Sandy Sims with Some Out of This World Ideas!
A CONTEXT FOR IDEA CREATIVITY
When we want create new ideas, methodologies and results, we can employ a variety of techniques to facilitate the process. Since we did not have the information before the process, we don’t spend much time thinking about where it is coming from or how it might be originating. Yet any explanation of how the field produces the new and novel or the context from which creativity springs, is simply left as a question mark.
Rather, we concentrate on how to coax it in to existence. If we get a flash of insight or an idea that is “Out of the blue” we usually do not imagine it as being the product of some other’s consciousness’s idea. But why not? Probably because our cultural way of thinking and the scientific method does not permit that belief at this time.
One of the trademarks of genius is an abiding and perhaps continuous state of curiosity as if the switch is continuously left in the “on” mode. It is as if there is a perpetual order to keep sending the new and novel.
I would like to think that the collective unconscious is inhabited not only by our connections to one another, but to a vast network of minds beyond ours, who operate not only to bring our desires into reality but to also give us their ideas as we seem ready for them.
To look at the universe in this manner gives rational explanation to such things as synchronicities, or as Jung referred to them, meaningful coincidences, to original ideas when you least expected them to appear. Furthermore it gives us the comforting feeling that we are part of an immediate team. Therefore, from this point of view I would like to propose that our idea generation is often a result of a collaborative effort with friends we cannot see. In this regard our lives can be filled with the most useful and efficient idea generation possible.
Seven Steps To Establishing The Contextual Mindset To Ultimate Creativity
1. See the collective unconscious as the home of your partnerships, an army of helpers who have unlimited resources and connections willing to do your bidding and also willing to send you unsolicited ideas.
2. live as much in a state of constant question as if you are in a childlike state of curiosity. In this way while your conscious thought is involved in one area your helpers have their assignments and are working even as you sleep. For example if you are to meet in a few days to work on solving a problem, define the problem as well as possible and ask yourself for solutions now. By the time your meeting takes place the process has long been underway.
3 For complicated requests think of the collective unconscious requiring “ TIME ” to make all of the manifesting connections. Know that it is being worked on, and that some ideas may never be revealed due for example to conflicting interests.
4. Think of INTENTION as a means of transmitting importance, hence priority. Assign the degree of intention .
5. Let it all go with gratitude, in effect knowing that it will take time for your partners to generate for you depending upon the difficulty and appreciating their effort.
6. Now that the context has been established enter into the content generation phase and harvest the results. Think of employing various idea generation techniques (content) as a means of making and strengthening the connections. (for example: mind mapping, thinking in pictures, lateral thinking, 1000 mile an hour thinking, listing bad ideas to stumble upon good ones, throwing away all of the initial ideas to get to those in the outer orbits, combine different fields of expertise etc.).
7. In addition to actual “aha” of an idea received, be open to all forms of inputs especially synchronicities to lead you to people, symbols, and resources which may ultimately convey an answer.
Sandy Sims’ Journey to Publishing The Creative Thinking Book
Some people would claim Sandy has been leading a charmed life. Born into a well-to-do family in the summer of ’42, his formative years were spent in Hollywood. In fact his mom, who is fast approaching 100, claims he was the first baby Robert Wagner at age nine ever held. Later he would grow up in Tallahassee, Florida, a model expression of the American dream with two universities a state capital and no industry. Faye Dunaway was even the head cheerleader of his basketball team. After college, and during the Vietnam conflict, the Navy would commission and send him to Hawaii and then to Japan to run the Officers’ club at Yokosuka. Having been mesmerized by Honolulu City Lights he would return after graduate school, land in a start-up advertising agency as a partner, spend a short working career of twenty-three years in Paradise, sell the agency and retire at age 52 to a life of inner and outer exploration on his own terms.
But beneath this surface story there runs a far richer vein of curiosity about the larger forces in the universe, our potential powers, and how to access these. A health crisis catalyzed a cascade of events: a girlfriend surgeon turned psychiatrist rewired his brain, sending him tumbling down the “Rabbit Hole” into new realms, where he became open to trying out new thinking patterns and recording the results. Over the next several years there was fire-walking, spoon-bending, trips to Peru and Brazil where psychic surgeons stuck knitting needles through his liver forcing him to accept almost in disbelief that we could be in different realities at the same time. Into his life poured mystics, shamans, kahunas, ethnobotanists, channels, luminaries, scientists, and even an astronaut. The Caddy family, founders of the Scottish Findhorn Spiritual Community noted for growing forty and fifty pound vegetables and roses from the snow, regularly came and stayed with him. These new patterns of thinking he cautiously tested, raising the bar slowly, then testing again and again, culminating in one compelling “aha” idea to build, as a collection. the designs of perhaps America’s greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.
How Frank Lloyd Wright Got Into My Head Under My Skin And Changed The Way I Think About Thinking, A Blueprint For Creative Thinking In The 21st Century is Sandy’s report of this compelling odyssey. It is available now.
