Creativity and Procrastination

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Many a creative seed has been choked by neglect. The reason for neglect is procrastination and a certainty that the idea will amount to nothing. We are not just discussing creativity that has given us masterpieces like Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, the Pyramids of Egypt, or Michelangelo’s David We are looking to create our own masterpiece to realise our true potential. We all receive creative impulses from time to time, directing these ideas require generativity.

Procrastination leads to stagnation. In his Eight stages of Development, Erik Erikson seventh stage is Generativity Vs Stagnation. Generativity involves concern for others and the desire to contribute to our world and future generations This can be achieved in a myriad of ways unique to the individual, whether through creative output, parenting or mentoring, they have a strong sense of adding value to society. Stagnation comes from feeling unproductive and uninvolved, leading to self-absorption, lack of growth and entrapment. According to Erikson, successfully navigating this stage develops a virtue of care. When we develop this virtue we feel a sense of contribution to the world, typically through family, work, and creative output. We feel unproductive by failing to find a meaningful way to contribute to the world. This leads to stagnation and a feeling of disconnect, uninvolved with our communities and society as a whole. Success in phase seven of Erikson’s timeline leads to feelings of usefulness and accomplishment, while failure results in shallow involvement in the world.

Procrastination has long been part of human behaviour predating the internet and the lure of scrolling. Procrastination is often a combination of fear of failure and sticking to a tried and tested formula. Anything that requires moving outside evidential experience is discarded as a flight of fancy to someone with fixed behaviour patterns. To move beyond this restricted point of view, we need to invoke a feeling of trust. Acting on a creative impulse requires determination to see it through even if we don’t know what the outcome will be. It requires trust that if our inner-directive has given us the impulse, it has also provided the energy to bring it to fruition. We can’t always see the outcome but we learn to trust the process. The suppressed energy that supplies the separate-self on an individual level, congeals to create a mass belief system among populations. Majority thinking is a mirror that reflects limitation, and it strengthens a resolve to stick to only what is tried and tested. But the limits of evidence are not the limits of imagination. Michelangelo is reputed to have said that every block of stone has a statue inside it, it is the task of the sculptor to discover it. We are the sculptors and our lives are the marble, our true face is waiting to emerge. But if we approach the marble from majority thinking, we will be just another featureless face on the frieze of humanity.

Collette O’Mahony 23/02/2024

An extract from my upcoming guidebook ‘A Compass for Change’ . Available next May/June.

For online counselling appointments please visit my Psychotherapy Page http://www.colletteomahony.com/counselling – or – email info@colletteomahony.com

Responsibility and Freedom

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When we accept responsibility for our thoughts and actions, we set off a chain reaction. We are declaring to the universal mind that we are willing to accept our faults and rejoice in our triumphs. If something goes awry we look to ourselves for the problem rather than blaming others, therefore we give out the message that if we own the problem, we also own the solution. If we hold someone else responsible for a problem, we then depend on them for a solution. The former is energy giving, the latter energy draining. By taking responsibility for a problem we are open to finding solutions that will bring peace of mind, by blaming others we are igniting worry and doubt because energetically we are saying that we have no control over the situation. The road to responsibility may be a long one for those who never learned it as a child or young adult. This is not responsibility for younger siblings, chores or homework; it is self-responsibility, knowing right from wrong and owning our faults as well as accepting compliments in equal measure. Extreme behaviour comes from a lack of measured response to a situation, it is viewing a thing from emotional reaction rather than rational thought. Learning to channel our emotions in an appropriate way avoids their escape in a heightened situation which may lead to quarrel and dispute. This can lead to a disproportionate response to something that is triggered by suppressed emotions.

