The other night at one of our Group Meditation Meetings, I ran an experiment with everyone. Take a blank piece of paper, and over 10 seconds, draw dots all over the paper, randomly, with absolutely no regard for order or aesthetic…
Try this yourself, then read on…
This is something that Zen painters attempt, as a process of understanding the controlling mind.
It’s virtually impossible to be random. Some part of your thinking mind is evaluating. ‘Oh, I forgot a bit down here’ or ‘that’s too empty over there’ or ‘they look nice in a little cluster’ or ‘oops that’s a line and it’s supposed to be random’, and so on it goes, the mind shooting rapid fire evaluations every mili second.
We are wired to control. Control is projecting and demanding things go a certain way, with positive or negative projections as to what’s happening, all through the lens of our conscious state.
Control is the opposite of creativity. Creativity is about flow, present moment awareness and exploration of what could be, and responding to what is in every moment.
So if we wish to be more creative, then we need to surrender our constant desire to control.