2 FREE Juicy Creative Aspirational Online Events in September!
September 01, 2020
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Because it is central to my work, I’m constantly learning and reminded - and in awe of - how what we see as a ”miracle" on one level (i.e., fulfilled intentions in the most unexpected, completely unpredictable ways) is just about partnering the with unknown-yet-to-emerge as a generative, creative resource and letting that be our guide.
I experience it not as "blind faith" in the process but rather faith-from-experience in the natural order of how things are created and emerge...and letting go of outdated, socialized assumptions and ways of being that no longer serve. I'm always looking to more fully inhabit and embody the "emergence lens" (which can be a struggle at times as I bump up against my own inner assumptions that need to be transformed).
But one thing is for sure…is that you can’t discover what you already know - to stay in the discovery process means allowing yourself the spaciousness of being in the unknown. Right now, we are all in a huge unknown. We have a choice to use that for discovery. It is the nature of how things emerge that when you bring intention, heart, and purpose into the unknown, you make discoveries that are often surprising, and always life-giving.
One of the tenets of the creative emergence process is turning uncertainty into discovery. It means you don’t fill up the unknown with something familiar - or avoiding it, relying on others ideas, or numbing it - for security, but allow yourself space and time to discover what is calling to emerge from within your own creative yourself. And something is always calling to emerge if we are present…and listening. Sometimes that means using various whole-brain cultivation “tools” to access it - from drawing it to to journaling it to acting it out in the body and so much more! There are infinite ways to harvest the “fertile unknown” (I’ve seen literally thousands of variations over the past 25 years working with my clients). Different ways work for different people - because we each have out own unique creative style and language.
A place to start is just accepting that you are at the edge of what you know, and you are open to discovering what is there. Just that will start to reduce the fear of the unknown into something you do have choice over - which is engaging your discovery process. Then, stay open to impulses, insights, awareness, and dreams (they contain subconscious information that our conscious minds often do not see) that come to you. Instead of brushing something supposing off, start to connect with it in whatever way speaks to you…through images, words, energy, feelings, etc. - and you’ll deepen the insights.
Discovery turns the unknown for a dark, scary place into a rich, fertile landscape you get to explore. And with enough exploration, something new, clear, and life-giving will eventually emerge. Security comes not from being certain, or in control (which is impossible in volatile times), but from learning to experience the unknown as a creative ally - something that is generous, creative, and there for you. That "bond" strengthens over time as you practice navigating it.
If you’d like additional support in this process, or have questions on how to get started, contact me anytime for a FREE 30-minute discovery session.
Michelle James ©2020
The following are some of the books (both the classics
and some newer ones) that have informed, inspired and/or resonated with me along my journey over the years. I've chosen each based on philosophy, context, concepts, principles, practices, or applicability. Some are more reflective and other more active. Since most would fit into more than one catagory it felt too reductive to break them down that way. I'm just listing them in no particular order for you to explore whichever calls to you.
I am stopping at 77 becuase I like that number, and...have to put a cap on this post. There are lots of other really fantastic ones to add another time. Next time I'll specifcially focus on some of the awesome Creativity in Business books I've read (there are a few on this list).
Last night I saw R. Buckminster Fuller: The History (and Mystery) of the Universe at the Arena Stage in DC - written & directed by D.W. Jacobs - based on Fuller's life, work and writings - and awesomely performed by Rick Foucheux. It was FANTASTIC! A one-man show with integrating storytelling, multi-media, scientific theory and universal mystery, it, for me, was its own hybrid genre of theater - one where where engagement, education, inspiration, entertainment, resonance, audience interaction and evolutionary invitation converged.