Using this journey’s examples, he has teamed up with psychiatrist, Kerry Monick, MD, who shared part of his adventure to write:
Creative Thinking For The 21rst Century, An Experiential Guidebook.
Their observations are that we seem to be rushing headlong into a watershed of epic proportions: Societies are facing unprecedented challenges. Technology is compressing our sense of time at a bewildering pace. The luxury of thinking time is vanishing. Fragile world economies, a challenged environment and dysfunctional governments are facing us. The news media is filled with experts rendering sound bites on diametrically opposing viewpoints. We are on information overload resulting in a kind of psychic numbing. Depending entirely on our linear thinking patterns to guide our daily lives no longer works like it once did. We must all become cartographers, learning to map the nature of our intuitive world, observing how thinking with intention seems to work, and how to best use and trust these processes. Sandy and Kerry explore the idea of a conscious connection with other realms where co-partners through synchronicities and perhaps our sudden flashes of insight or intuition reflect the communication of these co-partners.
The guidebook concisely addresses not just how to think but suggests what to think about, with ideas for overcoming fears, and strategies for understanding and using our intuition. Sandy and Kerry believe that an ultimate goal is to arrive at that state called “Flow,” where we balance our intuitive information with our analytical brain in a state of fluidity as events of life appear on our radar screen. It is also available now.
The desire is that this blog site will become a forum for sharing how intuition, synchronicities, flow and consciously thinking in these newer ways can make ordinary life extra-ordinary and useful. Hopefully this can serve as feedback loop for others testing the waters.
When Sandy is not engaging fellow travelers on their inner world experiences, you can find him working on his tennis game, very slowly shoving Spanish on to the smooth velcro of his youth-oriented but middle-aged brain, living abroad for a few months while searching for the perfect cappuccino, exquisite forms of art and architecture, or trekking a nature trail. He loves to think about both sides of a debate, and any good art film with an intriguing story can divert his attention. Home base is currently San Miguel de Allende, Mexico and Hawaii, but he admits that there must be gypsy blood in his veins, and he could pack his bags at a moment’s notice. He has driven across Tibet, pack-horsed in the high Andes of Bolivia, Ridden elephants into the hill tribes of Northern Thailand and practically made New Zealand a second home. His goal is to keep making life a continuous gracious adventure.
For more information about Sandy Sims and How Frank Lloyd Wright Got Into My Head, Under My Skin And Changed The Way I Think About Thinking, A Creative Thinking Blue Print For the 21st Century, visit http://creativethinkingbook.com/ and visit this page to get the Amazon links http://creativethinkingbook.com/buy-your-copy/.
Why I Wrote – How Frank Lloyd Wright Got Into My Head, Under My Skin And Changed The Way I Think About Thinking, A Creative Thinking Blue Print For the 21st Century – Comments from Sandy Sims
Originally I knew this would be a story of interest to people who follow architecture. After reading Wright’s autobiography I had been struck by the idea that not only was he famous but his drawings at the time were selling at auction for the same price as those of Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo. He had designed over 1,000 designs but some 500 remained unbuilt. In an “Aha” flash I imagined that a collection of Wright’s unrealized designs built in Hawaii would be stunning.
The pursuit of this idea was so compelling, that I innocently and naively began the journey, and what a journey it was. I was cordially invited into many of Wright’s private homes, to meet their owners, and to hear their stories. I became friends with those in the Taliesin Fellowship, some of whom were the earliest apprentices to Frank Lloyd Wright. It was a rich journey. While in the beginning I was attracted to the financial rewards that might have accrued, I later became fascinated by the idea of what it would be like to live inside of the space created by both a mystic and a genius. I found out.
Interview with Sandy Sims:
How did you become involved with the subject or theme of your book?
Sandy: I listened to the story of a man who had bone cancer at the age of ten. He had been confined to bed and asked his mom and dad to bring him all of the auto biographies in the library( There are not that many. biographies, yes, autobiographies, not so many.) He said that the common theme in all of them was that they were contrarians and that was the life he decided to live. He told me that he recovered, became wealthy, and happily married. Returning home I made a beeline for the Honolulu book store. The first book on the shelf was the autobiography of Frank Lloyd Wright. That was the beginning of the adventure.
Where did your love of books/storytelling/reading/writing/etc. come from?
Sandy: I owned an advertising agency where it is said the inventory goes out the door every night. Ideas are the stock and trade of that world and curiosity is naturally present. You might say that “singing for our supper” was just natural.
What cultural value do you see in writing/reading/storytelling/etc.?
Sandy: You can see it all around you now. We are perpetual learning machines, and are always looking for the most entertaining way to absorb information. Historically, dance, poetry, and theatre provided the ways that cultural values were shared and handed down. Of course now we have film, the internet, and a host of devices such as the Kindle, I pad, etc. to access these ideas. Yet at the core, we remember the most when it is coupled with an entertaining delivery mode.
How does your book relate to your spiritual practice or other life path?
Sandy: It is an accounting of the major influences that guided me.
What were your goals and intentions in this book, and how well do you feel you achieved them?
