For The Highest Creativity, A Balance Is Needed Between Intellect And Intuition

The more you seek to be guided by intuition, which is an aspect of superconsciousness, the greater success you will meet in every undertaking. The rational mind can only point to probable solutions. Intuition, rooted as it is in superconsciousness, will supply you with clear answers.

From a superconscious perspective, all life is a unity. From a rational perspective, life is disunity -- a bewildering jigsaw puzzle, often, with many pieces that never seem to belong together.

With the constant increase of information nowadays, knowledge is becoming so complex that no one really knows how to process it anymore. Even with such aids as computers and databases, people are overwhelmed by all the new facts bombarding them. They wonder if they can retain control of their lives, when the sheer flood of information is sweeping their little boats into a whirlpool. Rapidly losing sight of their moral convictions, they no longer seriously believe such a thing as wisdom exists.

The Secret of Creativity

But the intellect serves a valuable function. A unitive view of life, reined, but not motivated, by the intellect is the secret of creativity. Creativity, like life itself, comes with flowing awareness. It can only be channeled by intelligence. Intelligence, though useful, is subordinate to intuition. That is why creative people, relying too little on the intellect, are often not adept at analyzing their own work, or art in general. Professional critics, on the other hand, relying too much on the intellect, are not often creative themselves.

For the highest creativity, a balance is needed between intellect and intuition. To live superconsciously is to maximize our abilities in every department of life. For the rational mind, with its focus on differences, is essentially problem-oriented. The superconscious, with its broader, more unitive view, is solution-oriented.


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The unitive view is justified objectively in Nature. Every natural problem has a corresponding solution. American Indians claim that wherever a poisonous plant grows, its antidote will be growing nearby. In India I was told that in the tail of a cobra there exists an antidote to the snake's venom. This isn't a cure I'd care to verify, but my informant claimed that if a person is bitten by a cobra, he should bite hard on the tip of the cobra's tail and suck on its antivenom. This claim, valid or not, is certainly based on a valid principle.

Trusting Life to the Flow of Higher Wisdom

Superconscious living means to trust one's life to the flow of a higher wisdom. Superconsciousness arranges things in ways that we might never imagine. I've seen this principle at work on countless occasions. Always it has worked better than any solution I might have provided, myself.

Years ago, in India, I flew to Calcutta from New Delhi. Friends of mine had promised to meet me at Dum Dum Airport, but as things turned out they were delayed by heavy traffic and arrived much later. Meanwhile, finding myself at a loss as to what to do, I stood quietly for a moment and asked the Divine Mother, "What do You want?"

Now, I should mention that my one regret on coming to Calcutta had been that I'd been unable to locate the address of a friend of mine, a Dr. Misra, whom I'd known in America, where he'd been getting his Ph.D. Since then he'd returned to India, and was living in Bhubaneswar, some two or three hundred miles south of Calcutta. I'd been hoping to visit him during this time in India, but now it appeared I'd be unable to do so.

As I paused silently, offering up my predicament to God, there occurred a dramatic turn of events. An Indian gentleman on his way through the crowd toward the exit stopped and took a closer look at me. Then he addressed me, speaking in the manner of his country "Please excuse me, sir, but what is your good name?" Surprised at the question, I answered him.

"Ah," he responded, delighted. "I thought you must be he! I recognized you from your photograph. A friend of mine, Dr. Misra, showed it to me after his return from America."

"Dr. Misra!" I exclaimed in astonishment. "If it's the Dr. Misra I'm thinking of, he lives in Bhubaneswar."

"It is just of him that I am speaking. As I say, I recognized you from the photograph he took of you."

"Why, I've been hoping I could see him! Would you be so kind as to give me his address?"

"There is no need to see him in Bhubaneswar," the gentleman replied. "Dr. Misra is visiting Calcutta just now. I've flown here just for the purpose of meeting him myself. Let me take you to him."

And so I was able to see my friend, who also put me up for the night. (A fortunate extra bonus, as it turned out. I learned later that all the hotels had been fully booked that night.)

My other friends, whom I'd tried unsuccessfully to contact from the airport, arrived long after my departure. We got together later, and my original program was soon "back on track" again.

Now, just think what would have happened had I reacted as most people would have to such a situation. They'd have dashed about asking questions, making telephone calls, stirring up a maximum of confusion, and, at last, taking a taxi to a succession of fully booked hotels. My brief pause to put matters in God's hands solved my entire dilemma.

I can imagine the analytical mind objecting, "Well, what if that man hadn't been there? It was only a coincidence that he happened to arrive in Calcutta just then, and that he happened to notice you. His agenda was a different one altogether, and had nothing to do with meeting you." My answer would be that, if that man hadn't happened to come by, something else would have happened. And even if nothing had happened, I'd still have been in a better frame of mind to handle the situation than I would have, had I succumbed to worry and confusion.