Years ago, I had read his well known Operation Manual for Spaceship Earth and some of his articles and became enthralled with his ideas, vision and wisdom. But it wasn't until I took a design class that I really appreciated the power of physicalizing structure with those ideas - and "nature doing more with less." We were given toothpicks and glue and one egg. We had to create a structure for the egg by which we had to stand on a chair and drop the egg, encased in our toothpick structure, on to the ground...and the egg was not supposed to break. Long story short: only one person succeeded at not breaking the egg as he dropped it with nothing but a few toothpicks to protect it. His secret: he had created a geodesic dome around his egg. He used the least number of toothpicks, and he used them most coherently - just like nature creates. That was a powerful learning for me.
Last night I was reminded of Fuller's work and the magnificence of nature's creativity. I left inspired, re-invigorated and deeply grateful for the legacy of this brilliant, heart-centered pioneer who not only thought the great thoughts, but animated them with great actions and creations - and all is service of the good of "spaceship earth" for which he cared passionately.
A small piece of his story: Until 4.5 years old, when he got his first pair of glasses, he could barely see so he learned to live in and create from his imagination and internal experiences. In kindergarten, while other kids were putting together simple toothpick models based on everyday structures they observed (like box houses), he was designing triangles because they "stayed together - they made sense."
After diverse jobs, many hardships, and no particular direction, at age 32 he had a mystical experience that changed the course of his life while walking in the streets of NYC. He emerged from that experience committed to think for himself, discovering and speaking Truth. And in a way that is in integrity with nature. He wanted to find "the coordinate system that nature employs." Later on, in thinking about patterns, and especially "patterns in a mutable kind of way," he later discovered (what he had hints of intuitively at a young age) that "the triangle is the only stable structure" which eventually led to the development of the geodesic dome among his countless contributions. (More on him here).
Below are bits of his wisdom, as shared in the performance last night (in no particular order).• It is only through feeling that you are truly yourself. Thinking and knowledge can be learned form others,
but feelings can only from within you.
• Change is the normal state, as opposed to the Newtonian view where rest was normal
and motion was abnormal.
• Out of information comes synchronized principles.
• Nature is about doing more with less. Economists, on the other hand, have been about doing
less with more.
• I m not a re-former. I am a new-former.
• We need to re-orient production away from weaponry - away from killing-ry to living-ry.
• Behavior of the whole is unpredictable by the behavior of it parts.
• Oppositeness re-generates life.
• Each individual is a verb.
• You as an individual must have courage to go by the truth or you will be swayed by the crowd.
Only the individual can let go of his fear and plunge into the design science revolution.
• To reform the environment is the design responsibility of Spaceship Earth.
• Selfishness made sense when humanity didn't know there was enough to go around.
Now that we know there is, selfishness does not make sense anymore.
• All is expanding and contracting.
• We need idle time. It allows people to think, "What do I see that needs to be done?"
• Intuition is the key to thinking - the contact between the conscious and the subconscious.
The mystery is ever more entrancing and ever more beautiful.
• You can deceive your brain self, but not your mind self. The mind deals only with the truth.
• Everything is energy. Instead of seeing is as fixed - up or down - see it as inward or outward.
• We have a choice: Utopia or Oblivion. If we make it, we'll make it because of truth and love.
In an age when "visionary" and "renaissance" is found in every other manifesto, I think we need a more discerning word or phrase to do justice to the Bucky Fullers. For now, I am feeling gratitude for the "verb" of who he was.
The image is of the geodesic dome donated to Expo '67 in Montreal.
