Tapping into Universal Creative Energy

Sound is invisible. Yet, it exists. Love is the same. You can't grab it. Yet, that feeling is very much there. And the universal energy you need to tap into for your creative work is invisible too. Yet that too, exists. The paradox is that the moment you accept this intangibility, it actually becomes practical. Today, let's make that energy more real, diving into both the soul and the science, and discuss how to tap into it better. Flow... here we come!

Tapping into Universal Creative Energy

How Inspiration Strikes

When we talk about inspiration 'hitting us' or use words like 'the muse' or 'creative energy', it always feels very intangible. It's also hard to explain to other people sometimes, when you are asked questions on where the idea for that presentation, script, business concept, book, article, science breakthrough or piece of music came from. Surely, it didn't appear in the ether?

Actually, it did. In creative reality, that 'ether' is very real. So real even, it can be seen as the very foundation of all human inventions, art and progress. It's just not as understood nor accepted as much these days, as it was in older eras of human civilization, especially in times of ancient Greek philosophy.

The confusion is understandable. It is after all, strange that even though you can't see or touch ideas, there are still formed into your head. They are there, appearing to you, coming from some sort of unexplained ethereal thing that - like music and love - cannot be touched, yet still becomes part of the fabric of reality.

Now, for the purposes of this article, we're not going to try and explain everything about that muse here. We'll take a few fun sidesteps, but we're mostly just going to explain those things we need to know to make it more practical and easier to tap into. So, or order to train that creative muscle, let's have a look at three basic things that make your universal energy flow.

The first one is creativity itself: what is it exactly? The second is emotion: how and why do we connect? The third is balance: what is the best mindset for success?

What is creativity?

Creativity. Also one of those intangible things, right? Well, actually, it's not. It's physical. At its most basic, creativity is not some arty-farty-thingie, it's a very real, and very important survival mechanism that links synapses of stored information together to form a new idea (in most cases, not all... I'll get back to the absolutely fascinating exception, and actual scientific proof of the 'muse' in a bit!).

Creativity in its core is this: the ability to link two things together to create a new outcome. It started in our evolution as a method to link two bits of information together in order to survive. Some may link these bits of data faster or better than others. Yet, as it is a survival tool the animal kingdom has developed, everyone has it, everyone can do it. Creativity is in the DNA of every single person on Earth. Arguably even, with every single living entity on Earth.

For instance, you've noticed a flock of swallows coming by one day. That's the first bit. The next day, you feel that the temperature has risen and you see that the sun is out. That's the second bit. A year later, you again see a flock of swallows fly by. You connect both bits of stored info and conclude: spring is coming. And you start sowing seeds for the crops that year the next day. Creativity is that simple. Survival.

Our brains have evolved to connect many more 'bits' than two, all the way into the ability to work out quantum field theory, write a complete opera in our minds, save Apollo 13 mid flight or paint in such a way that it looks as if it's three dimensional (thank you Van Gogh!). In fact, the connections in your mind are so vast and numerous, they even put the entire Milky Way - with it's 400 billion stars - to shame.

And these connections start to fire more rapidly when we are either in danger, or in a very relaxed, confident state of mind. Emotion then plays its part.

The Role of Emotion for The Muse

Emotions too, are a product of evolution. They are a communication method, playing out in our bodies, faces, voices and eyes, to convey information. For instance, the emotion 'disgust' originated as a way to show our brethren that a fruit is rotten. They could see in your face when you took a bite: don't eat that fruit.

This goes for all emotions. Anger of course, is a defense mechanism that spurs your body to gain control over a situation, blood flowing to the upper body and all (hence, the red face). And seeing love in someone's eyes is important both for procreation, and for the trust needed as social animals.

In other words, like creativity, emotions are survival mechanisms too. The practical key for you, is to find out what emotions drive your own creativity. What is it that I feel and why, when I'm driven to create something? I'll give you a personal example.

Turning Emotions Into Output

For me, there are too emotions that drive me to creative output: when I feel pressured, and when I feel balanced. The two are linked, but at different moments they kick in.

Part of my character is that I'm a risk-taker. I'm one of those people that doesn't thrive if there's no danger. I just procrastinate on the couch with a bag of crisps, being lazy. I'm not an adrenaline seeker (I don't come up with a new book while I'm base-jumping hahaha ;) but I do thrive on emotional risks. Of course, I don't like insecurities, nobody does. But I do tend to start creating when insecurity strikes. In a weird way, pressure actually makes me feel at ease. My best ideas come when I sense there is some kind of obstacle, challenge or danger. You turn the feeling 'around' into something hopefully more useful.

Although I'm definitely not above some creative self-indulgence and seeking praise from others, I'm not telling you this to make you think I'm cool. I'm showing it to you so you can see how emotional self-awareness translates into practical output: it is linked to my muse and me forming ideas. And I'm just scratching the surface here: being aware of your own vast array of emotions is an infinite source of ideas.

Turning Emotion Into a Finished Product

Yet, starting the journey of creating is for me vastly different than finishing it. If I need to finish a creative piece, whether it be my music, a storytelling lecture or an article such as this, I need rest, relaxation and balance: the polar opposite of an emotional adrenaline rush. Most of the time my creative starting point is a very big emotion. But I cannot finish those ideas if I'm not relaxed, confident, even stoic.

A good way to explain this is by looking at hip-hop artists who come from rougher lives. The best work from someone like Tupac Shakur came from terrible circumstances. In his famous song Dear Mamma he tells us about selling drugs ("rocks") in a dangerous criminal life to make ends meet for his mother ("put money in your mailbox"). It's a perfect example to explain the survival-mechanism that is creativity: under tremendous pressure to survive, he creatively connected the dots in a song on an emotional level we can all understand.

