This document discusses a dissertation that seeks to understand how presence and insight act as pivot points in creative and self-organizing systems. It explores how states like presence, flow, and insight relate to creativity and the creative process based on the author's experience with yoga, meditation, and painting. The dissertation examines literature on flow states, insight, meditation, chaos theory, and dependent origination to develop a model of creativity as an emergent and non-linear process requiring presence and surrender. Key findings include that creative processes vary individually and change over time in a way that is difficult to systematically study.

1. Science and Non-Duality Conference, 2017
San Jose, CA
Insight and Presence: the pivot points of
self-organizing and Emergent Creative
Systems
By
Suzy Adra, Ph.D.

2. Thesis: “This dissertation
seeks to understand the
possibility of presence as
a necessary precursor of
the moment of insight in
the creative process.
Insight and presence
become the pivot points
of self-organizing
creative systems.”

3. Why Presence and Insight?

4. Because of my experience with yoga,
meditation, and painting….

5. 1- speed of execution
2- felt perception of an energetic
force guiding every brushstroke.
3- a feeling of surrender
4- I was witnessing while
something moved through me
*my role ?
*The relationship of this energy to
consciousness?
*Is it I who accesses states of
consciousness or is it the other way
around: consciousness is accessing
me?

6. The basic definition of presence is: the ability to completely
dedicate attention to the task at hand. It is the embodied feeling of a
combination of surrender, letting go, trust,
and the ability to be in a liminal state where the mind is quiet
and is able to make new connections (Klein. G, 2013).
The Literature

7. THE FLOW STATE
flow. This is not a new concept. Epictetus, Marcus Aurelius (Pies, 2014) and Viktor Frankl
(1959/2006) have all talked about flow.
Csikszentmihalyi (Cheek sent me high- 1990)
was the first to research flow and there are several studies that follow after that
Flow is a Process, not a state
Through my research I found that the flow state is composed of several states, not just
one state
Presence - the mystical notion of being here now is just one fragment of the flow state
I began to ask what are the other states?
One of them is insight.. I was able to find clues to this through looking at Vipassana and the
literature on insight meditation.

8. Meditation has four primary phases:
• withdrawal of external sense awareness (pratyahara),
• concentration (dharana),
• meditation (dhyana) and
• absorption (samadhi).
So I speculated that presence occurs between the two states of
dharana and dhyana,
between concentration and meditation.

9. I was now trying to understand how insight happens in
the painting process
because the creativity literature did not really speak
about this, it addressed insight from a scientific process
perspective:
preparation
incubation
illumination
Implementation
This implies a linearity which is not true of creativity

10. The Encyclopedia of Creativity defines insight as that which can re-
organize the mental field in a dramatic, and self-organizing way
(Richards, 1999, p. 36).
 Removing blocks

11. Insight as I define it:
a deep state of consciousness that allows for
understanding the essence of things.

12. The interviews
Findings
*infinite numbers of creative process, infinite insights
*Creative processes vary from one individual to another, and
within each person.
*An alchemical quality to flow creative process that is
unaccounted for in neuroscience, and the available research
====>
This alchemical quality is apparent when chaos theory is
applied to analyze the emergent nature of creativity.

13. Chaos theory
holds that within the seeming chaos of a system, there is a self organizing force
(mystery) that creates order out of the messiness, the newly self organized
product is what is emergent, and the process itself is emergence.

14. Emergence can take place when control is relinquished and flow is allowed.
Presence, awareness, trust, and surrender are required.
Emergence

16. One step
further...

17. I applied creative process (painting) to the
concept of paticca samuppada or what is
known in the Vedas as dependent co-arising
or mutual causality (Macy, 1991).
This theory holds that there are no primary
causes but an interdependence and
interaction of mutually conditioning events.
It is reciprocal, cybernetic, non-linear, and
depends on a multiplicity of factors in each
moment.

18. Systems theory tells us that the individual interacts with
the environment and responds as is appropriate in the
moment. Each person responds depending on their belief
systems, and worldviews. Since life is characterized by
impermanence or annica, the process will change as the
individual changes moment by moment, and day by day.
There is always something perishing and something else
replacing it (Macy, 1991, pp. 91–104).
This change is a vital part of creative process and this is
why researchers have found it difficult to really pin down
how creative process takes place.

19. ..one last important finding…

20. Creative process are what bring the unconscious to the conscious by the mystery of
self-organizing
Self-organizing cannot take place without the state of presence.
Presence is what allows for bringing what is the unconscious to consciousness: Insight
This presence is witness consciousness and the concept comes from
Advaita where the self is observing what is arising with equanimity.
The remarkable finding is that the idea of making the unconscious conscious is
what C. G. Jung defined as individuation (integration of shadow and light).

Individuation is a Creative Process

21. Enlightened Deviousness
Oil on woodboard, 2017
16”x20”