Some of the Principles of Creative Emergence include:
• The whole is greater than the sum of its parts
• It contains surprises and can seem like magic when they come together at a new level of coherence
• It is an evolutionary unfolding
• It "yes ands" - transcends and includes that which came before
it; ever increasing in inclusivity
• The known emerges form the unknown (the void) by a creative,
evolutionary impulse
• It increase in depth, complexity and purposefulness
• It is conscious and always seeking more life
An article on the web site, Integral Life, called "Exploring the Technium" that focuses on artificial intelligence and emergence of "conscious" technology speaks to these principles and others. To read the whole article, which is written by Corey W. deVos - about a dialogue between philosopher Ken Wilber and Kevin Kelly, Senior Maverick at Wired Magazine - click here. While I enjoyed the entire article and it's focus on intelligent machines, for spacial limitations on this blog, I have extracted the following parts particularly focused on emergence in general (which can be applied to all human systems):
The universe is evolving. From atoms to molecules, to simple single-cell organisms, to multi-cellular critters with increasingly complex nervous systems—evolution is a story of emergence, as new forms and new realities spring into being, new wholes that are themselves greater than the sum of
their parts. But emergence is a mysterious affair, as noted by Mark Bedau, Professor of Philosophy and Humanities at Reed College: "...logically possible, it is uncomfortably like magic."
...While humanity can be currently seen as the pinnacle of evolution in this corner of the universe, we are by no means the final word in this extraordinary story, and will one day be inevitably subsumed by something greater than ourselves—something that will undoubtedly emerge through us, while becoming something much more than us. Humanity represents a process of evolution becoming self-aware, which means that we are now actively participating with evolution, midwives to a future that simultaneously transcends and includes the entire human condition...
...In the beginning, there is nothing. There is nothing at all. There are no stars, no moon, no mountains or ocean or sky. There isn't even nothingness, not even the absence of absence. There is only pure reality—infinite, boundless, and silent. There is only pure unobstructed Awareness...
...A tiny point of light, impossibly bright, pierces through the Void. It is barely a pinprick, a pixel of light that somehow contains all space, all time, and all possibility...A universe is being born...
...Armed with creativity, curiosity, and conscience, man begins to fashion tools for himself—technological systems that evolve from foraging to horticulture, to agriculture, to industry, to informational, and beyond. These technologies pull worldviews up through increasing waves of depth, meaning, and inclusivity, growing from archaic to magic, to mythic, to rational, to pluralistic, to integral, and on into the future...
...Slowly mankind begins to understand its role in this evolutionary unfolding...mankind feels this very same creative force smoldering in his mortal heart...
...And so the evolutionary impulse continues to surge into the future, following the inherent tilt of the universe toward creative novelty...
"The creative genius will always look for a multiplicity of ways to approach a subject. It is this willingness to entertain different perspectives and alternative approaches that broadens their thinking and opens them up to new information and the new possibilities that the rest of us don’t see. Einstein was once asked what the difference was between him and the average person. He said that if you asked the average person to find a needle in a haystack, the person would stop when he or she found a needle. He, on the other hand, would tear through the entire haystack looking for all possible needles.
"When Charles Darwin first set to solve the problem of evolution, he did not analytically settle on the most promising approach to natural selection and then process the information in a way that would exclude all other approaches. Instead, he initially organized his thinking around significant themes, principally eight, of the problem, which gave his thinking some order but with the themes connected loosely enough so that he could easily alter them singly or in groups. His themes helped him capture his thoughts about evolutionary change by allowing him to reach out in many alternative directions at once and pulling seemingly unrelated information into a coalescent body of thought.
"Darwin used his themes to work through many points that led to his theory of evolution by helping him to comprehend what is known and to guide in the search for what is not yet known. He used them as a way of classifying the relation of different species to each other, as a way to represent the accident of life, the irregularity of nature, the explosiveness of growth, and of the necessity to keep the number of species constant...By adjusting and altering the number of themes and connections, Darwin was able to keep his thought fluid and to bring about adaptive shifts in his thinking. He played the critic, surveying his own positions; the inventor, devising new solutions and ideas; and the learner, accumulating new facts not prominent before."
The highest levels of creativity happen when using an integration of both sides of the brain - both the non-linear "flow" of the right, and linear "structure" of the left.
Harvard neuroanatomist, Jill Bolte Taylor, suffered a stroke n 1996. She then used her own brain as her "lab" over the next several years. In an 18-minute video of her speech at the last TED conference, she recounts the details of her stroke and the insights she cultivated as a result . She explores the differences between the left and right sides of the brain, and how by losing use of the left (sequential processing) side, she fully experienced the right (parallel processing) side - and the euphoria, transcendence, and consciousness that came with that. After 8 years, she regained full use fo both sides, and now it as choice which side to use when and how.
