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By Off the Shelf Correspondent Rosie Rosenzweig

After interviewing 40 women artists on their creative process, or Flow, the term coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, I realized that there was another state of consciousness. Flow, according to him had certain characteristics; these include:

EMERGENCE: the soul of creativity

1. Complete concentration on the task;
2. Clarity of goals and reward in mind and immediate feedback;
3. Transformation of time (speeding up/slowing down);
4. The experience is intrinsically rewarding;
5. Effortlessness and ease;
6. There is a balance between challenge and skills;
7. Actions and awareness are merged, losing self-conscious rumination;
8. There is a feeling of control over the task.

In my book Emergence: The Role of Mindfulness in Creativity, I equated his characteristics with certain states of meditation or mindfulness described in the Buddhist canon. The state of consciousness that I described as Emergence occurred during Flow as well as during certain moments of meditation. I used the terms meditation and mindfulness interchangeably. I based this idea on a talk by Buddha called Codependent Arising, which describes the links between states of consciousness and feelings. The important idea here is that thoughts arise and so does the state of Emergence.

I described this state using an interview with Novelist Joan Leegant, who described how, after creating the characters and the situation, she just watched the characters take on a life of their own to further the plot … they EMERGE. Creativity or Emergence assumes a will of its own, once experienced and produces the art form naturally.

I reasoned that this is the way of the natural world. For example, an embryo emerges as a baby after nine months, and that baby emerges as an adult, just like the seeds of spring grow to be trees, flowers, vegetables and other vegetation. Emergence is a natural state of being and occurs when artists produce art.

Everyone can access this in their lives when they put their minds to it, mindfully. Problems get solved daily with this same process. It’s not really that unique to artists and occurs multiple times during a day. Even finding a new route to an oft travelled place could be in this category.