For me creativity is definately a letting go of self. I am far too judgmental of myself to be creative when sitting outside myself and watching critically. I need to be still and trust my creativity to that open place, that it will arise and it will be OK.

Hi all, have been enjoying the blogg very much thanks Mary, plugging into the sangha this way - YAY!
When I am DELIGHTED with my activity, be it practice, performance, cleaning, conversation, listening or breathing - everything else is burned away.
My grandfather recently gave me his piano. I have faffed around the edges of this instrument for many years, learning scales and chords blah blah, but never really getting it. Most often I could only play for a short while before my hands would seize up with tension. SO now i had this piano, and i spent some time thinking of what my approach would be. I asked piano playing friends, “what do you play thats fun and easy?” Before too long a friend showed me a basic boogie woogie groove, so fun so easy!! Suddenly I could play for ages no probs, generating a huge sound on the piano, reveling, delighting in the sound….
There is an interesting book called Effortless Mastery. (http://wik.ed.uiuc.edu/index.php/Effortless_Mastery)
The advice he gives seasoned musicians low on inspiration is to re cultivate delight in ones TONE, thereby cutting through years of training baggage, getting back to that original wonderment at making a sound. Wow. Great stuff.

I’m with you on that one Mary - this mondo is a new one for me, and as I read old Dongshan’s answer I felt electrified! I think I wasnt expecting such terrific force of answer!

I really relate to this with my guitar studies; sometimes while jamming with my teacher I have the sensation of moving past that safe-and-steady stitching and into a place where fingers and guitar and the very air around us begins cheering with excitement! Then its like nothing can stop the music, and thats also the only time that I really lose my self-consciousness or sense of performance anxiety!

But of course, its not just about losing yourself - you also have to have a deep grounding in technique and musical experience. And thats a lot of preparatory stitching!

Hi, Mary. Thanks for visiting Meditation Matters. Here’s the story you asked about:

Abba Lot went to see Abba Joseph and said to him, ‘Abba as far as I can I say my little office, I fast a little, I pray and meditate, I live in peace and as far as I can, I purify my thoughts. What else an I do?’ Then the old man stood up and stretched his hands towards heaven. His fingers became like ten lamps of fire and he said to him, ‘If you will, you can become all flame.’
~~~
An “office”, by the way, is a prayer service.

You can find the story right here:

Flame story

Thanks for sharing your experience of learning to improvise, Chris—it made me prick up my ears. As you know I used to be a professional musician. Sadly, I never made the transition from professional to amateur flautist. That meant that I left music and never went back to it. Now and then feel a twinge of sadness when I realize that I’m in exile and have left my country of music forever.

How very, very interesting, Mary. I was a professional oboe player and, like you, simply could not become an amateur. I completely gave it up. No regrets. I had a lovely little career but I live a different life now. (I still play piano a little, though.)

Love that singer/song! Thanks for sharing, what a cool link!
xx brigid

“as though the entire earth were spewing flames” shares with me the great passion for what one is doing. An action can be experienced as an everyday affair or the very universe itself bursting through in the moment!

Thank you for leading this interesting and curly discussion about creativity , Mary. Fortunately in some ways, I was never a professional musician, but I did have a sort of musical training as a child on the clarinet and have played it in fits and starts through middle adulthood. I have also sat with the koan ‘who is hearing?’ for several years and didn’t think I even got close to finding an answer, but I did notice that sometimes I began to hear more and listen more. Co-oinidentally (or maybe not ) a few years ago I decided that I really really wanted to be able to play music aurally as in how a singer sings without the intermediary of ‘the dots” that told my fingers what to do. I am at an age that I don’t have to prove anything to anybody so I could just play (both meanings of the word.) I started sitting in on singing and jam sessions playing ever so softly and little by little with the listening and hearing, I am finding the voice. I have also started studying a bit of jazz theory and notice that yes the flattened 3rd which I would play intuitively often does have a lot of power contrasted with another note which creates tension, so it feels that both sides of my brain are coming together - beginning to know deeper the grammar and syntax of this language and merging them with the words and phrases to make a communication to me anyway that is connected and vital.
Also it seems like a personal reconciliation b/c I never really loved the clarinet - it just what I was given to learn as a child, but I do have some technical skill. With another instrument I would have to start from scratch. So it seems like I have taken part of me or part of my childhood done a transmutation to self-acceptance and something that is more relective of what is inside now. And apart from that its fun!
I was listening to an interview by Kim Hill with Oliver Sachs, the neurologist, and he said that there are 30 areas in the brain related to aspects of music - pitch, rhythm, harmony etc and that although one couldn’t identify the brain of a mathematician or writer on post-mortem, one can know a professional musician’s brain because of the denser bundles of fibres across the corpus callosum which joins the two hemispheres. Interesting eh?

Heya Mary, I’m really impressed at how lively your blog is, and only after such a short period of time. Congratulations, keep it up!

Cheers,
Albert | UrbanMonk.Net
Modern personal development, entwined with ancient spirituality.

Mary,

I recently came across your blog, subscribed, and am enjoying it greatly.
I saw this post and read it with some excitement as I am a very firm believer in the value meditation can have on creativity (not to mention things like productivity, mental acuity, etc). Thanks for the post.

PS. I have a blog (doesn’t everyone?) that discussed similar topics and I’ve posted a Meditation Journal which you might find helpful. http://www.zendonut.com

Thanks again. Mike