The legend goes however, that he made over a hundred versions of that particular song before settling on the one that was released. And that's exactly my point.

From experience I can tell you that's just about doing the grinding work, plain and simple (check out the article on the Yin and Yang of Manifesting on Medium here and or on my own blog here). You need to sit down every day, mix and listen very intently and ban all distractions from the studio. Even if that's a 'Thug's Life'. It's usually about getting a good night's sleep and enough good food to stay concentrated, calm and focused. In other words, being balanced.

How Balance Creates Output

What that balance between creative highs and the monotonous grind is exactly, is for everyone, different. Some need more balance in their lives than others, depending on your context. Yet, without at least some sort of healthy balance in your mind and daily life, you simply wouldn't be able to finish your piece. Think of it as 'creating workable circumstances'. They don't need to be ideal, but they do need to work.

The embodiment of both high emotion and total balance is of course, Bruce Lee. He teaches us that if you train yourself to deal with all the conflict in your life - both physically and mentally - you can reach a level of balance so incredible, that you would even know when a punch is coming... blindfolded. You connect to something more than your senses, an extra sensory 'ether' as you learn to trust your feeling so unconditionally, saving you from that punch.

And it's that balance that ultimately connects you to the muse, the universal creative energy. In fact, the more relaxed you are under pressure, the more you connect with the world around you, the more ideas you get, and the better you recognize the signals that one of life's 'punches' is coming. In other words, if you wish to create creative highs, you need more than the adrenaline: a balanced state of mind.

Connecting to Universal Creative Energies

The key insight here is that reaching that mental state of balance is often not (directly) associated with the creative work you do. For me personally, I go to concerts or a party or some sort other form of high energy stuff to get inspiration. But I make it a point to surf, go on long walks with the dog, regularly do spa visits, do QiGong or meditation or yoga or boxing or running... You're catching my drift. Things that get you out of your mind and into flowing in the now.

In that state, you connect directly to universal creative energy out there... crucially not always with the goal to create. Think of it as an energy that is always there, while you have freedom of choice when to tap into it. Or even better: when you let go of musing on the past (depressive thoughts) or musing on the future (anxious thoughts ) you reach a peaceful, balanced state that makes you 'see' and 'grab' that energy, and mold it into a creative output that suits you. You are in a sense, then a channel of this energy, with free will and power of the output how you wish that energy to come out.

Hence, you get an idea under the shower.

And this brings us to a fascinating peak behind the curtain of this energy.

How Nature Creates

Remember how I told you that most of the time creativity is connecting dots of stored information through synapse activity? There is, as it turns out, another way directly linked to the existence of universal creative energy: thought forms.

An incredible scientist called Michael Levin, has seen and measured proof of cells making creative links to survive and thrive... out of seemingly the 'ether' and not from linking previously stored information. I'm very rough with my science here... but the basic gist is that he observes 'biophysical mechanisms of embodied intelligence' that come from a consciousness beyond the brain and self, originating from what he calls 'Platonic space' (as in Plato describing a 'protos', an original substance from which everything derives).

This, and other practices, link science to tapping into the muse, which feels very full circle, since for the ancient Greeks all ideas in art and science have the same source. Following Levin, Plato and Tupac too, we get to an unexplained substance out there that connects everything - whether you call it chi, Brahman, kabbalah, god, the muse or like me, universal creative energy. The best way to connect to it is to have a calm, clear and loving state of mind, especially under pressure.

And to translate this into the practical, so you have better creative output, it basically comes down to getting your life in some sort of working order, and flowing in the physical now, outside of the focus on your creative output.

The more you let it go, the more creativity will come to you.

Flow like water

What many artists and creative people face, is that paradox. On the one hand we need high emotions and big roller coasters to come up with our ideas. We live in the fast lane. Many of us turn to booze, drugs, volatile relationships or destructive fights to produce those high emotional currents, subconsciously hoping it will give us great big light bulbs over our heads. That's understandable sometimes, as long as we don't hurt others in the process of course, as it's all a journey anyway.

Yet when we go overboard with those desires and not turn into the slow lane, we are not balanced enough to finish our work. We are wasting our energy chasing the muse and we end up not grabbing her, being unproductive.

Personally, I've never been a fan of idealizing the rock star life. I've been there (I'm a musician as well) and it was a lot of fun. But I've gone over the top too, and ended up not creating. As in literally not producing anything for long stretches of time. I feel the balance part is more important than the adrenaline most of the time. Why? Well, if you go overboard, it reduces your connection to the creative universal energy.

In fact, the key to for instance overcoming creative blocks (such as writer's block) is that simple: focus on your life, not your creativity. The block is not in the creative, the block is in your disorganized, unbalanced life, nagging in the back of your mind asking for attention and resolution, that is quite literally blocking you from tapping into universal creative energy, almost like a sound-proof wall blocking you from hearing the music.

You feel that energy when you're either high on adrenaline and feel really alive, or you've just finished a very healthy day in the spa. I say, both are needed to tap into the muse. To quote Bruce Lee: 'It's all in the balance'.

Often life as a creative person is about just sitting down and doing the work, leading a relatively normal and healthy life, without too much hot stuff. Because then, even if you can't see or touch it, the universal energy tends to just come to you. The muse doesn't always need to be chased. It can sometimes be perfectly happy hanging out in Levin's Platonic Space, waiting for you to knock on its door.

And you get your emotional high again anyway, once the work is finished, or you get on stage. You use that, and then you start your next move. Which I guess is the best description of this creative and artistic life: there's always another project in the wings. It's a career, not a party.

I've learned that the hard way. That's why nowadays, the quietest moments, for me, are the moments I slip into the zone.

Love, as always.

Rogier

And plant trees people. Plant trees and check out my book The Whole Story - The Ultimate Guide to Storytelling here !!!

The Whole Story