The Co-Creative Muse

[Togetherness]

I find that the best kind of creative inspired breakthroughs, in any field of endeavor, comes from communing deeply with other life presences, in heartfelt, open-minded, non-dualistic, empathic, loving attunement with them. The more deeply we invest our heart, mind, and senses, in communion with other life presences, experiences, and activities, in the world, the more deeply we can contact and experience the here and now present moment, and, thereby, gain profounder insight into the reality nature of life, and its essential beauty, wonder, and meaning. When individual resonate in deeply invested heartfelt attunement, or harmonious empathic communion, with each other, they energize each other, like magnets energizing one another, and, thereby, arouse, or elicit, each other’s creative potentials, as a co-creative process of synergy.

The highest levels of creative insight, regenerative life energy, and blessing power, can become released and available for productive functioning only through the process of non-dualistic relational connection, or deeply invested empathic attunement, between one's own subjective conscious awareness and other life presences in the objective world, uniting the inner and outer dimensions in a greater relational wholeness of life, which some people refer to as "love". Metaphorically speaking, the highest levels of creative functioning and constructive transformation becoming available only through relational communion between the subjective knower and objects of knowledge in the world, like individual magnets that cannot energize themselves apart from one another, but which become energized only through their connection to other magnets, or like the power of electricity flowing only when an electrical plug and socket, or positive and negative electrical poles, are connected to one another. That deeply invested "magnetic" connection between individuals, in heartfelt harmonious empathic attunement to one another, can bring greater gifts of creative inspiration and meaningful insight, as the source of enhanced creative performance in any field of endeavor, as well as producing enhanced enjoyment and appreciation of one’s life experience in the world.

However, as long as the heart remains egocentrically, narcissistically, selfishly, self-absorbed, or self-possessed, we will be able to make only rather shallow contact with others, with only the superficial levels of our awareness. Without heartfelt communion, the mind and senses, by themselves alone, can contact, understand, and appreciate, only rather superficial aspects of reality, and provide only a relatively shallow, mechanical, uninspired, level of creative artistic functioning. That is why I agree with what St. Exupery wrote, in his book, "The Little Prince", "It is only with the eyes of the heart that one can see what is most essential in life....Only the heart sees clearly, because what is essential is not visible to the eyes". I might add, what is essential in life is also not available to the analytical intellect, functioning independently of the deeper, relational, insight of the heart, because the analytical mind tends to be self-absorbed in its own abstract, speculative, presumptive, thought, as a kind of continuous inner monologue taking place in one's own mind, rather than making deeply invested, direct, experiential contact with other life presences, experiences, and activities, in the world, encountered in the relational flow of the here and now moment.

To make direct, deep, empathic, contact with anyone or anything, and to tap into the relational source of co-creative insight, and transformational breakthroughs, one must let go of precommitted mental presumptions, preconceptions, and abstractions, which function like an opaque filter, barrier, or distorting mechanism, keeping the mind self-absorbed in its own thought, and blocking direct contact and heartfelt empathic communion with actual life experience in the world, which the philosopher Martin Buber describes as the "I-Thou" relationship, in contrast to the "I-It" relationship. In Biblical terms, this is the difference between experiencing reality as though through a "poor reflection", or "a glass darkly" rather than "face to face" (I Corinthians 13:12).

Communing with the enduring living presence, or living spirit, that the author of any creative work has invested in that creative production can empathically reveal the meaningful experiential intention of that author or producer. The reason why the highest source level of creative insight, and new breakthrough discoveries, comes from relational communion is because that source is a relational reality nature, rather than a solo, divisive, dualistic, or separate, individualistic, nature. Therefore, introspective processes that produce greater self-involvement, and break off heartfelt communion with others, cannot reveal and release the highest level of creative functioning.

Caring human relationships can also facilitate creative transformations of individual people and global society by enabling the power of love to gradually transform individual hearts, and the collective spiritual heart of humanity, from selfishness, fear, and brutality to unselfish caring about others, and limitless abundance for everyone.