A couple months ago, Mindy needed one of her old college books, so I started digging through a few of the cardboard boxes sitting in my future library. As is often the case when digging through old books, I discovered a few forgotten treasures. The one I'd like to write about today was a book I bought in the middle of my residency,
by Robert Greene. I'd read the first chapter or two, but ended up setting it down in a busy and distracted time of life and moving on to lighter fare. It's not a book that can be read distractedly. It's over 300 pages of deep analysis of the stages of attaining mastery-- truly six books in one. He traces the attainment of mastery from "Discover Your Calling: The Life's Task," to "Submit to Reality: The Ideal Apprenticeship," through "Absorb The Master's Power: The Mentor Dynamic." Chapter Four, "See People As They Are: Social Intelligence," was a particularly surprising component of his discussion of mastery, but one which dovetails well with my pursuit of connection this year. His final two chapters, "Awaken The Dimensional Mind: The Creative-Active" and "Fuse The Intuitive With The Rational: Mastery," comprehensively explore high-level aspects of achieving creative mastery. I had so many light-bulb moments reading them. In my vein of exploring creativity, I'd like to highlight a few lessons I learned from Chapter Five.
But first, I would like to note two things. First, the anecdotes in this book are anything but the "fluff" which characterizes the lion's share of nonfiction books out there. Rather, the dozens of biographical sketches sprinkled throughout the book are indispensable in the exploration of his topic. In fact, I can't think of another book that's as layered, complex, yet seamless in its construction. Mastery is a topic that requires real-life examples to understand. It also requires a highly organized approach, which is exactly what the author has attained. In short, Greene displays a masterful grasp of not just the topic of mastery, but also of the craft of bookwriting. I can only describe his treatment of this topic as magisterial.
Second, the following photo captures the most compelling idea bouncing around in my brain over the past few months: on balance, people are either creators or consumers. And if you want to have a shot at an extraordinary life, you'd better be moving toward being a creator and away from being a consumer. That's why I'm writing this blog, and why I pursue so many random hobbies. It's also why I don't watch much television and why I'm off social media, and why I'm bothered by those who lack this sensibility. People who spend most of their lives consuming media created by others atrophy their creative powers and end up dependent on the creativity of others for a sense of vitality.
With this motivation in mind, Greene breaks down the three essential steps to attaining creative mastery: choosing your creative task, using creative strategies to loosen and open the mind, and creating optimal conditions for breakthroughs and insights. He finishes by highlighting six emotional pitfalls to avoid and nine distinct approaches various masters have used to attain creative mastery.
The essential thing in attaining creative mastery is to transcend the "conventional mind" that develops during one's apprenticeship and return to the creative childlike "original mind" with the added knowledge that comes from apprenticeship. But first, we must establish our goal, our life's creative task. This must be realistic yet challenging, open-ended and uncertain, and, crucially, something we are passionate about and which appeals to our sense of unconventionality and "calls up latent feelings of rebelliousness... The sense of having enemies or doubters can serve as a powerful motivating device and fill you with an added creative energy and focus." The creative journey is not for the weak-willed.
Once we find our life's creative task, we must follow the clues to mastery left by the masters who have gone before us. Greene details crucial developmental milestones attained by Mozart, Keats, Edison, Ford, Einstein, Darwin, Da Vinci, Faraday, and Champollion, the decoder of the Rosetta Stone. These include the ability to embrace mysteries and uncertainties and researching as widely as possible to create, as William James expressed it, "a seething cauldron of ideas, where everything is fizzling and bobbling about in a state of bewildering activity." If this can be achieved, "a kind of mental momentum is generated, in which the slightest chance occurrence will spark a fertile idea." An added tack is to engage in physical, artistic, or other kinds of activities outside your work to maintain an openness and looseness of spirit. The more varied the sensual stimulations we experience, the more unique connections are likely to spring forth. This can help us challenge ourselves to think more visually, metaphorically, and analogically, which takes advantage of the visual and associative powers of the mind. And of course, it's handy to always have a notebook or smartphone handy so we don't lose our insights when they occur.
It's important to avoid the extremes of premature closure ("short-circuiting" the creative process) and permanent skepticism. Though we must always be open enough to explore new ideas and see things from different angles, we also need to challenge ourselves to "put our nickel down" and create an artifact of some kind based on our ideas. Setting deadlines and expectations can create the eustress and tension we sometimes need.
Balancing this need for deadlines is the necessity to avoid impatience, one of the six pitfalls to creativity Greene highlights. To counter this tendency, Da Vinci adopted the motto "ostinato rigore," or "obstinant rigor," for every project he involved himself in. Much like an athlete, we have to learn to love the grind, even the pain, as expressed by one of my high school track mottos, "pain is only weakness leaving the body"! "Although it involves much pain, the pleasure that comes from the overall process of creativity is of an intensity that makes us want to repeat it." And to return to a theme mentioned near the beginning of this post, "Engaged in the creative process we feel more alive than ever, because we are making something and not consuming, Masters of the small reality we create. In doing this work, we are in fact creating ourselves." I would add that the act of creation also puts us in touch with God, the creative energy energy inside each one of us, and is thus a deeply sanctifying act. As we become more in tune with this energy, we will become more sensitive to the pitfalls that lie in wait to pull us off our path.
These snares lie at hand each step of the creative way. One we must always scrupulously avoid is grandiosity, an inflation of the ego that can occur after some measure of success. Think Rocky 3, when Rocky rests on his laurels only to get dominated by a hungry Clubber Lang. Good relationships are the best avenue to avoiding this type of fate. The other pitfalls-- dependency, conservatism, complacency, and inflexibility,--are avoided by religiously keeping an open, fluid mind and a bold, independent, rebellious soul, as described above. A community of fellow creatives can also provide correctives in these areas.
Our greatest task as we emerge from our apprenticeships is achieving creative mastery. Most people falls into a series of pitfalls right out of the gate, never realizing their potential. The techniques shared above highlight these pitfalls and open up the path to creative mastery. Yet we are a distractible species in an age of distraction, and if one thing remains true, it is that low is the gate and narrow is the way to mastery, and few find it. May you and I be two of the few.
