Creative Thinkers

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Contributor Comment by Tass Schwab on February 2, 2013 at 10:54

I love this group! WOW... so much to read. Thank you Anthony! Namaste to you for sharing this. 

Comment by Anthony Kreiner on July 9, 2010 at 9:18

The Creative Process.
Creativity is the use of the imagination to produce something new. What makes it difficult for most is that we are not taught how to evoke the state of mind that makes the useful associations that lead to unique ideas. Creative expression is a process within which inspiration is a flash of illumination.

Herman Helmholtz first described the stages … saturation, incubation, and illumination. It is essential that one understand what this process means, for one needs to facilitate the process by helping to create the right conditions. The problem-solver, after focusing on the problem, must anticipate and therefore prepare for when the unconscious gives birth to illumination.

Elmer and Alyce Green, biofeedback researchers: The entrance, or key, to all these inner processes [is] a particular state of consciousness in which the gap between conscious and unconscious processes is voluntarily narrowed, and temporarily eliminated when useful. When that self-regulated reverie is established, the body can apparently be programmed at will, and the instructions given will be carried out, emotional state can be dispassionately examined, accepted or rejected, or totally supplanted by others deemed more useful, and problems insoluble to the normal state of consciousness can be elegantly resolved.

Comment by Timothy Glasby on May 16, 2010 at 16:42

Freedom is the very source of CREATIVITY for both individuals and society.

Comment by Anthony Kreiner on October 29, 2009 at 22:33

Creative insights and illuminations can be explained in the G.Wallas model (1926) by a 5 stage process:

1. preparation (preparatory work on a problem that focuses the individual's mind on the problem and explores the problem's dimensions),

2. incubation (where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind and nothing appears externally to be happening),

3. intimation (the creative person gets a 'feeling' that a solution is on its way),

4. illumination or insight (where the creative idea bursts forth from its preconscious processing into conscious awareness); and

5. verification (where the idea is consciously verified, elaborated, and then applied).

Creativity is a complex subject, but what should be clear with regard to this process, is that very few people dare to question how it works. There are serious barriers (negative conditioning & prejudice) to creative thinking that need to be overcome.

Consider answering the following:
* How good are you at mind-mapping?
* Have you developed your speed reading skills?
* How does speed reading work?

Nothing new here; has been around for decades; so any kid going off to varsity should have already developed these skills, and if not ... ???? Go google bridging programs and let me know if you find anything worthwhile, for it seems to me that we are failing to acknowledge human potential.

Re-visit Maslow 's work on 'The Creative Attitude' to explore the nature of the 'thinking' required, and what transition to self-actualization implies. There is a death-rebirth process going on that may be of interest.

Comment by Anthony Kreiner on August 25, 2009 at 9:27

BEING ALL THERE
I've been re-discovering Maslow and came across this document on 'The Structure of the Genius or Flow State' by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Re-discovering Maslow is about claiming back what scientism and modernity has destroyed over the past hundred years, creating what Ken Wilber calls a FLATLAND.
Download the pdf file from the self-actualizing site, a synopsis that introduces the need to develop higher order skills.

Comment by Anthony Kreiner on August 3, 2009 at 12:17

Peak Experience
Ref site Free Online Library
Maslow (1971a) goes on to elucidate what happens in moments of peak experience, of here-now immersion and self-forgetfulness, which he also calls "the creative attitude":

1. Total fascination with the matter-in-hand, getting lost in the present, detached from time and place;

2. Giving up the past to the extent that it is "an inert, undigested foreign body" of platitudes, assumptions, mistaken beliefs, or unresolved conflicts.

3. Giving up the future to the extent that it devalues the present. This kind of forgetting about the future or giving up being apprehensive about it is a prerequisite to total involvement with the present;

4. Innocence, "being naked in the situation, guileless, without a priori expectations, without 'shoulds' or 'oughts,' without fashions, fads, dogmas, habits, or other pictures-in-the-head of what is proper, normal, 'right,' as being ready to receive whatever happens to be the case without surprise, shock, indignation, or denial";

5. Narrowing of consciousness, less distracted by obligations, duties, fears and hopes in relation to others in our life, which in turn means that we become much more ourselves, our authentic selves;

6. Loss of ego: self-forgetfulness, loss of self-consciousness due to being totally absorbed in non-self rather than observing oneself like a spectator or a critic;

7. Inhibiting Force of Consciousness (of Self). Consciousness of self can be a locus of doubts and judgments and can inhibit spontaneity when the self-observing ego eclipses the experiencing ego.

8. Fears disappear. "For the time being, we are courageous and confident, unafraid, un-anxious, un-neurotic, not sick". Our depressions, conflicts, ambivalence, worries, problems, and even our physical pains disappear.

9. Lessening of defenses and inhibitions.

10. Strength and courage. Such courage can take the form of independence and self-sufficiency, sometimes to the extreme of stubbornness, and strength of character or ego-strength, sometimes to the extreme of arrogance.

11. Acceptance: the positive attitude. We give up being critical, skeptical and judgmental, instead allowing experience to flow in around us.

12. Trust vs. trying, controlling, striving. One rests in a basic trust in the self and in the world, giving up the attempt to control and dominate. Maslow offers some examples of experiences that require a relaxed "letting things happen" approach rather than trying, straining and controlling.

13. Taoistic receptivity. An attitude of receptivity and noninterference is evident, of respectful attention and acceptance of things "as they are". This attitude applies to a problem or obstacle, to available resources, to any situation encountered, or to other people. It amounts to an eagerness for things to unfold as they will, according to their innate nature, without being manipulated or forced.

