art, creativity, and spirituality

THE SCIENCE OF ORIGINALITY
Many years ago, when I was running, I had an insight that lead to other insights that lead to a large and ever-growing material I call "The Science of Originality". Though I came up with the title and the material, I am not a scientist. I am an artist. The material resulted from my observations of my creativity. I also read a lot about creativity and studied the lives of various creatives, particularly artists. But the main contributor to my science is the knowledge gained from my own experience and from my own observations of me at work creating art or trying to create art. I have been the subject of my study as well as the observer.

Many would call the ideas in this book and subsequent ones philosophy. If that tickles your fancy, call my concepts and models and theories a philosophy. But it goes further than that: The Science of Originality is a science because I open the creative process up to investigation and I welcome input. As far as I know, all that I recount in this book and subsequent ones is empirical, or, if not, very close to the truth. You'll find theory, but you'll also find evidence from first hand experience.

I acknowledge that often enough my concepts touch on the ideas of others. To cite some examples: Bandler and Grinder's Neurolinguistic programming, otherwise known as NLP; Csentmyhaly's popular book, "Flow"; and all those who have ever written about or lead a "Vision Quest". I need to make clear here, though: I have not borrowed. These examples and many others I have not mentioned exist in my material because my work - my science - is true, and truth has a way of distributing itself. Holistic information, material that has integrity, combines and reflects pre-existing concepts and contributes to them. I believe my work is a contribution to thought regarding the creative process. What I have to share is not simply a synthesis of older material. My Science of Originality is original. One of the main reasons that is so has to do with me being an artist and someone who revels in creativity. I created my science. Yet my science is also the product of discovery. The two, discovery and creativity, are not so different. I will say more about that soon enough in this very book.

THE IMPORTANCE OF ORIGINALITY
I read in one book about creativity (I own a lot of books on that subject, not all of them good.) that originality was not so important. Creativity was what mattered, and originality was over-rated. The example given is this book was that of coming up with a random set of numbers, or producing something of random ilk, a spontaneously produced masterpiece, in other words. Well, that is just ludicrous. That example no more illustrates originality than does...well, I don't want to have to stop and think of something I could compare that idiotic example to. It's just too idiotic for me to match it. There is no originality in coming up with a random set of numbers or in randomly coming up with anything, necessarily. People have for thousands of years come up with random sets of numbers. There's nothing new, nothing original about that. The same goes for the many spontaneous masterpieces that one would claim original. Very few of them are. Further, I would bet that its getting difficult to come up with a random set of numbers or a spontaneous act that someone hasn't already come up with. Randomly throw ten digits together in any sequence. You're bound to be duplicating something out there.

I suspect the flaw in this thinking, that originality can be so easily produced, comes from a simplistic approach to Darwinism. One presupposes that evolution works this way: Throw a bunch of possibilities out there and see which one survives and thrives. I have a hard time believing that life works in so nilly-willy a fashion. Life is incredibly intelligent. You see that in the animal kingdom, and you can see it in plants and minerals. You can see intelligence in viruses, bacteria, and various diseases. How does a disease know to get a stranglehold on a certain area or system of the body? We know bacteria evolve. How do bacteria know how to do that? Is it just the strongest surviving? Or is something more going on here? How is it that a bacteria can find an evolutionary solution so quickly? And if dinosaurs actually did evolve into birds, how the heck did that happen? I know it took millions of years, but still... Something more is going on than a mere selection process. Somebody or something is stacking the deck.

Life has a will to live. Life doesn't just evolve because that's a nice thing to do. Life evolves because it must. Life is a relentless force that must grow and grow and grow. Life does not want to die. This you may have noticed from your own feelings. Even those who want to die must battle within themselves a powerful biological force that wants them to live, or, if not live, at the very least procreate before they die. And I would say this force is not just biological. It is spiritual as well. More than on or two occasions my Spirit has kept me I alive, I do so believe.

So life, this powerful force that wants more than anything to keep on living and procreate and grow and become more, is just going to toss out there in the environment lots of possibilities and hope that one wins out, becoming an evolutionary solution? I think not. That's not how I would play the game if I were life. If I were life, I would be as inventive and clever as I could from the outstart. I'd also be incredibly productive because you might luck on to a solution, you just don't know. Plus, you're going to have failures, many more failures than successes. You can bet on that. And you have to be willing to take risks, try things that don't work, might even seem like they never could work. You've got to be daring. But the odds are mightily stacked in your favor because you are so productive. It might even look on the outside as if you weren't being clever at all, as if you are just tossing out any random possibility that comes to you and hoping for the best. It may look like that because you are so productive and one cannot see the intelligent design.

The creationists, as ludicrous as their position is to many, have a point. The problem in the dispute about evolution comes largely from simplistic thinking on either side. Yes, evolution does occur. That's a fact, Jack. But it doesn't just happen. It happens because life is intelligent and because life is filled with spirit and spirit is filled with the force and love and goodness of our Creator.
Looking at evolution, you've got to admit there's poetry in it. Is this just an example of our need to anthropomorphize everything, to make it reflect back on us, or is something really going on here? Something beautiful. If dinosaurs did really evolve into birds, I find that beautiful and poetic. Could randomness come up with such beauty? Could ten million monkeys or whatever writing for countless years ever produce the works of Shakespeare? As my Tae Kwon Do master would say, aw, come on.
Something beautiful is going on here, something very, very beautiful. It's not all random, not one big mindless, meaningless joke, not an existentialist non-event. That, to put it bluntly, is horse pooky.

And yet what's happening is not a simple thing. There's not some man in the sky with a big, white flowing beard. He watches over us and He loves us. He makes sure nothing bad ever happens to us. Not. Simple explanations like that lead to cynicism and, more than that, rage.
In my travels I have found that the answer to any mystery is itself mystical and complex. In your travels I bet you've found the same. That's wisdom, knowing that.

Originality and creativity are intertwined. You can't be one without the other. The words could, in many instances, be interchangeable. Originality is the product of creativity, and originality is not so easy to come by. You must be creative to produce originality. You can't come by it happenstance. You just can't. Anyone who has an appreciation for originality knows this, or should.

Creativity produces original results. Originality spurs evolution. Without originality, we would cease to evolve and, soon, we would cease to exist.
You are original. There's no one like you, no clone, no duplicate. Even if you have a twin, you are still very different from your twin. You are original, no one like you, no spirit like you; no force has ever been like you nor will ever be like you. Isn't that amazing?

I want to teach you ways to open up to that incredible force, the force inside you that is highly creative and produces original results. I want to share information that has come to me through my many years of effort in the direction of my own creativity. The information itself is original. It touches on many pre-existing concepts, models, and ideas, but is also highly original. The information I would work with to teach you how to be more creative and original is itself original. I would not have this any other way. I believe in teaching by example.

You are a light. I want to help you turn on your light or keep it on or make it brighter, polish it, and shine. By example, I am shining my light, and my light here is my Science of Originality.
You are reading the first book of many which I plan to write. A lot of the information I have inside me and have sketched out and written out here and there. It is just a matter of organizing chunks of it into forms that cogently teach the concepts and express the discoveries and the insights that follow those discoveries.