Creativity Exercises from THE INTUITIVE WAY
To get your creativity going, you'll have to loosen up and dare to be slightly silly. The following technique can help you engage your limitless imagination. I've had great fun with this in seminars — I particularly remember a group of inscrutable Japanese businessmen who had surprisingly spectacular results. They came back from the meditation and drew pictures of goggles that took Polaroid photos, ceramic pinecones that generated an endless supply of heat and a bluegreen gel that hardened in the sun but turned liquid in the dark.

EXERCISE: THE INVENTOR'S LIBRARY
1. Close your eyes, get centered and quiet. In the clear space in front of you imagine a huge building up on a hill. Walk up the wide pathway to the giant front doors and the guard will let you in. Walk into the great rooms and notice the endless corridors of shelves stretching as far as you can see. On the shelves is an endless array of boxes — all different sizes, shapes and colors. Some are so big you have to get them down with a forklift. Some are so small you can only see them if you get up very close.

2. Let your body decide which way it wants to walk and when it wants to turn down one of the aisles. Let yourself wander around in the Inventor’s Library for a while, looking at the grand variety of boxes, wondering what might be inside each one. Soon one of those boxes is going to catch your attention in a special way. When you notice "your" box, go over and get it off the shelf, and take it to the end of the aisle where you will find a private viewing room.

3. In the viewing room, remove the box's lid and see what's inside. Take the invention out and examine it carefully. Look for the instruction sheet that comes with it. What is the title of the invention? How is it supposed to be used? What components is it made of? If you have any difficulty understanding what your invention is or how it’s to be used, ring a buzzer and a guide will come in and explain it to you.

4. Come back to your normal awareness and draw a picture of the invention. You might want to write about it: how could this be a symbol for something you need in your life right now?

Let's continue exploring our artist brain, so stay loose and experimental. Have you ever wished you could be a musician, or a great painter, sculptor or poet? Well, in your imagination, your inner artist is capable of anything!

EXERCISE: THE ART HOUSE
1. Close your eyes, get centered and quiet. In the clear space in front of you imagine your favorite place in nature and a fabulous getaway house: an infinitely charming cabin in the woods, a mountain chalet, a beach house, a high desert adobe with rock gardens or even a penthouse in Paris, high above it all. This is your private place for creativity and self-reflection. Go in and look around.

2. There are rooms for every kind of creativity: a music room with every fun instrument you can think of, a kitchen with state-of-the-art gadgets and mounds of fresh foodstuffs and spices, a studio with huge flat tables, easels, paints, pens and brushes of every kind, and wonderful natural light. There is a place to sculpt, or work with clay, or to make paper, or work with metal and jewelry. There’s a dance studio with mirrored walls and a stack of CD’s next to a CD player. There’s a woodshop, or a darkroom if you want one. There’s a place to write on beautiful handmade paper with fountain pens, or to type on a full-size color monitor. Anything you can think of, you can have here in your art house.

3. Let your body and your artist brain lead you to the kind of creativity you want to indulge in first! Go into that room, touch the tools and materials, smell and feel it all. Surrender yourself to a total involvement with the medium you've selected, letting yourself experiment fully. Concentrate your energy, then release your energy. Enjoy the natural movements of the currents that want to flow through you.

4. When you're finished with your art play, come back to normal awareness and make notes in your journal about what you did and how it felt.

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