The Direction of Intention

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Self-made prisons are thought constructions. There is a term for self-imposed limitations: Premature Cognitive Commitment. It goes like this: place a big chain around the leg of a baby elephant and fasten the other end of the chain to a big tree. The baby elephant will eventually stop pulling on the chain; it has learned its limits. As it grows, all the elephant handler need do is replace the chain with ever-weaker bits of rope tied to smaller and smaller trees. Eventually, all that is needed to contain the elephant is a piece of twine and a small stick pushed into the ground. Despite the reality of the twine and the twig, the elephant will not test the boundary; it has learned and internalized a limitation.

The belief that you are not creative is a premature cognitive commitment. The intellect will tell you to stop pulling on the chain because the data has shown that it does no good to pull; you are not going to make a living as musician/dancer/painter/writer so you must not be creative. Stop pulling. You’ve learned that you have to know “how” to do something before you attempt to do it; you have to know the place of arrival before you take a step. Stop pulling.

Intuition does not think its way into limitation; it feels its way into freedom. Intuition likes to wander over the next hill to see what is there – even if it went there yesterday. Intuition will never stop pulling because it will see the chain as an opportunity for play. Intuition engages with what is there, not what intellect thinks is there. In a healthy creative process, when your focus is truly on the process, the intellect is in service to intuition. Focusing an impulse is a radically different action than controlling an impulse. Intellect wants to control, intuition wants to create. Can you distinguish between focus and control? Can you feel your way beyond the boundary?

Filed under: Creativity, Truly Powerful People |