Guided Practice For Unlocking Creativity

This episode is dedicated to creative types, not just painters or musicians, but problem solvers, who have come up with new ways to deal with small or big problems that we come across in life. In this session, we use meditation to experience the fourth stage of consciousness - where awareness is high but mind activity is low - where we can become more creative, think more creatively and problem solve in ways we have never thought of before. Meditation is that space, is that state of consciousness which allows your awareness to reach this realm where newness can come into your consciousness. I will guide you through each of the steps to achieve this - and by practicing this technique regularly you will begin to experience it more deeply. I hope this inspires your meditation practice!

Transcript

Hi,

This is Dhyansey and you're listening to Dhyansey Meditation Podcast.

This meditation session was given in Basel,

Switzerland on 23rd of September 2018.

In this session,

I talk about how to become more creative with meditation.

Today's session is dedicated to those creatives.

I've been living in Basel for more than a year and I see lots of creative artists,

Painters,

Musicians.

And this session is dedicated to those people,

That aspect of life which is known as creativity.

Not just as a painter,

Not just as a musician,

But also as a problem solver,

As a person who has to come up with new ideas,

New ways of dealing with smaller or bigger issues,

Problems in life.

When we are put in a situation where we need to come up with something totally new for ourselves,

Be it at work,

Be it at personal life,

This creativity,

This aspect of human consciousness,

That we can all think differently,

We can all come up with something totally new,

Which was never seen before,

Heard before,

Is something so special as a human being.

And this is something that we would like to understand where this comes from and how can we bring this more in our life.

When we say think differently or think out of the box,

This phrase is so common,

Is very popular,

Especially at work.

But I always ask myself,

What is this box?

What is this box that we talk about when we say think out of the box?

Anybody knows what is this box that we usually refer to when we say think out of the box?

Routines?

Mind?

Anything else?

Same things on the daily basis,

Patterns that we live in the worldly daily activities,

Patterns that we live in our mind,

All these patterns,

They can be put together as a box.

How do you come out of that box?

How do you come out of the patterns?

Look inside.

More importantly,

Who goes out of the box?

What goes out of the box?

Mind?

Thoughts?

What else goes out of the box?

Out of the conventional?

What is it that reaches beyond the normal,

Breaks it and brings the newness?

Let's do a small experiment.

I don't know if you have heard about this puzzle,

But let's see.

If you have heard about it,

Please stay quiet and those who have not heard about it will hopefully enjoy this.

Imagine on an island,

There are three people stuck.

One,

A very good friend of yours who once saved your life.

Second,

A pregnant woman.

Third,

Somebody who is your dream man or woman.

So three people stuck on one island.

If you will not save them,

Eventually they'll die.

There is no food.

There's nothing on this island.

One,

The woman or the man of your dreams.

Second,

Pregnant woman.

Third,

Your friend,

Very good friend who once saved your life.

And you happen to reach there with a boat where you can only take one person.

Take a moment to think about what will you do in that situation?

How many of you will take the friend who saved your life once?

There's no right or wrong answer.

It's just a fun puzzle.

How many of you will take the pregnant woman?

Okay,

One answer.

Two.

How many of you will take the man or the woman of your life?

Is there anybody with a different solution?

If you have not heard about this puzzle before.

Alright,

Then please go ahead.

That's exactly the answer,

Which is very,

Very rare.

When this puzzle or this situation is given to statistically a lot of people,

Very,

Very,

Very,

Very few people come to this point to this exact solution.

And this is nothing but to show that we should think differently.

Even in the same situation,

There could be a solution which is completely new,

Which is not you had not thought of before.

And that solves the situation for you in a completely different way.

How this is related to meditation?

Why I brought this up in this session.

Meditation is that space,

Is that state of consciousness,

Which allows your awareness to reach to these space,

This realm where newness can come into your consciousness.

There are four states in which your ordinary state of consciousness lives.

The first state is the waking state,

Which is hopefully your wall are awake.

So in this state,

Your mind is active,

Your mind is still running the patterns,

You're still thinking,

You're still having all the emotions,

Everything that is in your mind is still active and your awareness is also relatively high.

So two factors,

Your activity of the mind and your awareness,

Both of them are somewhat high.

This is wakefulness.

This is the waking state of our consciousness.

This is the state in which we spend 16 hours,

18 hours of our life every day.

Then when we go to sleep,

Second stage,

The dreaming state of consciousness,

This is where the mind activity is still high,

But the awareness is low,

Almost low.

And your mind is going crazy in dreams and in creating all the pictures,

All the dreams for you,

But it's still active.

That's the second state of consciousness.

Third state of consciousness is deep sleep.

When the activity of the mind is also negligible,

Your awareness is low,

Almost negligible.

You do not know that you are asleep and your mind activity is also low.

Typically,

We only live in these three states of consciousness all the time,

But there is this fourth state of consciousness where the awareness is high and the mind activity is low,

Is almost negligible.

