Cosmic Creativity
Hermila Farquhar
I am in the process of writing a book on inner-mind creativity and anticonventional thinking (ACT). I am serialising the book in Report 103, a popular newsletter on ceativity, imagination, ideas and invention, and including a draft on these pages.
In addition, I have been doing inner-mind (also known as "cosmic creativity") and anticonventional thinking workshops and talks at conferences as well as for businesses and government bodies in Europe, North America, Asia, Africa and the Middle East. Learn more about my talks and workshops here or get in touch with me now to see if I can help you and your team think more creatively and innovate more effectively.
* "Inner-Mind Creativity was originally called "Cosmic Creativity". However, I have decided to change the name to inner-mind creativity for two reasons. Firstly, I believe "inner-mind" better reflects the method. Secondly, someone else has been using the term "cosmic creativity". He took the term first, he deserves it.
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Don't Trust the Status Quo
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Everyone has their own process and rituals (mine includes palo santo with a side of citrus essential oil), but there are vast innominate cosmic cycles that interconnect all of our distinct creation modes.
Creativity is like catching lightning in a bottle. At times, I feel like a boundless channel, overflowing with a flow-state faucet of ideas and manifestations. Other times, I feel like I\u2019m clinging to the clouds, seeking answers from Source only to receive deafening silence in return.
It\u2019s only been until recently that I\u2019ve learned to trust my own creative cadence. When I feel resistance, I do my best to surrender to the stirrings within so I can reconnect post-incubation with bursts of clear, connected energy.
We are all mere fractals of the cosmos, birthed from stardust. It\u2019s only logical that Source has some greater pull over our energy \u2014 the ability to expand our creative channel if we\u2019re open to it.
Lot of the comics also have a lot of ordinary life things in them, and also between the lines there can be reflections, and possibilities for sub interpretations. And I love that. Creating your own stories by looking at the images and make new associations. Maybe someone finds this weird! Guess comics in general are not really seen as a high-end intellectual thing really. Depends on what it is of course. But it definitely feeds the creativity and the fantasy for me.
Later the whole underground culture with posters and stickers got on to us, that came through hip hop and graffiti in the beginning, and we became aware that every other scene, punk rock, hardcore, rockabilly, club culture, and so on also got their own style, designs, but still the same flyer and poster culture.
So, when we did our fine art education and then after that worked as artists, the graphic part has always been a huge part of the work, and became an important element for the artistic communication, promotion and in general a style. Both in a visual way but also as a more in-depth idea-based language.
Another time in school they talked about the polar bears you see when you look out the window on both poles, this was of course a trick question from the teacher. And everybody went along with it. But I just randomly said, no, it depends what pole you are on. And of course, again, it depends, since polar bears only exist on the northern hemisphere.
Jayda and me, meet in 2014 through a mutual friend in Berlin. And we got really close. She was totally new to DJing, but was talented, had a great energy, and really good music taste, so I invited her to play at parties with me, some here in Berlin, like a party called Welcome To The Pleasuredome, which I did together with good friend Double Dancer at Paloma. Or the basement parties I did at Samehead with PLO Man.
Around that time Jayda and I started to organise underground parties together in Vancouver as well, and we called them Freakout Cult Parties. On these parties we played, but also invited friends and locals like Hashman Deejay, LNS or Scott W to play with us. I made the flyers for the parties, and since they were illegal the promotion was very secretive, and just a few selected artist studio spaces were used for these parties. There was a really fun and great energy in Vancouver at the time! The timing for these kinds of parties was perfect! It was just before and when Vancouver got the big hype, before that bubble burst it was really cool!
Think pretty much humans are the greatest threat to ourselves and everything we do to mess up our life and planet. So probably need to reprogram our mindset and learn to have a more in general healthy balance to life and our planet, to keep the things we need to live on a functional level.
It all happens in Wappinger Falls, NY, an hour-and-a-half drive north of NYC. I spoke with the artists and church co-founders about entheogens, psilocybin, and cosmic creativity as a spiritual practice. Apparently, it all started with a vision (and some MDMA).
VICE: Some people are Christian, Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish (among other religions). Meanwhile, some believe in Universal Love as their core principle of spirituality. Do you consider yourself religious people?
Alex Grey: Love is God's secret name. I grew up Methodist and went to church until my parents gave up on religion when I was nine. Allyson grew up Jewish and continues to practice to some degree. I have been a scholar of all religions, particularly Buddhism, for the past 25 years. We meditate. We are both approved ministers who counsel people regarding their spiritual and creative lives, officiate weddings, baby blessings, and attend to those grieving. Art is our spiritual path and ministry. Religion comes from the word "re" or again and "ligare" meaning to bind or tie back. The purpose of religion is to unite the self with God or the creative force. Music, sacred spaces, and meaningful icons are the way we conjoin our minds with the transcendental.
What makes it a chapel and not just a gallery?
Alex: A chapel is a place of prayer or worship and may house sacred art. A gallery is a commercial space to accommodate exhibits, spectators, and is often associated with the selling of art as a commodity. Chapels, indeed most sacred sites, include paintings, stained glass, mosaic, carving, aesthetic architecture, and are designed to be welcoming to the spiritual pilgrim. The intention of building CoSM and Entheon, is to inspire an experience of the divine through contemplation of visionary art. CoSM became a church in 2008. The artwork points to the light body of the universal human, an integral worldview, so we founded a trans-denominational sacred space that integrates the insights of science, and features creativity as a spiritual practice.
Couples have gotten married at your chapel. Was that the initial plan for the space?
Alex:The initial plan was to create a sacred space of visionary art to serve and uplift the community. We weren't sure what would happen. People started asking us to perform the marriages at the Chapel.
What is the CoSM campus? What did it used to be?
Alex: CoSM lives on land that was once inhabited by Wappinger native people. Four-hundred years ago, around the time of Henry Hudson, the river 1500 feet from our entrance, was called the "MoHeKanniTuck" -- the river that flows both ways. The Hudson is a tidal river that changes directions every six hours, flowing in from the sea, past Manhattan to the Hudson Valley and back. The Wappinger people suffered genocide, were exiled to the Trail of Tears, and are no more. The Wappinger are remembered by the name of our town, and we built a memorial in their honor at the entrance of our property.