Sandy: I feel that we are much more powerful than we give our selves credit for being. However, because we live in the cross currents of everyone else’s wishes and desires it is difficult to connect the dots between what we originally wanted and what eventually transpired. The lag time, failures, losses etc. contribute to these conditions. In my book I write about how I was unaware of this fact until I was in my early thirties. Then I consciously began to record my manifestation journey from this viewpoint. I feel like this book shows everyone how powerful they can be.
Can you share some stories about people you met while researching this book?
Sandy: Peter Caddy, the co founder of the Findhorn Gardens and Community in Scotland, and I were drinking beer on my back porch in Hawaii. He was telling me how the main purpose of the community at the time was to teach people how to manifest and then to send them on a six week adventure into Europe to consciously practice. They were to have only $50 in their pockets and report back in six weeks to Findhorn to share their story. His favorite accounting was the professional couple from New York. After their third day on the road, they were holed up in some grungy Scottish pensione which was damp and cold. They looked at one another and burst out laughing because they both thought how utterly nuts they were to be doing this. They counted their money, $37, and agreed to chuck it all, dig out the credit cards, find the best restaurant in this small village, have a great meal with a bottle or two of wine and head back to New York. They found the upscale hotel restaurant which was empty save for a gentleman seated by himself and proceeded to uncork the wine and thoroughly enjoy themselves. In the process of expressing their laughter and joyfulness the gentleman approached their table and said that he was by himself and could not help but be attracted to them and their fun and could he join them. They graciously welcomed him and continued in their celebration, not quite letting him know the source of their glee. At the end of the meal he told them he couldn’t remember having had so much fun and that he was the editor of Michelin, was on an unlimited expense account and would they consider being his guest for the summer to review the fine restaurants and inns of Europe. This was one of Peter’s famous manifestation stories.
What is the biggest thing that people THINK they know about your subject/genre, that isn’t so?
Sandy: I am primarily writing about looking at our life’s journey from the perspective that we are creating it. I feel that the popular view is that much of what happens is just luck, good or bad,and in many case simply the breaks. While I certainly cannot prove it, the new quantum physics evidence seems to suggest that our intents and beliefs put certain forces into play. The idea a lot of people have is that if they just have positive thoughts then that ought to produce positive outcomes. However, our intentions, fears, and other emotional inputs combined with those of everyone else can have a profound effect, thereby creating doubt.
Who are some of your favorite authors that you feel were influential in your work? What impact have they had on your writing?
Sandy: Since the basis of the book and workbook is self-help, writers on spirituality and metaphysics have had the most profound influence on me. The Jane Roberts “Seth” material was pivotal. Tony Robbins, David Spangler, George Leonard, Charlene Belitz, Meg Lungstrum, Rupert Sheldrake, Jean Houston, Carl Jung, Eileen Caddy are a few that have influenced me. They helped to shape my life and consequently what I chose to write about. Stephen’s King’s book “On Writing” made a solid impression on how I wrote.
What are some day jobs that you have held? If any of them impacted your writing, share an example.
Sandy: Naval officer, college lecturer, account manager, and owner of an advertising agency were the most significant. Probably the latter influenced my writing because I was constantly writing proposals and plans. That helped me to organize my thoughts.
For those interested in exploring the subject or theme of your book, where should they start?
Sandy: My book deals primarily with manifestation. I feel that the “Magic of Findhorn” is a wonderful first read followed by the “Laws of Manifestation” by David Spangler. The “Seth” material by Jane Roberts is profound. With regard to synchronicity I think the Celestine Prophecy material by James Redfield is good, and of course the concepts of synchronicity as outlined by Jung.
How do you feel about ebooks vs. print books and alternative vs. conventional publishing?
Sandy: I like printed books because you can handle them, but I handle my laptop, I phone and I pod. We are in the digital age and as this technology becomes second nature Kindles, Ipads and whatever is coming next will become natural. Ebooks make it easier for both writers and readers in that information never need be converted into paper.
Do you write more by logic or intuition, or some combination of the two? Summarize your writing process.
Sandy: The book and guidebook were first efforts. For the most part they came out as a logical reporting process. Were I to write a fictional story I might be tempted to let the characters evolve intuitively.
What are some ways in which you promote your work? Do you find that these add to or detract from your writing time?
Sandy: Most of my writing time is now devoted to maintaining a blog. When I wrote my book I, like so many people, thought if it were good enough I might find an agent and then a publisher. As I completed the task it was clear that this channel was essentially closed to new writers except those with an established platform and therefore, market. This forced me to embrace learning about social networks, blog tours, blog writing, and the activities surrounding promoting via the internet. It has been a steep learning curve. The marketing activities have currently taken a good bit of time.
I would like to thank Sandy for his time in sharing all this wonderful information with my readers! I am currently in the midst of reading the book and going through the guidebook, and highly recommend both. I wish Sandy all the best with this blog tour and hope he sells many books!
Love and Blessings to you all-
Julie
April 4, 2011
Julie Achterhoff
Julie Achterhoff
Julie Achterhoff's Eclectical Blog 