WHAT IS CREATIVITY?
Art of all kinds has always been important in human cultures:
It can create new points of view to blocked or habitual understanding.
It can help breaking down prejudices or it can build up courage.
Art can expand our language and so deepen the understanding of ourself and the world.
Art was always and can still be a powerful ritual - a way to overcome problems, blockages, sorrows etc.
Art can help us to explore beauty and truth.
Art was always part of rituals to secure present and future life, or to connect between different worlds.
Art always had a therapeutic aspect both for the society and for the individual.
Art is like a parallel reality that we can share with others
The secret behind arts sometimes almost magic influence on us is the creative process itself - the process of making the art.
Its not so simple to describe it, but lets try:
Daily life is in general lived according to rational and understandable reasons: I have to go to work so I can make money to feed myself and my family. I have to leave at 7.50 in the morning so I can catch the bus. I should not cross the street when a car is coming, etc. etc.
Rational thinking is helpful in many situations, but as we grow up it often tends to dominate all thinking in life - we forget how much more we contain.
It only gives us access to a small part of what life is. What I feel, which way I should go in life, how to explore my true passion etc. - the existentially important themes in life cannot be dealt with by the rational mind as they are only accessible in a "higher" working mode of the mind. The spoken language can not be used When it comes to expressing myself and to contacting the intuitive level.
To express oneself is a basic need for humans but in todays rationalistic society many people are lacking ways to express themselves.
The making of art does not happen through rational and logical thinking. Art languages (music, painting, sculpture, theatre etc.) are not restricted and not censured by the rational mind, it does not have to be understood and explained.
In the creative process we have therefore a liberating freedom to express also what we don't know. Our intuition often comes up with profound and amazing new aspects - often exactly what we could not figure out ourselves.
And this is the real gift of the creative work: It seems to add what is lacking, to give what is needed, to express what could not be expressed.
Our creativity is the access to a more clever part of us, a perspective that includes what we seems to neglect.