“Real creativity . . . works best when we aren’t searching for outcomes but are simply allowing them.

“Not knowing is where we naturally start in infancy. From there we make our way to speech, to knowledge, to delight and love, to making an entire life for ourselves, and to communicating. . . .

“At some point in our early development, we turn from intuition toward analysis (prompted, perhaps, by the predilections of the educational system), and the training of our creative ability gets pushed to the side.”

—Sean Kernan, Communication Arts, January/February 2009

Kernan goes on to suggest that there are ways to wake up your creativity. Invoke spaciousness in your mind, “a kind of Buddhist emptiness full of potential.” Perceive without judging or categorizing or interpreting. Allow an experience to be absorbed into the emptiness in order to have it fully.

True creativity is not recycling the same old ideas with a predetermined intention. It happens when you make space for it. It requires patience because it can’t be forced. Results are “individual and unpredictable.”

“We can provoke creativity by setting aside knowledge, control, security, outcome, comfort and limits, thus making room for learning and creating to resume.”