In this state,

When your awareness is high and your mind is not capturing the awareness,

The energy to engage in the patterns that it knows of,

Your awareness,

Your consciousness can reach out and bring new ideas,

Concepts,

New information,

Anything that is new that you do not know of before.

This is the source of creativity,

This is the source of creation where there is pure awareness,

Pure consciousness and your mind is not in the way.

How to do this as a meditation?

It's a bit tricky to experience this fourth state of ordinary consciousness just like that in 20 minutes,

But there is a way.

If you practice this,

It's easy.

Give it a try in this session and when you go back home,

Give it another try and see whether you are able to slowly put your mind to rest and your awareness to a higher level.

How do we do this?

Step one,

We become aware of all the five senses and the sensations that we capture from these five senses.

So we'll hear everything that is around us,

We will see with our eyes closed whatever images that we are seeing,

We will smell whatever our sense of smell brings,

We'll try to feel whatever is feeling on our skin and so on.

So senses,

This is five senses is the first awareness that we would like to have of awareness of the five senses.

When we go inside of our body and we try to become aware of the sensations within the body,

How do we feel inside the body?

What are the sensations of the body?

Third step,

We would try to become aware of our thoughts,

Of our emotions,

Of anything that is going on in our mind.

Fourth step and I'll guide you through these steps,

Step by step as well during the meditation,

But just telling you upfront what is going to come so that you have a bit of a mental picture about it.

Then you'll visualize all of these sensations,

You'll put them together as one.

You can imagine maybe a sphere or you don't have to imagine it as a sphere,

But just the idea that all these sensations from the five senses,

From the inner sensations of your body,

The thoughts,

The emotions of everything that is the content of your mind,

If you put all of these sensations together as one sensation,

You will start to feel them as one sensation and then you will see that these sensations have boundaries.

Boundaries means you can only to an extent here,

You can only to an extent see what is it that is beyond this one big bowl of sensation.

What is beyond is empty space and we will try to bring our awareness to that empty space where there is no thought,

Where there's no emotion,

Where there's no sensation,

Where there is no experience and we will hold our awareness in this empty space,

In the silence as much as we can for a few minutes and we'll bring back our sensation to our body,

To our mind and everything that we can feel,

Touch,

Smell and so on.

Sounds complicated,

But it's very,

Very simple.

Any questions?

How we are going to do that?

You will know and if you don't,

If you don't reach to that empty space,

Try to imagine that beyond these sensations that you're putting them together as one sensation,

There is this empty space where there is no sensation,

There is no feeling,

There is no thought and try to transcend that just with your imagination first and once you start touching that,

Once you start having that in your consciousness,

In your awareness,

Don't try to evaluate it because the moment you judge it,

The moment you say,

Oh,

That's it,

The moment you say this is what we were talking about earlier,

You will get caught up in the thought process of it.

Stay in that illogical,

Fuzzy,

Empty space as much as you can,

But with awareness.

The criteria is that you are aware.

Try it out and see if that's just an imagination or if that's something which comes into your consciousness as well,

Even if it's coming for a few minutes and then you're pulled back into thoughts,

You're drifting back into the mind,

Into what's later you have to eat or what's going on outside and so on.

Whenever you get distracted,

Go back to this exercise where you would go out of this one single sensation of everything that you could experience and beyond this,

That's the empty space.

One request from my side in these sessions,

We try not to disturb others.

I know sitting for 20 minutes,

25 minutes sometimes can be painful,

Sometimes can be uncomforting,

Discomforting.

If you feel that pain,

Very quietly move,

But make sure that you're not disturbing others because once we build up the energy for this meditation,

We built up the silence.

If it's disturbed,

It is disturbed for everyone.

So we try to not do that.

If you would like to sit in even a more comfortable posture than just crossing your legs,

Take your,

Take a posture like yourself where you sit next to the wall.

The only criteria is that you do not put your head next to the wall.

Otherwise you will fall asleep.

So let's try this out and see where this goes.

Close your eyes.

Take a couple of deep breaths.

Inhale from the nose.

And exhale from the nose.

Once again,

Inhale from the nose.

And exhale from the nose.

Keep your back straight.

Shoulders down.

Neck straight.

And all the muscles of the face relaxed.

Throughout the meditation,

Keep on breathing in and out as normally and gently as you always do.

Now become aware of the noises from outside.

Whatever you can hear,

Take note of it.

Footsteps,

People talking outside.

Simply observe all these noises.

The people around you are breathing in.

Now become aware of the smell.

As you breathe in,

How does it smell?

In this moment,

In this room.

Keep your awareness on the smell.

Now bring your awareness on your tongue and feel how it tastes.

What is the taste that you have in your mouth right now?

Keep your awareness of the taste in your mouth.

Feel it.

Now bring your awareness to the images in front of your closed eyes.

