Creative Selflessness

“No reward is greater than the doing.” Charles Bukowski

Or maybe the reward is not required at all if we can get into the state of non-doing. Artists have often mentioned that when they are working, they slip into a state of not being the doer, that something else takes over and the artwork makes itself and time passes without notice, All the sudden one looks up and the work is finished. A lot of artists think of it as being in the groove or in the flow. This is probably the kind of doing that Bukowski is talking about which brings the feeling of reward.

There are various other ways of describing this condition, being an empty vessel or a hollow reed. Our consciousness is like a mirror. If the mirror is kept clean, it reflects what comes before it. The reflection does not belong to the mirror, the mirror cannot hold it or possess it. When we get into that reflective state we are in a state of selflessness, we become what we are reflecting from our creative imagination. This is the state where our work can flow through us. This state of selflessness can happen in any activity if we immerse ourselves in it.

We have a tendency to want to put all kinds of filigree on our mirror-like consciousness, to cover it over with knowledge and beliefs and opinions until we can barely experience our own reflective nature. This is a trick of our intellect and our individual ego that wants to be something, to be somebody. We use our minds like a nest that is composed of all our intellectual acquisitions and that nest becomes a cocoon where we feel safe and protected but also isolated and cut off from our creative freedom and this restricts our movement and responsiveness.

“In the pursuit of learning, every day something is added. In the pursuit of the Tao, every day something is removed.” Tao Te Ching — chap. 48

In order to act by not engaging in action, to do without engaging in doing we must put aside all that we know, all that we desire, all that we have achieved in the past and enter the moment with emptiness, with open hands, not holding on to something or being someone. To empty our cup, to make accommodation. This seems mysterious. What does it mean? We all know exactly what it means but we don’t normally ever reflect upon it.

If we are conscious of being in a selfless state then, at that moment we are not in a selfless state. Our self has returned to the forefront. That is the conundrum. When we are thinking about creative selflessness we are not in a selfless state. It is something that can only be looked at retrospectively, after it has occurred. When our sense of identity returns, of being present as ourselves, is the only time when we can ponder the question. When we are in a state of creative selflessness there is no one to ask the question or make the observation. When we are in this creative state our self is missing in action.

So the question then becomes how can we prepare ourselves or train ourselves to be in a selfless state beforehand? Young artists fresh out of college usually find that in order to start pursuing their artistic interests, they have to unlearn everything they learned in art school. In school, learning, acquiring knowledge and technical skills is the point of their efforts. But then their minds are full of theories, history and formulas. The mind has been packed full of knowledge. While the residue of this preparatory knowledge will remain, the thing an artist must do is throw it all away and start over fresh in order to find their own individual creative path and their own voice. How can anyone recognize that voice if the mind has been filled with the voices of all of their teachers and the masters whom they have been studying?

If pursuing your own inner way is the goal, then this process of unlearning, of emptying our cup so to speak, to still our mind, to remove something every day is how we prepare ourselves for slipping into this state of creative selflessness, of reflectiveness. This is how we clean the mirror of our consciousness. Not by adding but by removing and polishing. Only then will we be able to move fluidly back and forth between these states.

Any artist working at any stage of their life and at any point in their career needs to follow this same discipline and continue to deepen themselves in this process of unlearning and of removing something every day. It is the process of simplifying, of emptying the mind of the unnecessary and the extraneous. Clinging to our sense of self and its constant desiring is the only true obstacle. The more inwardly quite and contented we become the less trouble we are to ourselfs and the less we block our creative flow.

Obviously, most of the time we are present as our self. How we think of ourself as a personage can also affect our ability to let go and be creative. But by constantly dipping into the reflective state where we can express our creative imagination, our sense of self slowly softens and becomes more fluid and less self-absorbed.