By using our inner-directive, we have a compass to guide us through change. When the mind slows down, the heart opens and everything becomes clear. Disturbance in our minds and turbulence in our heart obscures our inner-directive and we cannot tell in what direction we must proceed. Our true self is the unhindered, unblemished potential that came into the world. True self is deeper than flesh, it is a wholesome nourishment in the seed of the individual, propagated by truth and nature. A soul on fire, brave and true, breaks through the tough shell of mental inertia to become the exact fruit of its original design. We do not go in search of our true self, it is already with us, healing work is tending to the seed, encouraging it to germinate and cast off the husk of conditioning and unconscious beliefs. Taking responsibility is an important step towards realising our true potential. We must hold ourselves accountable for our thoughts, words and actions, which negatively impact on others, and on ourselves. Every damning word of our inner-critic, toward ourselves or others, shrinks the fulfilment of potential. The seed of potential must be nourished by daily mindfulness to expand awareness.

Collette O’Mahony 16/02/2023

extract from A Compass for Change

Navigating Change

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An extract from my upcoming guidebook – A Compass for Change.

When something cataclysmic occurs it has a direct effect on our mental health. This may be a gradual cause like separation and divorce, or an unexpected cause such as sudden death. The cause is the event, the effect is the feelings of loss and grief. We cannot undo the event no matter how much we may wish to but we can gradually process our feelings by giving them our attention. The effect of a job loss may shake our confidence and lead to financial uncertainty, on the other hand it may lead to better opportunities and increased salary. Preparation is the key to success in most fields of endeavour, it is similar for good mental health. Most people face a crisis when unwanted change is forced upon them through tragic or unavoidable circumstance. Similarly, those who try to avoid change reach a point where their health suffers due to a clash between their conditioned mind and their inner directive. The conditioned mind functions on schemas, the parameters laid down by learned habits, beliefs and structure. It arises from childhood and is influenced by family structure, schooling, regional and national thinking. On the other hand, the inner directive is our intuition, that which says something is wrong even if others try to convince you otherwise. Too often we allow ourselves to be swayed by what people think of us, or the mood of the collective.

Our initial response to enforced change is often resistance. This is understandable given how the subconscious operates. It takes longer for our subconscious mind to accept change, it runs on a conditioned loop compromising of our daily habits and cognitive learning, culminating in repetitive behaviour patterns. When these behaviour patterns are thrown into tumult through an unexpected event, the subconscious mind tries to default to the habitual patterns causing the thinking mind to struggle with the new situation. This is something that those who are bereaved struggle with, particularly in the early stages of grief, the conscious mind has to constantly remind the subconscious that their loved one is no longer with them. It can take several months for the subconscious to acknowledge the death, when it eventually does it reduces mental pressure. This permits normal functioning of the mind to resume and allow time for the bereaved person to process grief. Many bereaved people report feeling lost, confused, forgetful or think they are losing their mind; it could just be that the thinking mind is overloaded with functions that are normally designated to the subconscious. The subconscious will eventually register the change and adapt accordingly, but during the adjustment period there are feeling of loss and grief that require inner attention.

Many people take the view that free will is an illusion, and that our behaviour is governed by forces over which we have no control. Consequently, how we act or react is viewed as predictable or unavoidable. Our behaviour can be predictable, but that doesn’t make it’s inevitable. We can choose how to behave, but this is restricted if we determine we have to behave according to our structural belief system. As individuals we are free to choose our behaviour, we have a choice to act responsibly or irresponsibly.

Collette O’Mahony. 10/02/2024

Excerpt from the guidebook – A Compass for Change.

The Language of Dreams

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Last night a dream leapt up from my subconscious and forced me to remember that I have dreamed the same dream multiple times. The subconscious is a dangerous place full of hiding places for our fragmented souls and it launches an attack when our conscious mind is sleeping. The insomniac knows this trick and remains on guard throughout the long night. The subconscious is canny, it shows us a flash of a dream, enough for us to recognise it is a frequent visitor but then snatches it away in case our conscious mind goes to work on decoding its language. The language of the subconscious is in dreams and only the life force permeating our finite meanderings can understand its true meaning.  