It is worth watching through to the end. See the video here:
When-a-brain-scientist-suffers-a-stroke video
There is an ever growing trend in looking at neuroplacticity and creativity. Scientific research shows the more we use our brain in novel and different ways, the more placticity it generates - and the more adaptable, pliable, and innovative we become.
Neuroleadership brings that knowledge into the business world. It is an emerging field of study focused on bringing knowledge of the brain and how it works into the area of leadership development, management training, education, consulting and coaching. It involves looking at leadership abilitie through the lens of neuroscience. They are having a summit in NYC in October. Check it out at www.neuroleadership.org.
I found this a fascinating video of the universe in its 10 dimensions based on String Theory - "dimensionalizing" itself just like in any creative process:
A few years ago I completed an intensive 5 year program in a psycho-physical healing modality called coreSomatics (at the Somatic Institute, Pittsburgh, developed and led by Kay Miller). coreSomatics is informed by depth psychology, Gestalt Psychology, the Feldenkrais Method, the Alexander Technique, other body-mind practices, and the expressive arts. During the program and since, I felt especially drawn to the philosophy and practices of Moshe Feldenkrais, the creator of The Feldenkrais Method. In describing movement - through awareness - in the body, the goal, he said, was to:
Make the impossible possible
The possible easy
And the easy elegant
It works. People practicing his Awareness Through Movement system can achieve miracles at making the" impossible" elegant. I have since come to believe this to be a universal evolutionary principle, true for all creative endeavors. We often do not get to see the elegance emerge because too often we just stop at the impossible.
When we get a vision or an impulse to innovate (which we actually do all the time if we pause to be in awareness), if we change the question of from "Is this possible?" (which often results in a no if there is no previous evidence to back up the vision) to "How might we make this possible?" (which assumes that is already possible, despite the lack of historical evidence, and we just need to discover the ways to create it forth) we are on the evolving path to elegance.
The term Creative Emergence unfolded in my consciousness 10 years ago when observing what was happening an "emergent" co-creative process in which I was immersed with a business partner. I had not heard it before, but something amazing was happening in our process where there was no compromise - where the whole of what we were creating was greater than the sum of both of our contributions.
As I started working with clients using creative emergence processes - by discovery in real time - I observed some reoccurring patterns and compiled "44 Principles of Creative Emergence" (to go in my book some day). Shortly after, I discovered that Emergence was one of the more well known principles talked about in the complexity sciences. That opened a whole new level of understanding - what I had been learning about emergent creativity fit in perfectly with what I started learning about complex adaptive systems and emergence in the natural world - and could be applied in human organizational systems. Then, I started studying improv theater and found the improv principles fit in with both the principles of creative emergence as well as the ones in complexity sciences. Suddenly, things fit more into place in my mind - we live in a creatively emergent universe and these patterns can be found everywhere.
Today I found this article entitled Emergence Processes by Tom Wiscombe at http://www.emergentarchitecture.com/pdfs/OZJournal.pdf. Here are some excerpts:
Emergence isn’t interested in parts; it is the science of wholes...
There has been a lot of talk about emergence since it was ‘discovered’ as a subset of complexity theory in the 1980s, that discovery linking back to the emergence of systems theory in the 1920s. Beyond the journalistic definition, ie. ‘to arise’ or ‘come to being’, as in ‘emerging artists’, emergence refers in fact to a very particular scientific phenomenon: the indivisibility and irreversibility of wholes-- be they structures, organizations, behaviors, or properties. In particular, emergence refers to the universal way in which small parts of systems, driven by very simple behaviors, will tend toward coherent organizations with their own distinctly different behaviors.
