Cracking creativity #7

Yesterday, as I was out walking with my daughter, I thought some more about creativity. The techniques taught by Cracking Creativity are all about breaking the habits of the mind, in order to get new ideas. In history, painters, musicians, writers, etc, have attributed a significantly heightened creativity to drugs (of various sorts). To me, it seems obvious that the drugs induced unconventional thinking rather than anything else. (I found a webpage about by Susan Opar, titled Hallucinogens and Creativity, but I haven’t read it yet.)

Reading about creativity has also made me think of Zen (which I have read a bunch of books about). I’m not sure I can express why yet, but the fact that you need to break conventional thinking patterns is similar to the “beginner’s mind” idea – observing things without judging, without preconceptions. Also, koan practice seems, to me, to be about breaking thought patterns. Perhaps I’ll get back to this at a later time.

Speaking of both Zen and drugs, I came to think of the book The Joyous Cosmology by Alan Watts (see here – here – and here. ––– Got to go now.