Creativity

[saieditor]

Pardon me for dragging this stuff in BUT

about 20 years ago I changed religions to Hinduism.

One day I discovered the Brahma Gayatri. Lemme explain. Brahma is the creator in Hinduism and the source of all creativity. A gayatri is a specific mantra which counts to 21 syllables, follows Gayatri Metre, and both describes and invokes the attributes of the deity addressed. So, in search of creativity, about 15 years ago, when I discovered this particular prayer, I have been chanting it as a mantra whenever I need creativity. For me, it works, and whether or not that is self-fulfilling prophecy, well, that is your take. For me, it works, I believe. Here it is:

Om Parameshwaraya Vidmahe
Parratatvaya Dheemahe
Tanno Brahma Prachodayat

[Tiltyred]

I'm often praised as being creative with interior decoration. I actually think I'm resourceful and hard-headed. I get an idea of how things should be and I just keep moving the pieces around, adding and subtracting, until it feels right, and I'll use whatever I have. Like, I made cafe curtains and valances from a set of napkins, by hand. I mentioned it to a friend at work who couldn't imagine it, but she came over and was like, "Oh, that works!" Or I can walk into a room and see immediately how if you just tweak a couple of things, it will fall into place, the colors will flow better, or a certain theme will be better articulated. I like to work with objects, though.

[TheChosenOne]

Originally Posted by Cimarron

This came up somewhere else on the forum, so I thought I'd focus on it.

Is there anybody else here who knows and admits (has come to terms with) lacking creativity and originality? From personal experience, I know I'm horrible at coming up with new ideas, but love picking apart other people's ideas. If you want an optimistic note, I think of it as being the gardener who trims the hedges, as opposed to the one planting them.

So is it just me?

No, I've admitted to not being imaginative or creative, and frankly I couldn't care less, because I've got other attributes that I'm proud of. I work more like a robot than a person.

[Beat]

I'm so uncreative.

[Cimarron]

It's going to be okay.

[T-Guy]

Originally Posted by Cimarron

This came up somewhere else on the forum, so I thought I'd focus on it.

Is there anybody else here who knows and admits (has come to terms with) lacking creativity and originality? From personal experience, I know I'm horrible at coming up with new ideas, but love picking apart other people's ideas. If you want an optimistic note, I think of it as being the gardener who trims the hedges, as opposed to the one planting them.

So is it just me?

Yes I admit I'm not very creative nor imaginative, but I do make other people's ideas better.

[Cimarron]

Originally Posted by T-Guy

Yes I admit I'm not very creative nor imaginative, but I do make other people's ideas better.

Exactly, that's how people like us contribute.

[d@v3]

Originally Posted by T-Guy

Yes I admit I'm not very creative nor imaginative, but I do make other people's ideas better.

LOL! Then they get mad at you for getting credit for their idea!

Anyways, yeah I'm so not creative.

[Eagle]

I find that I am not very creative or original. When it comes to art I only enjoy or can remotely complete art that is either randomly abstract (very rarely) and more often then not, landscape art. When it comes to creative solutions it's just what appears logical based off my resources and occurs to me at the time. I hate sometimes not being able to come up with an original idea, but I work at it. I write songs, so that's a start, funny thing is most songs involve some passion on the part of the writer, good luck with that coming from me.

[Eagle]

Originally Posted by Cimarron

Exactly, that's how people like us contribute.

Exactly, I find that I can't create a ingenious idea on my own, but I can vastly improve another persons idea. So, maybe we all just need to use ourselves as focusing lenses.

One question that occurred to me do to the fact that each member of human kind is creative in their own way is this:

Is that magnification of others work a type of creativity in and of itself?

It can't just appear out of mid air. Not everything we do to improve others ideas and work is entirely logical.

Finally, can't we SJ's be creative in other ways? I mean, we might not be able to be inventive when it comes to pieces of art or poetic works, but we can be inventive when it comes to arguments and logic. We can come up with many different ways of arguing any one point. Sometime we just create random ones that throw others for a loop. Sometimes we just construct our ideas using a logical framework. Might this be considered creativity? Or might it not?