The Space After

  During the group meditation today, the facilitator  had  talked about this notion of meditation being not just about using a method but about the space it opens up for the mind to discover and explore. I would like to think that perhaps this is the more creative aspect of meditation: not in the sense of the mind running around trying to catch stray thoughts, but a far more relaxed and spacious creativity. The best way I could describe it is being able to see the possibilities in the ordinary everyday that we wouldn't normally find time or inclination to enjoy or appreciate.
    What gets in the way of this everyday appreciation? When the mind is preoccupied with personal gains, it cannot appreciate simply what is. In fact, such a mind is always looking for the next thing, and is caught comparing one situation to another. Even creativity can sometimes get that way. For instance, I can be writing something quite enjoyable to me, which is inspired by some funny idea, and then later find myself becoming very 'serious' about it. I might think about publishing the writing or marketing it in some way, as though these were the true and only valid aims of writing. What gets lost in this is simply doing something with a mind of emptiness and non-expectation. This is the kind of mind that children often have or demonstrate, without being particularly aware of it. Unfortunately, as many studies have shown, it seems very easy for this child's mind to become lost in rankings, accolades and competition. At this point, the work that a child is engaged with ceases to be a personal discovery and more about appealing to a standard set out by other peers or teachers.
   It's interesting how people come to meditation often with the ingrained educational conditioning of wondering what the outcome of an activity is. It's as though they look at meditation as a form of self-improvement, and want to be able to say they have passed a hurdle or two through regular meditative practice. Aside from being hard to measure, there is this question of: does everything that is worth doing always have to have this quality of a finished product to it? And can we even predict what a creative endeavor is ever going to look at or how it's going to function before it is produced? Too much emphasis on finished product can sometimes distort the creative process and lead a person away from its spontaneity.
   With meditation, there is this opportunity to make space for creativity. But creative does not refer to some faculty that is 'sharpened' like a knife. Rather, it is the ability to generate something new that comes from not being bound to something old or habitual. The biggest constriction to creativity is expected result. How can a story be told if we already know in advance what the characters are going to do, how they will end up, and so on? It seems that the power of the story lies in something that is immanent, unfolding and rarely predictable. Perhaps one can say  it is the difference between letting characters or inner voices speak out for themselves and trying to structure those voices around a predefined or pre-existing plotline.