What’s creative consciousness?

In the context of the use of our creativity on complex environments that we live, there is a mysterious emotional universe.

Let’s be real: complex environments, in the end, is just to live. The level of complexity is given by circumstances, as well through our emotional repertoire to deal with stimuli.

The events we can’t control, emotions arising we can’t either (which make us realize that control, controooool itself, basically we have very little of anything). But we do have choice (lots of us, at least). And they start by what to do from the emotions that arise, since we have some space to make conscious decisions on how to act in front of what it presents to us.

Considering that we have basic survival needs in order, like food, shelter, basic safety, and community (a scenario that would give a whole other context to the theme of this essay, but it’s not the main focus here), we have the opportunity to begin to have some consciousness that instinct and emotions are in command of the majority of our reactions against a challenge. The rational part of us can try to force some space in between fears and dramas to try to solve the situation.

That is, we constantly need to consider the three of them as integral parts of processing, choices, actions and reviewing of the creative process.

It is common and also socially accepted that we overestimate our instinctive reactions, that we underestimate our emotional reactions, and that we trust blindly in our rational actions to put some order into chaos.

Even because is more frequent that we just try to access our creative capacity (in the common sense) when we have a problem right in front of us, the kind that is so annoying that we can’t get away from or make it disappear instantly. It doesn’t matter how much we pretend that it doesn’t exist or procrastinate.

If you are a type-A person, who look the thing in its eyes fearlessly, that also is a reaction with a high-level emotional charge, in the end of the day. I bet people who are used to go to therapy knows exactly what I mean.

But let’s try not to psychoanalyze now, let’s invite ourselves to simply go observe the more common ways that we are used to take when that need or even that desire to initiate a creative journey. It can be as simple as “today I am going to watercolor because I want to”, even if don’t know technically how, or it can be as complex as find ways to get rid of a global viral pandemic.

It is needed to stop and take a moment, second or years, to make choices. Most of the time, we don’t have consciousness of this process. We don’t like to stop, sit and have a tea with the thing that it is right in front of us.

In the case of watercolor, it can bring up the limitation of not owning the adequate material, the frustration of knowing how to draw right, the discomfort with the pigments not behaving the way you want, the disliking of the final product. Or quite the opposite, the satisfaction, the joy, the peace of creating something so freeing, so light and loose. We tend not to utilize the dance of these two scenarios. Also because, usually, feelings considered contradictories most of the time make mess inside us with sensations that we can’t make sense of it, with a more superficial look.

The level of complexity includes many factor, but I am going to refrain myself here to talk about relationships. Because while in the example above I show our relationship with ourselves, we also have situations that there are more people involved, and that adds exponentially more dimensions for us to manage our emotional side.

Both, the individual internal journey, as the external relational journey, give us precious opportunities to amplify our emotional repertoire.

And when we begin to observe from the simpler situations, that push some buttons more possible to deal with, it can be a gentle way to invited ourselves to add more possibilities of conscious responses to other more challenging situations.

We have the chance to look across the relational matters with less reactivity and getting dragged by less drama created by others, even because we are understanding that there is a mysterious emotional universe going on there inside that other being that we hove no idea. Nevertheless the third entity that is created by the interaction between two people, because the relationship itself form very well-shappen outlines of attitudes and emotional subtleties which only exists there in that link.

More than that, through expanding our capacity to navigate emotions with less reactivity and more consciousness, we gain more and more intuitive abilities to make choices and have attitudes align with make more sense, in the personal point-of-view, or the collective, without much effort and suffering.

Each stopping to observe, each interaction with another being with intention, each situation managed with consciousness offer us more conditions to go through the creative process in a more natural way that we always had since the beginning of our lives. We are creative beings because we feel and we relate. And even without much awareness about that, we continue to be creative. But the process can be richer, more fascinating, more fun, quicker, and more decisive when we are enjoying the journey to know ourselves with more care.

Melissa is a professor of Relational Intelligence and Creative Consciousness in the post-graduation course Creativity & Complex Environment at ESPM — Advertising and Marketing Superior College — in São Paulo, Brazil.