Be CREATIVE, feel FREE to EXPRESS yourselves!

TRANSFORMING THE FUTURE OF NAIL POLISH




SEPTEMBER 4, 2008- MODERN ALCHEMY AND IMAGINATION



I have just dipped into a book about the future that has become a best seller. I notice some familiar themes: go beyond the ego, surrender to life, find unity with Spirit, ascend to a state of mind in which the present moment becomes All.

I would call these prescriptions tranquilizers. Their effect is to convince a person he is gaining in wisdom as he becomes more passive. Perhaps that is not the intent, but it works out that way.

Why? One reason is, the word ego, used negatively, is vague. People come to believe they need to repress certain energies and self-ish impulses in favor of sacrifices.

It’s a muddle.

Another reason is, people who recommend attaining some “elevated” state of mind as a direct goal are trying to ignore ACTION.

And that action is creative. It has a everything to do with imagination.

Trying to attain or inhabit a permanent state of satisfied mind is a very slippery proposition. You find a glimmer of it and then it vanishes.

One of the keys to living a creative life is discovering that you want to EXPRESS something. You may not know exactly what it is, but that doesn’t matter.

And here is where people drop the ball. Purposely. They think expressing something high and wide and deep could get them into trouble with their friends and family. They will go beyond the norm. They’ll stick out in the crowd. They’ll experience rejection. They’ll find themselves up the creek without a paddle.

So they back down and try to fit in. They cut the link between themselves and their own imagination. Because EXPRESSION has everything to do with imagination.

And then, in the aftermath of giving up on expression, people are available for all sorts of “self-improvement” advice that advances the theme of success without true creativity. Or they redefine creativity as something that will help them sell candy or hairpins or nail polish more effectively.

Society as a group places no emphasis on exploring great works of imagination. It places less than no emphasis on becoming inspired by the people who created those works. Well, what else would you expect? Society always forwards the goals of the group. Expression and imagination are all about the individual as distinct from the group.

Once you are embedded in a group, whether or not it has a name and defined objectives, you quickly discover you are involved with conflicts and resentments and gossip. You are involved with proving you can set aside your own desires for the sake of other people. The desire to express something is buried under a welter of nonsense.

The group, and its preoccupations, tends to conceal its naked reality behind a mask of prescriptions and slogans and pathetic advice couched in appealing terms. It may even appear that the group has some concern for the fate of the individual. But when you track down those concerns to their core, you find it was all a sham. The true aim is to embed the individual in those emotions that spring from the notion that the group is All.

In such a world, how does the individual maintain his own independence? He does it by living through creative action, by expressing his own imagination. You can try to tap dance around that one, but there is no easy fix. This is not a typical problem that has a solution. This is not something you can deflect by acquiring more money. This isn’t a puzzle you can work out with an ingenious answer. This isn’t a structural flaw you can correct. No amount of meditation or contemplation will do it for you.

People who are used to relying on systems will inevitably try to make this crossroad into an opportunity by applying yet another system. And they will find themselves in a stale vacuum.

Living through and by imagination is a solution that goes beyond any other solution. It goes so far beyond it that it isn’t a solution at all. It’s a new life.

JON RAPPOPORT www.nomorefakenews.com