Intuitive Guidance: Placing Matters In God's Hands

What I've learned in life is that, if you place matters with complete trust in God's hands, things always work out for the best. Sometimes all you gain is the calmness to make the best of what might otherwise seem a bad situation. That does happen, for many of life's problems are "solved" by simply changing our outlook. Often, however, the change is objective also. Events turn out so amazingly well that people later refer to them as miraculous. And yet it isn't really a question of miracles. It is simply that this is how the superconscious works: It ties things together. It dissolves difficulties. It offers practical solutions, where the rational mind sees nothing but problems.

Where people see disunity, the superconscious mind sees the expression of Oneness in everything. To superconsciousness, everything is related. Not relative, merely: related. You don't have to be in superconsciousness to think superconsciously. All you have to do is train your mind to adjust your thinking to superconscious modes of perception.

Find Connections, Not Differences

Think more unitively, less analytically. Concentrate on finding the relationships between things; don't dwell at length on the differences. See others as your own greater Self. They are not alien to you. Look on them as friends, even if they appear outwardly to be strangers.

Years ago, I received a beautiful demonstration of the practical merits of this unitive view. It was in Paris, France, and -- as it happened -- on my birthday. I wanted to attend a concert as a birthday present to myself. I arrived at the church where the concert was to be held, but found about fifty people being turned away by an official, with the explanation that there was no room left.

"Mais c'est mon anniversaire!" I cried out ("But it's my birthday!"). I couldn't believe I'd be disappointed on this special occasion. "Alors, monsieur, bon anniversaire! Entrez, s'il vous plait," he replied ("Well in that case, sir, happy birthday! Please come in."). He opened the door for me. The main seating area was completely filled, so I was given a seat on a folding chair behind the altar, where a handful of others were seated already. We faced an audience, on the other side of us from the orchestra, of about seven hundred people.

It was a joy-filled occasion. In addition to the beauty of the music, I felt a sense of expansive love for everyone present.

Later, on the Metro (the French subway), an old woman approached me. "Don't you remember me?" she inquired. No, I said regretfully, I didn't. Surprised, she cried, "But I was in the audience in the church this evening!"

How could I have noticed her in that throng? But somehow she'd felt a connection with me. She went on to confide in me a problem she was having with her daughter, as though I were a close friend of the family.

Being Solution-Oriented: Listening to Intuition

See oneness everywhere, and the universe itself will respond to you in kind. Be solution-oriented, as I said, not problem-oriented. To do that, approach your problems with perfect confidence that their solution is already there, waiting to be found. The intellect will try to discourage such faith, whispering, "Caution! Common sense!" But I've found that strong faith brings better results than any I could have imagined, myself.

What is particularly needed is to give one's faith the motive force of willpower and energy. Energy generates magnetism, which attracts the inspiration.

Attracting Inspiration, Intuition, Solutions

Can we really attract inspiration at will? Yes indeed! Strong energy, powered by confidence (which must be rooted in faith; it must not be ego-confidence) can attract inspirations, opportunities, solutions to problems -- anything.

This is a delicate point for me to clarify, and for others to get clear. For instance, it isn't a question of wanting anything, personally, but of wanting it because it is right. It is important to exclude ego-motivation as much as possible. It's also important that faith not become an excuse for irresponsibility. To live superconsciously means to cooperate with the superconscious flow, not to expect that flow to do everything for you.

It's a question of energy in cooperation with faith. You must be wholly focused on whatever you are doing, without seeing yourself as the doer.

Many highly creative people rise to certain heights of creativity, then find it impossible to rise any farther. Why? Many of them actually begin, at a certain point, to lose their creativity. Again, why? Always, it seems to me, the loss follows an increase of egotism. Their thought "I'm doing it all myself" blocks the energy-flow to the superconscious, whence they derived their highest inspiration. The energy then, blocked in the seat of ego in the medulla, is prevented from flowing on toward the seat of superconsciousness in the Spiritual Eye.

A number of artists, composers, and other creative people have even become mentally unbalanced -- enough of them to inspire the popular saying that only a fine line divides genius from madness. Interestingly, this doesn't seem to have been so much the case prior to the Romantic Era. With the dawn of Romanticism, creative artists -- in reaction, probably, to the "soullessness" of the industrial revolution -- began to be praised for their "exquisite" sensibility.

Look at the nineteenth century. Why did so many artists -- Hugo Wolf, Nietzsche, van Gogh, Scriabine, to name a few -- lose their sanity? Many others, though not certifiably insane, gave every evidence of instability. Such imbalances don't seem to have been so much in evidence previously, when artistic creativity itself was rendered less homage. It is as though the high energy required to create a masterpiece, if that energy is blocked by a growing sense on the artist's part of his own importance in the scheme of things, resulted in disturbances to the brain.

Relax and Let Go: Seek Inner Guidance

If you are creating something, or even if you are seeking guidance in anything that you do, relax the consciousness in the medulla of personal "doership," and direct the flow of energy onward to the point between the eyebrows. Keep your thoughts uplifted while you work. Don't accept an initial inspiration, then snatch the ball from Higher Guidance and run with it yourself.

