Lesson 5 Soul Making and Principles of Innovation

Summary

Soul-Making: Becoming Conscious of Life

The lecture presents soul-making as a process available to anyone—not only artists or religious people. Here, “soul” means a person’s individuality as expressed through behavior, experience, and perception. By reflecting on life’s challenges, people can gain new insights and create or re-create work that expresses those insights.

Soul-making involves both making art and understanding it. Artists can communicate through visual art, stories, music, sound, movement, and unconventional techniques. Viewers, in turn, need some understanding of a work’s style, shape, materials, and design elements to appreciate it fully. Encountering another person’s work can also help us understand that person—and ourselves.

A key starting point is consciousness: noticing how we live, facing our history and feelings, and being willing to examine our experience. Living on “autopilot”—without attending to oneself, others, or the surrounding world—can prevent this process from beginning. The lecture distinguishes mindful stillness from simply doing nothing: stillness involves awareness and acceptance, while autopilot is a lack of awareness.

The Five Stages of Soul-Making

The lecture describes five stages. They are not necessarily a one-time, straight-line sequence; people may move between settling and surrendering and may need to repeat parts of the process.

1. Seeking or finding

   • Recognize a desire to grow and make sense of the world.
   • Explore disciplines, ideas, or practices that may help.
   • Gather and refine useful tools while remaining open to learning.

2. Settling

   • At some point, commit to a practice or set of ideas rather than continually searching.
   • Use what you have found to connect more deeply with people and the world.
   • Settling provides a basis for sustained creative work and growth.

3. Surrendering

   • When pain or vulnerability makes certainty difficult, accept that not everything is under your control.
   • Acknowledge wounds rather than denying them; surrender does not mean endorsing or acting on harmful impulses.
   • Stay with difficult feelings long enough to understand them. The lecture suggests this can deepen compassion for oneself and others.

4. Soul-making

   • Through lived experience, reflection, and practice, develop insight and create from it.
   • Accept that life involves repeated falling, getting up, settling, and letting go.
   • Growth may also lead people to support or help others.

5. Soaring

   • Describes a state of peace and inspiration that may follow the earlier stages.
   • The lecture associates it with spiritual ideas such as Nirvana, Heaven, or Paradise, and with a calming presence that can help others feel grounded.

Pain, Mindfulness, and Creative Work

The lecture argues that painful experiences can become sources of insight when they are acknowledged and processed rather than buried. John Keats’s writing is offered as an example: he regarded the world as a school and the heart as a book through which people learn from feeling and suffering. A student’s sonnet about the death of her grandmother illustrates how grief can be transformed into a heartfelt creative work.

The lecture also cites Stephen Levine’s discussion of creative life as involving cycles of falling apart and being remade. Letting go of past identities and accepting uncertainty can make room for new ways of being. This is not presented as a call to destroy the self or eliminate fear and desire, but to become aware of them and allow one’s goodness to emerge.

The film Kiki’s Delivery Service provides a related example. When Kiki becomes overwhelmed and loses her ability to fly, her friend Ursula advises her to rest, take walks, and stop forcing the outcome. The lesson is that a pause can restore awareness and creativity; it is not the same as living unconsciously.

Appropriation, Imitation, and Originality

The lecture notes that artists sometimes learn by studying or borrowing from earlier work, a practice called appropriation. It can become problematic when artists reproduce another person’s work or use its elements without acknowledging the source. The boundary between appropriation and forgery can be difficult to distinguish, and uncredited borrowing may erase the original artist’s voice. The lecture recommends strengthening one’s own imagination and insight rather than simply copying.

Seven Principles for Developing Creative Genius

The lecture presents seven principles associated with Leonardo da Vinci, with suggested ways to practice each:

1. Curiosità — curiosity

   • Keep learning and ask questions such as “What if?” and “How come?”
   • Reflect on personal questions: What brings me joy? What triggers me? What might I be overlooking?
   • Journal ideas, observations, dreams, and realizations.

2. Dimostrazione — independent thinking and learning through experience

   • Test ideas through experience instead of accepting claims uncritically.
   • Learn from mistakes and actively seek opportunities to grow.
   • Reassess beliefs by considering other perspectives and sides of an issue.

3. Sensazione — refining the senses

   • Pay close attention to what you see, hear, smell, taste, and touch.
   • Savor ordinary experiences—for example, noticing a flower, listening to birds, or eating slowly.
   • Spend quiet time observing your breathing, body, and surroundings.

4. Sfumato — embracing ambiguity

   • Become more comfortable with paradox, uncertainty, and unanswered questions.
   • Ask questions even when they create confusion; resist the urge to look up every answer immediately.
   • Practice tolerating not knowing, which can build patience and openness.

5. Arte/Scienza — balancing art and science

   • Bring imagination together with logic and analysis.
   • The lecture cautions that imagination without logic can become mere daydreaming, while logic without imagination can be uninspiring.
   • One suggested exercise is alternating between the left and right hands for writing, drawing, or handling objects.

6. Corporalità — caring for mind and body

   • Support creative thinking with physical and mental well-being.
   • The lecture recommends healthy eating, adequate sleep, movement, yoga or similar practices, walking, breathing exercises, and meditation.

7. Connessione — recognizing interconnectedness

   • Notice how people and things depend on one another.
   • Reflect on how nearby people and resources support you—and how you affect them.
   • Consider how personal choices influence society and how to contribute positively.

The lecture’s overall message is that soul-making and these principles apply beyond art: they can guide how people live, learn, cope with difficulty, and develop fresh insights.

Speakers and Sources Featured

• Ma’am Mie, the lecturer and principal speaker.
• Socrates, quoted on examining one’s life.
• Dr. Norman Narciso, cited for describing soul-making as a way to know oneself and explore the meaning of daily life.
• John Keats, discussed through a passage from one of his letters and as an example of transforming suffering through reflection.
• Stephen Levine, cited on creative life, personal disintegration, and renewal; the book title is unclear in the subtitles.
• James Hillman, cited for the term “soul-making.”
• Thich Nhat Hanh (the subtitles render the name unclearly) and Eckhart Tolle, referenced in connection with mindfulness and living in the present.
• Leonardo da Vinci, whose seven principles of creative genius are presented.
• Studio Ghibli’s Kiki’s Delivery Service, including a scene featuring Kiki and Ursula.
• An unnamed student, whose sonnet about her deceased grandmother is read by the lecturer.