Relaxation is an important part of the creative process.
Left alone, you do the right thing.
—Jane Roberts
Sleep is the best meditation.
—The Dalai Lama
I grew up in a culture that’s built on BMW efficiency, the principles of German engineering, and doing things according to the book. Most of all, it’s a society in which anything that is remotely lazy or that even vaguely resembles “doing nothing” is frowned upon. So it comes as no surprise that “doing nothing” has been challenging for me.
However, we are most creative precisely at those moments when we are not aware of it—the moments when we let our mind go into a kind of free drive.
Our Western societies are saturated with an overflow of infor-mation, mental debris, and clutter. We have to consciously weed out the clutter and debris on a continuous basis. This will allow us to feel our impulses more clearly and act on them. And it puts us in touch with the creative genius that we all possess.
Anything Can Be a Meditation
We were sitting together in a half circle at Google headquarters in Silicon Valley, California. I was with my very good friend Meng from Google and U.S. Congressman Tim Ryan. Tim was describing the inex-plicable magic that happens when we meditate. We tap into the inner source of our being, and somehow something happens that we cannot quite explain.
Over time, periods of frequent meditation change our internal and external perception and thus our behavior.
We feel a deeper connection with our being and with everything that surrounds us. We feel more embedded in society and in the world at large. We feel more of a connection with our place in the universe,
and we have a better understanding of the unique contribution we can make to society.
Meditation is a powerful practice because it lets us tune into our own inner being. Ease and effortlessness are key elements of the practice of meditation.
Contrary to what is commonly thought, anything can be a medi-tation. We just have to make sure we let our mind go into a kind of free drive at those times. Those periods of flowing energy and free-flowing thoughts are essential to reaching our peak potential.
From Surfing to Airplanes
I was with Victor Chan, the founder of the Vancouver Peace Summit, who is also a passionate surfer. We were sitting in a quiet boutique hotel on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Victor explained that, even though he is a devout Buddhist and very adept at traditional medi-tation, surfing is still his most effective way to meditate: “I really don’t meditate that much in the traditional sense of the word, but whenever I get out on the water and windsurf, this is my meditation.”
“Doing nothing” can mean many different things to different people. There is no “one size fits all.” It could be relaxing in a hammock, looking at the sky, taking a bike ride, lying in the sun—anything that gets you into that kind of mental free flow or drive. For the actor Har-rison Ford, flying small airplanes is his unique form of meditation. The singer and songwriter Sting says: “The only meditation I would have done before [yoga] would be in the writing of songs.” For the author Stephen King, it’s his daily walks on the beach. For the singer Celine Dion—and for a lot of CEOs—it’s golf.
There may be things that are considered silly, but that give you true pleasure and satisfaction. Use those activities as a trigger to get into these states of free flow, and engage in them as much as you want.
You Are Most Creative when You Are Not Aware of It—The Invisible Dwarfs
In those periods when you just let go and do “nothing,” you open an inner channel that lets your intuitions and impulses come to the
fore. This is precisely when the magic happens and you get your best ideas.
Imagine that every time you actually go into a kind of free drive and do nothing, there are a thousand little dwarfs working away who get most active when you’re not. This can help you to get out of the tra-ditional mindset and the belief shared by our Western societies that to do more is more.
When we relax, the creativity inside of us is cooking. It is trying to solve our biggest challenges and problems, to produce our biggest and most creative breakthroughs, and to provide insights into the answers we need most.
Capture the Shooting Stars
Alan Wallace is a former professor of religious studies in California and author of more books in English on the benefits of meditation for Western society than any other author. He once told me that he was teaching double the course load of anyone else at Santa Barbara Uni-versity by incorporating frequent 20-minute periods of meditations into his day. He carried a yoga mat with him all the time so that he could quickly “close the gates” and meditate wherever he was.
Alan also told me that he always has a pen and paper ready during his periods of meditation because some of his greatest ideas come to him during that time.
This is why great composers like Andrew Lloyd Webber always carry a notepad with them to jot down musical ideas that come to their mind during these periods.
You will be likely to produce some of your best ideas during those periods or shortly thereafter. The creativity that will be at work to solve your problems and challenges, both the minor and the major ones, can serve you well only if you actually trust the impulses, intuitions, and ideas that will shoot forth.
Take whatever tools you need to capture them and think of them as being like stars shooting through the night, waiting for you to make the best use of their power and energy.