Creative Flash Meditations

This is meant to cultivate the ability to create wholly new things with our minds. It does this by repetition of what are called Creative Flashes. These are vivid, complex creative thoughts. Variables to play with are the speed of repititions, intensity of vividness, complexity, and exotic features.

A creative flash is something you create in your imagination that is wholly unique, and previously unknown to you. It can include many features, but should have a minimum of 3 distinct features. Features can include anything you can think of. Objects are a feature, actions are a feature, appearance, feelings, colors, beasts, sex acts, intoxication, god, angels, new creatures never seen, explosions, planets getting ripped in two under your feet, mars falling onto earth at lunchtime while your feet are swollen with artichoke dip you stuffed into the boils growing there because of the fire ants who attacked you earlier for sponging their territory, for example. It can be as pleasant or unpleasant as you like. It can be beautiful, or hideous. The objective is to create a thought you've never had before.

It is important that as one goes they are using their mind to experience it as thoroughly as they can. What does Mars smell like? What does it sound like falling onto earth? What can you see on it's surface? Vividness is a key factor. Your mind should burn with the intensity of it. Feel the emotions of Awe and Fear as mars plummets on top of the earth in front of your eyes. See what I'm getting at?

Applying Creative Flashes to meditation is a whole other thing. What I'm trying at the moment is to have a short creative flash with each breath, then STOP the flash in the moment between breaths. The next flash should be unassociated, not built upon, the previous one. In other words, not a string of things, but each with a fresh beginning. This is actually very tough for me to keep up at a meditative breath pace. I can string together a bunch of random things easily but "opening the box" over and over again is actually much harder for me. One way I'm thinking to boost my ability here is to do a theme. I could do unique beasts over and over (I like this one). Or, I start with a scene and each time something unique happens there. It's kind of a mid-point to the big boy version.

I have not a clue what the output of this exercise is. The most obvious assumption is that it would increase my creative ability and perhaps focus as well. Once I can last 5 minutes, or even 10, I wonder if the nature of the creative images will start to change. I think it's possible that if I can lose myself in it for a moment, then I'll find myself in a unique state of mind or a surprising image from the deep of my mind.

That's an interesting idea, have you been practicing it lately? It would be nice to hear how well your progress is coming along with it.

I think another bonus which pretty much just falls under the creative process is that it might have an effect on your dreaming, especially if you practice lucid dreaming, as visualization exercises are a good way to flex your creative muscles. I might just give it a try for myself, thanks for the idea.

A very interesting concept!

I've been occupied with moving the past couple days so haven't gotten to it.

I got the idea from what I read about memory training. The Memory Palace method. The idea is to build a place in your mind (like a restaurant) and attribute something original to each restaurant seat. Then when you're memorizing, you put each item, usually a card from a deck, in each seat. Somehow the creativeness and uniqueness of each seat makes it "sticky" in the brain and what is attached to it gets a little "sticky" too. I read also that it didn't really have to be a restaurant but a hillside or a house or anything really. The trick was making it "sticky" enough. It resulted in the most interesting, free-flowing, and vivid daydream I've had and I can recall every detail of it months later. Immediately recalling daydreams a couple times helps too. Then I got the idea to combine it with meditation.

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Ok, I just did it a little bit. I'm still finding it tough to clear my mind totally between creative flashes. I just keep wanting to let them flow, daydream-like. Memories randomly pop in and out too. I'm doing it with deep breaths and I try to hold at the cusp between breaths until I've moved into new territory. This is resulting to feeling light headed and my ears ring until some frequencies are just gone. LOL. I love breathing. I can only keep the exercise up so long atm though.

I was doing this meditation last night and had a sort of vision/revelation. It started simply, with a cartoonish elephant. After awhile it moved into more interesting things. These snippets of my imagination happened with back-to-back breaths. It ended in a cool conception of Duality on a very macroscopic scale.

I saw Jesus on the cross saying his famous words "father forgive them for they know not what they do". It occured to me that in that moment he must have been more mortal than divine. Otherwise, he would have known that his execution was necessary to his father's plan. Then a moment of clarity and correction came to me. Being divine he would have said exactly the same thing. He knew what he was saying and doing from the moment he left heaven. He knew the plan, his role, the purpose, and had his lines memorized exactly. Jesus the actor would never have actually interfered with the plan. The people that were there to see him die had such violence and intent in their eyes.

Next it was centuries earlier and on a battlefield with roman or greek armies. They were ragtag by modern standards. Less healthy, shorter, weaker even. yet they had a ferocity that simply awed me.

The next breath led me to a group of ape-men who were engaging a neighboring tribe. The ferocity was there still.

After seeing the ape-men fighting the next breath brought me little in terms of definition. I could only perceive blue-ish black and red-ish black particles bouncing and pounding about. I could see that this was the very early universe and these were the only existing particles in that moment. They too attacked each other ferociously. It was here that I could see that the duality extended in all directions through time, equally. Only the scale changed.


I tried to then go the opposite direction in time, to see if there was an end. I saw what science calls dark matter pushing and pushing in on a galaxy. The galaxy shrunk until it was a bright ball of light. Then it was gone. Only Darkness was there. I thought maybe the dark ate or destroyed the light. A new image appeared though of the light being "poured" from this universe into a different one, like a fountain, but downward.

The light was in part retreating from the dark. I thought the light could be weak. Instead I realized that the light was actually persuing the dark as ferociously as the dark persued the light. The place the light was "retreating" to was the Darkness' old home. Blim-blam yin-yang.

I knew then that for all eternity they would fight one another, equally in flight and persuit. I knew then that only a fusion of the two can possibly end the cycle. They must be forced to mate.

--It was interesting to say the least. It was right after watching the movie Lady in the Water. I like that movie, it put me in an open, relaxed state. Those breaths do come very slowly as I struggle to follow this method.

I have an idea now of what this meditation might do. It seems to take whatever is in the mind and it seems to give a new perspective. Sometimes with a subject I might think it over quite awhile until finally I 'stop' thinking about it. Usually releasing that mental force brings me a conclusion. Not always the ideal or even most useful conclusion, but a conclusion no less. I think maybe this meditation is a direct way to trigger that effect. So, after mulling on a topic for awhile and lacking a conclusion, one could use this to see what pops up. Maybe.

"Being divine he would have said exactly the same thing. He knew what he was saying and doing from the moment he left heaven. He knew the plan, his role, the purpose, and had his lines memorized exactly."

I found great insight in this. sometimes I get little mental subtitles underneath what people have said to me; in this case it'd be .."[i]because you must be what you are[i]" and you are light, and love, and forgiveness.

This is quite a cool concept, bransondude. As a creative thinker and artist, this could be a great way to get the creative juices flowing. I'm going to try it! Thanks for sharing.

I have only been meditating for the passed week and opened my third eye since and cannot cut it out of my vision.
This flash meditation is one of the abilities i think i have been experiencing aswell, sounds exactly similar, and concentration gets extremely intense with more intense flashes and images.

But i feel the same as you, if i could get totally lost in this, i think the images will become much sharper and i have a feeling that it has something to do with remote viewing, the main images that i see, or spring in my conscious mind are of people walking. And it always seems as if i am looking down at something rather than directly in front.

Wow! This just goes to show you how different people can be.

I'd like to be able to turn off what you (all) appear to be trying to turn on--what works for me is pot (slows it down) and most TV programming (puts me to sleep), so, maybe if you (all) avoid pot and TV you'll find that your exercises come a little easier. <shrug>