Sabotage your quick thinking judging left brain as you become aware of your present–of being — right now.  Eliminate preconceptions about the past and future by letting go of naming and categorizing and become receptive to the source of all being– being, in fact, receptive to God. The Receptive is the second hexagram of the I Ching. You are ready for the second exercise:

1. Place a picture upsidedown. Draw it without turning the original right side up. Your visual part of your brain is activated.
2. Avoid using words to identify what you see. Start the drawing at whatever point you wish. You may want to skip around and end up back where you started or you may work from line to line. The way you choose is right for you.
3. Avoid talking to anyone to avoid left-brain activity taking over the exercise. Left-brain thinking indulges in verbal, logical, analytical thinking with a preference for clear sequential logical thought which funnels complexity down into managable words, symbols or abstractions. It benefits from narrow examples and from trial and error. It reads musical notation and keeps the beat.
4. Don’t say anything negative to yourself. Just go on drawing angles and curves relative to the edges of the paper, and placing shapes and spaces. Live in ambiguity, paradox, complexity, rich and associative patterns grasping wholes. Seek relationships between parts and search for the ways parts fit together to form wholes. By the quickness, complexity and nonverbal nature, right-brain style of thinking is difficult to put into words. This creative thinking can take on complex visual perceptual processing with greater ease. This is the tone, melody and expression of life.

An imaginary line will help locate various parts relative to each other. Sometimes a picture is marked like graph paper so people can see better how things are relative to each other, very much like a jigsaw puzzle.

What is your state of mind as you draw? Does it vary? How does it vary? What is your reaction when you’ve finished and turn the drawing right side up? While you were drawing , were you aware of seeing lines in a different way? Are you aware of the lines not sinking into a familiar form?

“Ridesideup” we view a familiar form in the usual way. We quickly categorize what we are looking at and this blocks our creativity and divergent thinking.

Preconceived thinking blocks our ears and blinds us to inner insight and creativity. With upsidedown orientation, even difficult drawings can be accomplished. Unconventional thinking born from letting go of preconceived thinking can circumvent a difficult problem.

The key is to let go. If you try to hang onto your life, you will lose it. Let go of preconceived notions and be receptive. This is the groundwork for meditation, for reflection, for prayer, for spirituality, for personal growth. Your creative responses will be your mark in the world.

intellect*emotions

logical analysis*metaphorical synthesis

Yin*Yang

rational*poetic

abstract*concrete

scientific*imaginative

The corpus callosum connects the two hemispheres of the brain and transmits the separate processes of the two modes to each other and the two views of reality are reconciled. That is the beauty and complexity of your creative process. Now, you have a record of the your beginning creative journey.