The natural world gives us the most vivid, real-time examples - the hive, swarming, flocking - where independent parts snap into formation and take on complex emergent behavior, behavior which is not traceable back to the behavior of the parts. Nevertheless, emergent phenomena are natural in a broader sense, and have been proven to be equally useful in describing the complex behavior of cultural, political, economic, and urban organizations.
Even the organization of conciousness into what is often loosely referred to as ‘intelligence’ turns out to be best modelled from the bottom-up as a swarm of neurons exhibiting emergent behavior. More interesting still, paradigm shifts, or changes of collective mind, appear to also be best understood as sudden coherences emerging from multitudes of independent feelings about the world. Growth and evolution, and the drive toward more complex forms of organization, therefore, are never additive and linear, but rather consistently based on the dynamics and transformative potential of emergence...
This means setting multiple processes and techniques in motion...rather than focusing on a singular formal solutions.
I had the pleasure of being in scientist-philosopher-mystic Nassim Haramein's session at the Institute of Noetic Sciences conference a while back. His was one of the most interesting presentations. A multi-dimensional pioneer, he is working on a unified field theory he calls the “Holofractographic Universe.” I deeply resonated with what he was saying - not through the lens of a scientist, but through my lens of the living, fertile, fractaled, integrative, shape-forming, creative universe. He has mathematically and scientifically discovered what creators and mystics have always known - that we create by feedback and change and that we are all beings of infinite creative potential - in a very literal sense: the vacuum is not empty - it is not nothing. It is actually highly organizing and always communicating - an "unknown" that is actually fertile with creative potential. He founded The Resonance Project Foundation. You can see him speak on the Crossing the Event Horizon video on YouTube.
I found this write-up of him at The Laughing Coach Newsletter:
Nassim Haramein, a world traveler, was born in Geneva, Switzerland. As early as 9 years old, Nassim was already developing the basis for a holographic hyper-dimensional theory of everything he calls the “Holofractographic Universe.”
The Holofractographic Universe theory is a unified field theory resulting from over two decades of investigation into the geometry of hyper-dimensional systems and their relation to the creation of three-dimensional reality and all of its forces—including consciousness.
The premise of The Holofractographic Unified Field Theory research is that space is not empty, it is full. It is full of an energy that, through a specific set of fractal geometry, creates atomic structures that are themselves made of 99.999% space. It is a sea of electromagnetic flux we call the zero point energy, which has been demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, since its mechanical effects have now been measured in laboratories.
This is nothing new, most ancient civilizations believed in a primordial soup of energy embedded within the fabric of space and in a primary geometric pattern coordinating creation. Later many of the world's great thinkers, including such scientists as Albert Einstein, Nicolas Tesla, Buckminster Fuller, and Walter Russell, believed in an all prevailing energy at the base of the fabric of space.
Haramein's findings have resulted in theoretical and practical developments based on a specific geometric array fundamental to creation. This theory has now been presented to the standard scientific community with great success, and his papers on the Holofractographic Universe will soon be followed by a book for the layman entitled "Crossing the Event Horizon."
Nassim's investigation of the geometry of hyperspace has combined quantum physics and cosmological understandings of universal forces with other sciences such as biology and philosophy, resulting in advanced unification computations that, astonishingly, relates to ancient codes left in monuments and documents around the world—including the Bible, the I Ching, the Mayan Sacred Calendar, Pyramids, and Egyptian temples. The results of his research may bring our planet to a new dimension of understanding and existence, one which was predicted by the ancients to arrive at this time in history.
Nassim is fluent in both French and English. He conducts workshops and seminars on his theories to help bring an awareness that is greatly needed in these times. His lectures are designed around his life experiences beginning with childhood illuminations and culminating in the discovery of a technology and united view that seems to have been left encoded by ancient civilizations for us to rediscover. His work may lead to some of the most important scientific, philosophic and technological discoveries in written history.
©Copyright 2000 by Nassim Haramein
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