The melody of many a song, as just an example, begins with a beautiful first line, then rapidly loses inspiration. Such a song may achieve fame purely on the strength of its first line. How much lovelier it might have been, had the composer not tried to work out the rest of the melody in his mind, but instead continued to hold his energy up to superconsciousness for further guidance.

Don't let the labor involved in dealing with the mechanics of a creative work tempt you to relax your grip on superconsciousness.

TUNING IN TO HIGHER GUIDANCE

Whenever you need special guidance but find none forthcoming, try following these suggestions:

1) Ask for guidance from superconsciousness at the Spiritual Eye.

2) Wait for a response in the heart center. Be completely impartial. Don't intrude your personal desires into this process. Pray, "Thy will, not mine, be done."

3) If no guidance comes, propose several alternative solutions at the Spiritual Eye. See if one of them receives special endorsement in the heart.

4) Guidance often comes only after an idea has been made concrete by setting it in motion. If, therefore, you receive no answer in meditation, act in whatever way seems reasonable to you, but continue to listen for guidance in the heart.

At a certain point, if your direction is right, you will feel the endorsement you've been seeking. But if your direction is wrong, suddenly you will know it is wrong. In that case, try something else, until the endorsement comes.

To refuse to act until you receive inner guidance is good only if you can keep your level of energy and expectation high. For it is high energy and high expectation that attract guidance. If you must act because you have no other way of maintaining that level of energy, then go ahead and act. Often, it is better to act, even in error, than not to act at all.

5) Even if you feel inner guidance, never presume on it. That guidance may tell you, metaphorically speaking, to go north, but if you cease listening you may not hear it when, at the next corner, it tells you to turn east.

6) A problem is half solved already once it is stated clearly. In seeking guidance, form a clear mental picture of what it is you need. Then hold that picture up to superconsciousness at the point between the eyebrows. People often struggle for a long time to find the inspiration they want. No time at all is needed: only sufficient mental clarity, and energy.

Never use the claim of inner guidance as an argument for convincing others to listen to you. The flow of superconsciousness is always humble, never boastful. It doesn't cooperate with attitudes that discourage others from seeking their own inner guidance. To tell a person, "This is what my intuition tells me, so this is what we must all do," is to say, in effect, "God will speak only through me, not through anyone else." Such an attitude sooner or later gets its comeuppance. The divine law does not endorse pride.

SUPERCONSCIOUS ATTITUDES

Every quality that flowers naturally in superconsciousness should be affirmed by the conscious mind, and transferred by the conscious mind to the subconscious. Divine joy, for example, is a fruit of deep meditation. A person of scientific bent might decide to test this truth with a "controlled" experiment. To prove the reality of superconscious joy, he might determine to be as grim as possible during meditation. But the way to attune yourself to divine joy is to hold a joyful attitude, even though the true experience of divine joy is -- to use Paramhansa Yogananda's words in his poem "Samadhi" -- "beyond imagination of expectancy."

If you're expecting someone to visit you, you won't wait for him in the basement. If you're expecting a phone call, you won't drown out the sound of the telephone by turning on the electric blender. If you keep a grim attitude during meditation, you won't be prepared for the experience of joy even if it comes to you. It won't be your grimness, so much, that prevents you from experiencing joy as your essentially anti-superconscious attitude of skepticism, your resistance to the inner flow.

Be joyful in meditation. Be peaceful. Bless all the world with your love. And, even walking down a city street, secretly send divine love and blessings to everyone you pass. You'll be surprised how many strangers will treat you as a friend.

Reprinted with permission of the publisher,
Crystal Clarity Publishers. ©2000, 2008. www.crystalclarity.com

Article Source:

Awaken To Superconsciousness: How to Use Meditation for Inner Peace, Intuitive Guidance, and Greater Awareness
by J. Donald Walters (Swami Kriyananda).

Awaken To Superconsciousness by J. Donald Walters. Here is a fresh, revolutionary approach to finding inner peace and expansive joy, presented by one of the greatest exponents of yoga and meditation alive today. Through meditation, chanting, affirmation, and prayer, Swami Kriyananda, disciple of Paramhansa Yogananda, teaches us how to reach the superconsciousness successfully and regularly and how to maximize its beneficial effects.

Info/Order this book (new 2008 edition - different cover). Also available as a Kindle edition.

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About the Author

J. Donald WaltersJ. Donald Walters aka Swami Kriyananda -- May 19, 1926 to April 21, 2013 -- has written over eighty books and edited two books of Paramhansa Yogananda's which have become well known: The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam Explained and a compilation of sayings of the Master, The Essence of Self-Realization. In 1968 Walters founded Ananda, an intentional community near Nevada City, California, based on the teachings of Paramhansa Yogananda. Visit the Ananda website at http://www.ananda.org

Video/Presentation with Swami Kriyananda: Is the Consciousness of Man Changing?
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