The Creative Principle

A message from the crazy-wise:
invoke the creative forces of chaos to bring the order of beauty to a desacralized world.

From the lusty saints:
revoke the voting rights of the teetotallers and puritanical finger-pointers.

On behalf of the trickster bodhisattvas:
provoking the grim and grave into laughter in spite of themselves,

And the bandit mystics:
evoking a new, imaginal world that fulfills the best of all of our collective dreams.

“Welcome to the new age—
Where outsiders are the new insiders.
Standing out is the new fitting in.
Weird is the new cool.
Artists are the new athletes.
Optimism is the new nihilism.
And rebels are the new mainstream.”

– written by anonymous

The Age of Eros is entering as a time of unprecedented and non-linear creative growth, riding in on a wave of democratized access to information, practices, and wisdom—which can occur as mounting pressure, cultural disruption, and eruptive conflict. Have no fear, this is a signifier of a climactic cultural shift from an era of production into an era of creativity. The nature of climax—the entry into a state of consciousness that is without reference, free of pre-existing interpretive filters—is happening on a global level. Those who relied on established and antiquated stocks of knowledge will experience this time as disorienting and threatening. Those trained and entrained in the creative element of arousal, who can meet uncertainty with openness, will find that this time is rich with never-before-seen material and potential. The old guard will topple and a new way will rise up, demanding 21st-century facility with dynamism, real-time reasoning, an ability to read the “gut compass,” and tap into the roaring river of possibility.

As with all cultural disruptions, there will be a split. There will be those who grasp tightly to the old, who cling to normative fixed concepts of good/bad, right/wrong, virtue/vice, and an ultra-reliance on old methods to make one’s point. The new guard will operate according to the Creative Principle, redefining good, righteous, and true as that which gets us out of suffering, the causes of suffering, and helps others get out of suffering. When the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna was asked, “What is truth?” He replied, “Whatever works!” It will be one’s mastery in felt-sense wisdom that will be our guiding factor. Canons, letters following one’s name, titles prior to one’s name, tenure, “proven methods,” and academic credence will all prove useless as those only matter in the land of matter. Culturally, as we enter the creative we are entering the numinous, the energetic, the world of flight, where the impossible becomes possible.

The cultural schism that will occur will happen across race, creed, education, political leaning. Difference will now be determined vertically rather than horizontally: those who see possibility and those who see limitation. It will not be something that can be faked. A certain hysteria will set in as those who have not established the faculty that can see in the darkness, the mystery, the unknown will panic as their old methods fail them. Still, many will double down on the old formulas; we’ll see an increase in passive aggression, a sense of aggrieved victimization, withdrawal from public discourse, an attempt to develop separatist silos in revolt against what cannot be stopped.

We’ve accused each other of trolling, canceling, and gaslighting each other between the two (only two?) narratives we’ve been given to choose between. Forget gaslighting, we are battling our way through the smoke and mirrors of “politic-lighting,” so that eventually we all might know the truth for ourselves. Those who can maintain their center irrespective of appearances will make it out and through the illusion.

The best sense of reality we have at any point can still only be considered a working theory. I suspect much of what we are experiencing at this time is that our “givens” are being pulled out from beneath us and that AI and robotics will be making this a regular occurrence. Those who do not grip to a fixed notion of reality will likely have an easier, perhaps even enjoyable time as we transition into becoming—as one friend of mine says—like pets to AI. We are entering a time when many bets are off, where things we relied on—like political forecasts—prove invalid, and those who have previously defined reality are rapidly losing dominion over what they once ruled. But there can be wisdom in insecurity.

Rather than haves and have not’s, the world will come to be divided into the cans and the can’t’s. There will be those who believe it can’t be done—both because they are relying on an old playbook and because they stay gripped to their sense of unique suffering as a ballast to anchor identity in a fixed concept. And then there will be those who will live in play consciousness, plugged into the creative element of resourcefulness, knowing that there is always a way and living in the joy of discovering it. Without some external “authority” or dogma—political or otherwise—there will be no significance to find in either victimhood or big-institution-villainhood. Significance will be created by the mindset of eudaimonic, autotelic creation for the love of creating. Equality, freedom, and tolerance will not be bestowed by an authority like the media or government so pleas to those institutions will be useless. Demands by marginalized special interest groups will be meaningless because, through the democratization of social access, one’s standing will be determined as a matter of moral character and creative contribution rather than historical positioning.

The split will be entirely determined by one’s attachment, or lack thereof, to any idea, concept, or principle that would take you out of play or have you feel harmed if you did not get the outcome you desired—rather than becoming inspired to either create it or to accept it and learn a new way.

Life on life’s terms will be the playing field. Those who can meet those terms with joy, resilience, some good humor, and infinite resourcefulness will “win.” Winning will be, again, a personal end of suffering, the causes of suffering, and the invitation to get others out of suffering. You will know the new guard by those who, without complaint, sanctimony, or scorn, without resentment or martyrdom, without soapbox or comment section, choose to fly through space—facing obstacles with the joy of an athlete, and give a non-partisan, non-“sermon-y” hand-up to anyone who wants it. Your friends will not be the people you agree with necessarily but the people who figured out flight.

We will shift from the victim/victor model that is based in production consciousness—the pendulum where one pushes oneself and others until it inevitably swings back to the other side, where one must excuse the fact that they cannot push and manufacture excuses for their inability (“it was… fatigue, financial status, gender, parenthood, injury, education, my mental health, addiction. It was some big institution like the government, or my appearance…”—We especially point to the body as the source of our victimhood). In the new era, the imposition of condition and cause will become irrelevant because value will be determined intrinsically rather than extrinsically.

Everything can then work for you. With creativity, your greatest defects can become what makes you unique in a creative world. The question will not be “How do I fit into the cookie cutter of success?” but “What does the blueprint of my unique soul tell me to be?” One’s influence and gratification will accord with one’s capacity to operate in pitch-perfect response to that injunction.

The reward? The boon? You get to define and customize the interpretation of experiential data:  

Are you really ADD? Or do you have a multi-tracking mind?

Are you autistic? Or are you a bodhisattva, not burdened by the weight of frothy emotional attachment?

Are you an addict? Or someone who has found the livewire of creation and you’re harnessing the power of compulsion for art?

Are you dysregulated? Or are you a subversive mystic that is answering to a deeper, more regulated dharma?

Are you traumatized or are you cracked open for the light to get in?

Are you a narcissist or are you like a pregnant woman, carrying a precious art waiting to be birthed and focusing your utmost care on carrying the mystery?

The old world will identify with the former for significance, the new guard will identify with the latter for the potential unleashed.

All suffering will be optional. It will be the result of not listening to and following the simple and elegant instructions of one’s interior voice.

There will be three ways to play:

1. 1. You can accept and play with whatever you encounter;

1. 1. You can employ that creative drive to change your circumstances to be more artful;

1. 1. Or, you can “lose”: go into the defeatism of righteous cynicism.

It’s all up to you.

This will not be a step but a leap.

No one can do it for you, but no one can take it from you.

Set aside your preferences about the company you keep—your kind may not be those with whom you share politics or identity.

Let your rules—especially your limited notions of vice and virtue—die.

Drop the spiritual materialism of feigned benevolence, compassion, and humility.

Step into the place where you cannot fake it.

You either get lift-off or you don’t.

And you only do it for you: 

You are the one who knows if you have a ground of joy, which is the confirmation of flight.

Take off the cement boots of grievance, “rights,” and demands.

Spread equally the wings of “freedom from” and “freedom to,”

And fly into self determination.

No one will be waiting for you,

But all will be happy when you arrive.