無 / 有 – Sungwon Peter Choe Online

Aligning Yourself with the Creative Impulse: The Birth of 無/有

Some spiritual philosophers, like Andrew Cohen, teach that it all began with a creative impulse, a “must” akin to God becoming sexually aroused to the point of imperative action. He argues further that the universe has a direction, an evolution that we are not only part of but indeed responsible for. But the creative impulse, that is the stuff universes are born of.

Flow

Can we get a taste of this universal creative impulse as individuals? Can we drink from the celestial creative juices of the Gods? But of course, my love. We often feel the creative impulse coursing through our being when we are “in state”, when we experience “flow”, or the “nimbus” as known in some seduction circles. 

Creativity and Competence

Creativity is the defining characteristic at the pinnacle of achievement. It’s almost cliche. The highly-educated physicist who receives an insight from a chocolate doughnut in a dream. The free, flowing improvisational technique of a jazz guitarist after years of calloused-fingered training. In NLP, they have a model for competence within a deep skill: 

• unconscious incompetence – unaware that you’re a bumbling fool
• conscious incompetence – aware that you need a lot of work
• conscious competence – aware that you’re kickin’ ass, and knowing how you do it
• unconscious competence –  not even thinking about it how you naturally excel

Flow occurs, of course, when you have reached unconscious competence. A few people seem to be born naturally in touch with the creative impulse, most of us can reach it by training in a skill or art until we’ve reached unconscious competence (yet again few do, I urge you to be one of those few, commit to your love of an art or other deep endeavor). And nearly all of us have had a glimpse of flow no matter how skilled or not we may be at the time, just as many of us have had glimpses of higher levels of consciousness from time to time before, if ever, we reach them (see the work of Ken Wilber).

Following the Creative Impulse

There is, though, another way to feel the flow of the creative impulse. That is simply to do what you want. When you follow your passions, you are driven by a rush of motivation and creativity. This begs the question, though, what do you really want to do?

Here you have to trust your heart, I’m afraid.

Going Astray

Several months ago I decided to start a blog. I wanted to express myself in writing and make some money on the side, as it were. I had a few different ideas for blogs, this being one of them, as well as an English language blog about investing and personal finance in Korea. I talked to some friends about my ideas, and most of them suggested I start the investing blog. It did indeed seem like the most practical route to go.

It was fun setting up the blog and at first it was satisfying to publish articles that could potentially be of help to people. Over time, however, the articles I wrote got fewer and far between.

Researching and writing articles for the blog began to feel like work. It had become a burden I’d placed on myself, taking time away from doing the stuff that really inspired me. Now I’ve decided to put that blog aside altogether. I still think there is a need for the information the blog aimed to provide, so I hope that someone else will take it over or start something similar, but my heart, as they say, is not in it. 

Finding the Way

My main interests for the past couple years have been in spirituality and self-development. In the Fall of last year, I was browsing through the Integral Theory websites and found one that offered Integral Life Coaching classes. Looking over the program, I realized I really want to do something like this. 

That seed of an impulse started as an interesting idea that I was toying with in how I could integrate my various interests and practices, but over the months, it has grown now into my mid-term life goal. I started to tell others about this goal, tentatively and almost embarrassed at first, now fully and confidently almost as if it was so apparent that the question didn’t need asking. I have made this goal part of my identity.

Defining Identity to Refining Action

The more I identify with this new role, the more I am driven to take action to actually manifest it. The area where I seek to specialize in is in integrating various interests and areas of your life so that they have a synergistic rather than antagonistic relationship. This means that I necessarily will be continuing with my diverse interests and practices, but I realized that some of my activities, like the investing blog, were diverting my energies away from my passions. 

Aligning with the Creative Impulse

When I started thinking about writing down my thoughts in the form of this blog, I began to feel excited and happy about the possibilities. When you are filled with such positive energy, you know that you are indeed aligning yourself with the creative impulse.

My point is this: take the time to evaluate your life and where you are directing your energies. When you strip away all that you “should”, all that is “work”, does your passion emerge naked and radiant, free to embrace you in the flow of the creative impulse?