Taoism

Creativity and the Celestial Mind

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In my readings of Taoist mysticism, there’s an idea from some works (that dates back a bit over 1000 years by my guess) that describe the Human Mind and the Celestial Mind. The Human Mind is often described in terms of Yin, the receptive force of the universe, but a very pathological form – grasping, distracted, etc. Meanwhile the Celestial Mind, the enlightened mind, is described as Yang, the creative force, but concealed by the Human Mind. The creative power and the receptive form-giver are out of wack.

I found this concept helped appreciate my artistic creativity and it’s helped me in my meditations. In fact, I plan to write on this more.

The metaphor of the Human versus Celestial Mind is a helpful metaphor understand meditation. Our human mind, pursuing various activities like breathing, clarifies and calms itself, so something else emerges – the Celestial Mind. We’ve probably all been there – a state of clarify, powerful, subtle, and of course something we keep getting back to again and again as we keep getting away fro it.

With this metaphor of this Celestial Mind, this clear and calm yet somehow powerful and creative force, I began noticing something about my creativity.

When I was really creative, such as with my surrealist art, there was something about it. It was emergent, it wasn’t exactly part of my “everyday mind.” After a good art session I felt different, in touch with something, though it was almost like there was a hole in my regular self that something else poured through. It felt similar to what happened in meditations, those moments where you’re gone but something is there.

I also noticed similar experiences with energy work. Meditating on bodily energies (wether you consider them more metaphor like me or not) leads to a kind of clarity and a sense of something deeper within us. When you’re aware of your body, you’re aware of all the STUFF going on. This was also similar to that sense of creativity, of touching something greater.

Using the above metaphor of Human and Celestial Mind, of a pathological form of Yin and a concealed Yang, I appreciated the meditative element of creativity. When you really get going something shifts, the everyday you fades away and something else comes out. The “you” experienced in meditation and the creative you are similar if not the same thing.

I even began noticing how taking time to work on creativity seemed to correspond with better experiences in meditation. The way to the Celestial Mind was primed by both.

I hope to keep exploring this idea, as I find it in a few Taoist Documents, and I think it’s useful. I also now see how Creativity really can be a kind of meditation, and how it enhances our experiences. That Celestial Mind is there, and that’s one way to be in touch with it.

  • Xenofact

The Intake

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The five colors blind the eye.
The five sounds deafen the ear.
The five tastes harm the palate.
Dashing about riding and hunting injure the mind.
Rare goods lead one astray.
The sage is for the root not the eye.
They take one, discard the other.

-Tao Te Ching Chapter 12, interpretation

This chapter from the Tao Te Ching is one that I hadn’t thought of initially, just assuming it was about getting caught up in things. Over the last few years I’d come to realize how profound it is, and I have to say the internet played a huge role in that.

Not using the internet for research. But watching how overloaded with crap it is, and how it sells us crap. Does it seem like we’re overloaded with things to buy? Is there endless hype and things you’re told you want? Are you trying to keep up with the latest hyped game and getting the graphic card you’ll need? The internet in Web 3.0 is a gigantic device meant to overload the senses, keep us online, sell ads, and sell products.

And, as I became disgusted with the state of Web 3.0, I began to really get this chapter.

Humans can only process so much information. Some of that is the limitations of our senses and systems, but some of it is a blessing because we’re information, and taking in too much ruins who we are. To be who you are, you can’t drown yourself in information, but process it so you grow effectively. Information is a lot like nutrition, you choose the right input, the right amount, and you’re healthy and functional.

Web 3.0 is a mixture of buffet, processed food, and force feeding for the mind. It’s not good for us, and people are using it to drain our attention, money, and time.

So now I get this quote. Too much stimuli, unselected and unchosen, numbs us, distracts us, and misguides us. We have to be selective, we have to keep aware of who we are, centered, so we don’t numb and distract ourselves. It also keeps us from being exploited.

Its a reminder of how some common sense has been written down over the aeons . . . and how we have to keep rediscovering it.

-Xenofact

We All Deserve Better

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“You must will the liberation of all beings; you cannot handle attainment with a careless or arrogant attitude.”

– opening of chapter VI of Cleary’s translation of The Secret of the Golden Flower

The above sentence got me thinking in my meditations. This has been a thread through Taoism for ages, that liberation comes with wanting to share it, fitting the tale of it’s creation (the story is some Taoists channeled it from Lu Dong-bin). It echoes with some of the fusion Buddhist sentiments from the time it was published. What is the role of wishing the best for others in the attainment (of the Tao, Enlightenment, etc.)?

So, simply, I started thinking about it, and it’s one of those moments where a few simple thoughts opens your mind. So of course I share it.

I realized how better the world would be, how happier people would be if they were more “practically” enlightened. If people were driven to be better, to be happier. It wasn’t just willing the liberation of others, it was hoping they’d seek to be happier that way.

I realized how hoping the best for others improved my own actions and meditation. I realized maybe I could help others in my practice, but also that they were fellow travelers on a journey. I wasn’t above them, or behind them, or whatever – we on the same path and it was best to do it together.

Finally I realized how people deserved better. Yes, even the assholes.

Call it Samsara or the mundane mind or whatever. Life didn’t come with a user manuals so between sages and gods and philosophers we’ve tried to figure it all the hell out. A lot of us yes, even the worst of us, could be better, could have been better. But we’re all here just trying vaguely to figure it out. So many of us would be better if we had a better idea of just what the hell we were doing.

We don’t have a full roadmap. We deserve better. We don’t deserve to suffer, and we don’t deserve to be assholes who cause suffering. This doesn’t mean I spare the assholes per se, but I can at least know things could have been better.

I’d like us to have better and we deserve it. Even when it’s time to slap some assholes down, it can be with some regret that it happened.

It really is best when the journey to self-improvement of whatever kind isn’t alone. It takes down your boundaries and your ego, and opens you up to others – and maybe to the you you want to be.

Amazing one a few sentences can do, can’t it?

You deserve better.

– Xenofact