Dreams like water have many fathoms, some skim the surface of our daily lives and others dredge deeply linking us to the unfathomable depths of infinity. There are dreams that are prescient in quality, forewarning us of the path we are about to take and others that excavate our emotional graveyard for buried trauma. Decoding dreams is a tricky business and the truth within them can only be felt, it cannot be told. In a way, dreams transcend death and mortality giving us a glimpse into a world beyond the waking mind and the repetitive noise that creates the rigid corners of our existence. Occasionally, we have a dream that presses a reset button and rids us, albeit temporarily, of our structured thoughts and beliefs. In these enlightened dreams, we can reach back in time to touch the great minds of the past, those unhindered by religion and societal constraints. It offers us a fresh objectivity on life as a whole, steering us past our cornered subjectivity.

We can enter into contemplation, a relaxed open state of mind allowing ideas to germinate and grow, rather than an active thinking mind where constant mental activity leads to a hurried pace within and without. When we are engaged in constant mental activity we enter a treadwheel of finite possibility, when we are in contemplation we are on the precipice of wonder. Contemplation is not mental laziness, it is a state of vibrational activity and offers fertile soil for new ideas. The means by which these new ideas bounce into life is by enthusiastic and creative response.

And so, back to my dream, a tool to circumvent my active thinking mind that is moving along life’s middle lane and missing out on contemplative opportunities. In the dream I am driving a car, an illusion of control, until in a flash I am moved into the passenger seat and trying to steer from the side-lines. I need to indicate and pull off the motorway, it’s time to allow the life force at the core of my being to take the steering wheel from the middle-of-the-road conscious mind. My acquiescence finally allows the dream to decode in my conscious awareness. I am not in control. I am in control. The dichotomy of my existence rests on this axis. The former occurs when I am trying to control my life through active thinking, the latter comes about through contemplative openness. Dreams are powerful communicators from the source of intelligence if only we would allow that source to work through us.

Photograhic credit: Rekha Garton.

Time: Friend or Foe?

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Time swoops into focus, nudging us with a ticking noise, ‘keep moving’ it says, ‘my survival depends on motion’. The mind, wired like a ticking clock, swings between right and wrong, swayed by excitement and an avalanche of opinions. One day, it’s taking sides in a political debate, the next it’s swallowing every story of the digital age. Pierce through the stories about fractious nations, warring families and rising inflation, climb down from the pendulous left to right motion that is stealing your valuable life.

Solitude is the enemy of time sitting still among the swirling edifice and finding the eye of the storm where sanity prevails. Seek nature, walk in the forest, climb a hill for the views, in ten years, even twenty, these are the shining moments of joy that decorate our lives. Daily news stories that readership devours will be assigned to the scrapheap of our minds. Every step we take in nature reduces this mind-fill and allows us to live life on our terms rather than become fodder for the beast.  In fifty or even a hundred year’s time no one will remember the irrelevance of commentary on insignificant stories, only facts will remain. Put down the phone, turn off the TV, step outside and take a deep breath. This is truth. We need air. We don’t need a constant drip feed from media outlets. Breath connects us with something greater than the news channels and apps that decorate our phone screen, it provides us with life. No one, ever, reached to check the latest news story when they were choking or in cardiac arrest. Breath is all important.

Every country has their headlines, every social network drowns in opinion swaying from left to right, we want free speech but only on our terms shouting down those who disagree. The online platform allows us to hide behind its shield and let our fingers do the talking. If we enter the slipstream of time and motion caused by outer phenomena we are in a state of reaction, positive action comes when we act from a place of stillness within.

Time moves at a speed corresponding to our mental activity. Slow the mind and time expands, fill the mind with news threads and we find ourselves swinging mercilessly upon the pendulum of time. If we wonder where the year has disappeared to, then we have consigned much of it to the scrapheap of our minds. If we can look back on the year and pick out several cherished moments, we have brought some balance to our lives. If, however, we sit in this moment neither looking backward or forward, we have achieved the magic moment that always exists, taking us beyond the boundaries of time into the very existence that pervades all life on earth and the universe.

Collette O’Mahony

January 2023

Perpetuum Mobile by Matjaz Jerman