Become aware of what you see in front of your closed eyes.

And what you see in front of your closed eyes.

Become aware of your skin.

And how does it feel at the outside surface of your skin?

Does it feel cold or hot?

Or something else?

Stay with this awareness of the sensations on your skin.

Now slowly move your awareness to the inside of your body.

To all the sensations that you feel in your body right now.

Keep on breathing in and out.

Very gently and normally.

Keeping your awareness of the sensations in your body.

Now move your attention to your mind.

And see what thoughts you have right now.

Simply observe what's going on in your mind.

Observe the thoughts.

Observe the feelings.

Anything that is going on in your mind right now.

Don't try to change it.

Just observe.

Keep your awareness at whatever is happening in your mind.

Keep your attention in your mind.

Whatever is going on,

Simply observe the thoughts and everything else.

Now imagine that all the sensations in your body,

All what you can hear,

Smell,

Taste,

See,

Anything that you can feel,

Everything is a part of one sensation.

Like a big ball of sensation which contains all your thoughts,

All your feelings,

All the sensations in your body.

Give yourself a couple of minutes to settle into this visualization of all these sensations as one single sensation.

All the sensations.

All the noises.

Everything is a part of this one sensation.

Now notice there are boundaries to this one sensation.

Beyond which there is empty space.

Simply move your awareness from the sensation to this empty space.

Beyond this sensation.

Beyond this empty space.

There is no thought.

There is no feeling.

There is only silence and awareness.

Move away from any sensation and keep your awareness on the emptiness.

Leave all the sounds,

Sensations,

Thoughts and stay in this empty space.

Simply remain aware in this empty space.

Allow yourself to expand in this empty space.

If you get distracted,

Gently move away from any sensation.

Leave all the sounds,

Sensations,

Thoughts and feelings.

Just remain aware of this silent,

Empty space.

Leave all the sensations and stay in this empty space.

Leave all the sensations.

Stay absolutely silent and aware.

Allow yourself to dissolve in this empty space.

Stay here.

Just like that.

Absolutely silent and aware.

Very gently bring your awareness back to your body.

Feel the sensations in your body.

Notice the sounds around you.

Notice how your mind has quietened down.

Notice how you are aware right now.

Very gently and slowly you may open your eyes.

Feel the sensations in your body.

Feel the sensations in your body.

Feel the sensations in your body.

Feel like maintaining the silence.

Feel the sensations in your body.

Last few minutes we usually try to share our experiences.

If we would like,

If not,

Silence is equally good.

If you have any questions,

Things that came up during the session,

Would you,

If you would like to clarify before you leave today,

If not,

I have one more puzzle for you.

Once there was an evil king.

He had a prisoner for 15 years.

And this prisoner was a noble man.

He was a good guy.

But this evil king had imprisoned him,

Had charged him with something he had not done.

After 15 years,

He said,

Let's play more evil games with this person.

So he said,

He brought this prisoner to the court in front of everyone,

In front of his entire council members,

The entire audience.

He said,

Let's give this man a chance to be free.

He said,

I have this jar with me.

It has two balls.

One is black.

One is white.

If this prisoner,

If you take out the white ball,

We will shuffle this and you can,

You can take a look at it in this before,

If you like.

But after you have taken a look at it,

We'll shuffle it.

And if you take out the white ball,

You're free.

You're free to go.

But if you take out the black ball,

You will be sentenced to death.

The prisoner had no choice to say,

OK,

Yeah,

Fine.

So the jar was presented to him.

Only the king could see what's in the jar and the prisoner.

The prisoner looked at it.

Both the balls were black.

He could not have done anything,

But he could not have said that the king is lying.

Otherwise,

He would be beheaded immediately.

So he said,

OK,

Fine.

He picked out a ball,

Put it in his hand.

He told everyone,

Look,

I have the ball,

I've taken out one ball out of this jar.

And he put it in his mouth and ate it.

He said,

Look,

I ate one of the balls and the other one,

Which is in the jar,

Is not the one that I took.

So let's see what that what that ball is.

Of course,

The king had to keep his face in front of every person around and all his audience.

So the another ball was taken out of it,

Which was black in color,

Which meant that the person was free because he swallowed the white ball with that little.

Another story,

Another anecdote.

I would like to thank you very much for joining me in this session.

I hope this inspired you to bring this out of meditation in your life,

Not just for the purpose of creativity,

But for any other reason that you find in your life is important,

Significant.

Reviews

Thank you Dyhanse!!!

Wonderful ❤

Feeling peace right now thankyou

Wonderful! I wish I could hear the response from the audience to the first puzzle.

This meditation was profound for me, I felt my body expanding, melting and very heavy, like I couldn’t move it. Lots of tears as well. I also feel an expansion and calmness that I didn’t have at the beginning. Now I’ll try to see how long I can keep this state, thank you 🙏