electroencephalogram, a record of the pattern of brain waves, as people made up stories. Creativity, he showed, has two stages: inspiration and elaboration, each characterized by different states of mind. While people are dreaming up their stories, he found their brains were surprisingly quiet. The dominant activity was alpha waves, indicating a very low level of cortisol arousal: a relaxed state, as though the conscious mind was quiet while the brain was making connections behind the scenes. It's the same sort of brain activity as in some stages of sleep, dreaming or rest, which could explain why sleep and relaxation can help people be more creative.

However, when these quiet-minded people were asked to work on their stories, the alpha wave activity dropped off and the brain became busier, revealing increased cortical arousal, more corralling of activity and more organised thinking. Strikingly, it was the people who showed the biggest difference in brain activity between the inspiration and development stages who produced the most creative storylines. Nothing in their background brain activity marked them as creative or uncreative. "It's as if the less creative person can't shift gear," says Guy Claxton, a psychologist at the University of Bristol, UK. "Creativity requires different kinds of thinking. Very creative people move between these states intuitively." Creativity, it seems, is about mental flexibility: perhaps not a two-step process, but a toggling between two states. [Hmmm, not so much toggling; I'd say it's seamless slide across the dance floor to and fro.]

In a later study, Martindale found that this change in activity was particularly noticeable on the right side of the brain. However, people who had the connections between the two sides severed to treat intractable epilepsy seemed to become far less creative, showing that communication between the two sides of the brain is also important.

Bonus: I love this poem that gets to heart of the receptive state. The noticing and naming come in when you are like Raven or Wren in your perceptual capacity.

Stand still. The trees ahead and the bushes beside you
Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,
And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,
Must ask permission to know it and be known.
The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,
I have made this place around you.
If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.
No two trees are the same to Raven.
No two branches are the same to Wren.
If what a tree or bush does is lost to you,
You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows
Where you are. You must let it find you.
- David Wagoner

Comments

[Pieter Ruiter]

Love this! Love your thoughts! But the last poem is only translated by David Wagoner, and is attributed to a Native American Elder.

[nobintofe]

good resourse Anyway by sight very much it is pleasant to me