Magic of the unconscious mind

(Nimue)

I’ve had a few lovely exchanged with Marie in the comments recently about unconscious thinking and creativity. I thought it might be a good topic to pick up for a post.

The human mind absorbs far more information that we can consciously process, and does a lot of thinking at levels our conscious minds cannot see. When ideas bubble up unexpectedly, this is where they come from. This is really important for anyone seeking inspiration, or trying to solve problems. Our deliberate thinking is often not as good at these things as our unconscious thinking.

Much of it is to do with how we make connections – the unconscious mind handles far more information and can pull far more together to create new possibilities. While this kind of thinking can be treated as irrational, it’s actually very sensible stuff, and what comes up as ‘gut feelings’ or ‘intuition’ is often perfectly rational and just based on an unconscious processing of the available information.

For the creative person, being able to tap into unconscious thinking is often the route to opening up our most imaginative responses. There are a number of ways of doing this, including (but not limited to) paying attention to dreams, making time for daydreaming, letting your mind wander, doing unstructured things like doodling or playing with words or tunes. Experimenting creatively in a not too structured way can result in things bubbling up. You have to make space for it and invite it if you want this kind of inspiration to be available to you. If you’re just waiting for it, you aren’t prompting your unconscious mind to deliver anything in particular.

As a creator, it’s worth spending time exploring the relationship between structure and unconscious outpourings in your work. We all need some structure, but too much structure can limit our thinking and cut off the potential of the unconscious mind. They key is to find ways of working that let enough inspiration in, but also allows you to be deliberate about what you do. There’s no one right way of doing this, the important thing is to find the balances that work for you.