14. Integration of the B-cognizer (vs. dissociation). In the act of creating, or experiencing peak moments, one tends to be whole, integrated, all of a piece. "Here-now-allness is less dissociated (split) and more one".

15. Permission to dip into primary process. Primary process (poetic, metaphoric, mystic, primitive, archaic, childlike) allows access to recovery of aspects of the unconscious, liberating the person from the limitations of the conscious, analytic, rational intellect.

16. Aesthetic perceiving rather than abstracting. This form of perceiving is an attitude of non-interfering savoring, non-intruding appreciation, which keeps one from confusing the map for the territory. "For many confused scientists and philosophers, the equation, the concept, or the blueprint have become more real than the phenomenological reality itself".

17. Fullest spontaneity. Our capabilities adapt to the changing situation quickly, effortlessly, and flexibly just as fine dancers mutually adapt to each other, or as water flows into cracks and contours.

18. Fullest expressiveness (of uniqueness). Without effortful striving, the only determinant of outcome is the deepest-level intrinsic nature of the person and the interacting environment together, forming a fusion.

19. Fusion of the Person with the World. Maslow quotes Hokusai: "If you want to draw a bird, you must become a bird".

Maslow (1994/1970) eventually began to distinguish transcending self-actualizing individuals, described as exhibiting "unitive perception," or the "fusion of the eternal with the temporal, the sacred with the profane" from what he called non-transcending self-actualizers (1971). He described such people as "more essentially practical, realistic, mundane, capable, and secular people, living more in the here and now world ... 'doers' rather than meditators or contemplators, effective and pragmatic rather than aesthetic, reality-testing and cognitive rather than emotional and experiencing". Due to this observation, in his unpublished critique of self-actualization theory (1996), Maslow thought that "self-actualization is not enough" for a full picture of the optimally functioning human being.

Comment by Anthony Kreiner on July 23, 2009 at 13:26

Creativity and ANXIETY. The techno-devices that are designed to enhance our personal power are in fact reducing it. A reduction of personal power creates anxiety and a cycle that slowly kills intelligence and development. JC Pearce refers to anxiety as a state of mind that feeds itself, and that isn't made of thought, but influences thought. He says it is like a contagion that creates unease and even guilt. He claims that 'the dominance of left-hemisphere thinking may result then, not from its inherent superiority, but from the anxiety and powerlessness this one-sided mental action produces'.
I agree with this because ANXIETY is an incapacitating state of mind, and our intelligence is being hobbled to technology. The counter as I see it, is to spend more time developing right brain faculties that computers should never taught.

Comment by Anthony Kreiner on July 15, 2009 at 15:00

"TRIZ" is the (Russian) acronym for the "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving." G.S. Altshuller and his colleagues in the former USSR developed the method between 1946 and 1985. TRIZ is an international science of creativity that relies on the study of the patterns of problems and solutions, not on the spontaneous and intuitive creativity of individuals or groups. More than three million patents have been analyzed to discover the patterns that predict breakthrough solutions to problems, and these have been codified within TRIZ.

TRIZ is spreading into corporate use across several parallel paths - it is increasingly common in Six Sigma processes, in project management and risk management systems, and in organizational innovation initiatives.

Generalized Solutions: TRIZ research began with the hypothesis that there are universal principles of creativity that are the basis for creative innovations, and that advance technology. The idea was that if these principles could be identified and codified, they could be taught to people to make the process of creativity more predictable. The short version of this is:
Somebody someplace has already solved this problem (or one very similar to it.) Today, creativity involves finding that solution and adapting it to this particular problem.

The three primary findings of the last 65 years of research are as follows:
1. Problems and solutions are repeated across industries and sciences. By classifying the "contradictions" (see later) in each problem, you can predict good creative solutions to that problem.
2. Patterns of technical evolution tend to be repeated across industries and sciences.
3. Creative innovations often use scientific effects outside the field where they were developed.

Much of the practice of TRIZ consists of learning these repeating patterns of problems-solutions, patterns of technical evolution and methods of using scientific effects, and then applying the general TRIZ patterns to the specific situation that confronts the developer.

Visit the site Triz-journal.com

Comment by Anthony Kreiner on July 9, 2009 at 21:43

Difference between creativity and innovation
Creativity refers more to producing new ideas, approaches or actions, while innovation refers to generating and applying such creative ideas. Innovation can refer to the entire process by which an organization generates creative new ideas and converts them into novel commercial products and services. Creativity can then apply to the generation of novel ideas as a step within the innovation process.

Comment by Anthony Kreiner on July 2, 2009 at 21:33

From my blog: Test your right-brain skills. I am offering a FREE Brain Profile to anyone who can solve the puzzle at Ultimate Puzzle

The challenge you face is to discover a thinking process linked to the ancient mysteries: the Philosopher's Stone etc. Discover a right-brain heuristic that is the key to higher mind.

Right-brain R1 thinkers have the best chance of success for they have a preference for thinking in the quadrant where the necessary synthesis takes place to solve kōans.

A kōan is a story, dialogue, question, or statement containing aspects that defy rational understanding, yet accessible to intuition. Kōans reflect the enlightened or awakened state: confounding the left-brain rational thought in order to switch over to another level of awareness. Zen practitioners meditate on kōans during meditation using critical analysis to validate an experience of insight (kensho) or awakening. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Koan

What makes this the ULTIMATE puzzle is the potential to tap into unconscious knowledge, making this a creative thinking system.