Contents

Create-the-new methods

Creating Collaborative Gatherings Using Large Group Interventions

Creating Greatness in the Realm Beyond Systems Thinking

The Creative Act

Creative Action

Creative Victory

Innovation Methods Mapping

The Newcreator’s Glossary

The Red Hand Files

Talking with Angels

Theory U

Think and Grow Rich!

Toltec School

The Totality of Oneself: the Tonal and the Nagual

Create-the-new methods

Please refer to the article Newcreate and other Now-to-New methods located elsewhere on this website.

Creating Collaborative Gatherings Using Large Group Interventions

This is the title of a chapter I contributed to the Gower Handbook of Training and Development. (In retrospect, the title of my chapter should have been Creating Collaborative Gatherings Using Large Group Intervention Methods). Although the handbook was published in 1999, most of the content is still relevant.

In the chapter, I outline five large-scale collaborative meeting methods:

  • Real Time Strategic Change
  • Future Search
  • Open Space Technology
  • Participative Design
  • Simu-Real
Download Creating Collaborative Gatherings Using Large Group Interventions (pdf)

Creating Greatness in the Realm Beyond Systems Thinking

My contribution to the e-book distributed to participants in European Sharing on Systems Thinking, held in Prague, Czech Republic, 18–20 June 2015. Reviewed and revised May 2023

Download Creating Greatness in the Realm Beyond Systems Thinking (pdf)

The Creative Act: A Way of Being

by Rick Rubin, co-founder of Def Jam Records

Sunday Times bestseller
New York Times bestseller
Shortlisted for Waterstones Book of the Year 2023
Shortlisted for Foyles Non-fiction Book of the Year 2023

A quick flip through this glorious book may give the impression that there is no underlying structure to its 78 Areas of Thought. This is not the case, as a thorough reading will reveal Rubin’s four phase approach: 1) Seeds; 2) Experimentation; 3) Crafting; 4) Completion. There’s a quotable passage on every page and not much I disagree with. As an object, the book is a work of art and a joy to hold. The image on the hard cover was designed by Pentagram, and the typography makes for easy and enjoyable reading. Neil Strauss (The Game, etc.) made a contribution of some kind.

The Creative Act: A Way of Being, by Rick Rubin

Many famed music producers are known for a particular sound that has its day and then ages out. Rick Rubin is known for something else: creating a space where artists of all different genres and traditions can home in on who they really are and what they really offer. He has made a practice of helping people transcend their self-imposed expectations in order to reconnect with a state of innocence from which the surprising becomes inevitable.

Over the years, as he has thought deeply about where creativity comes from and where it doesn’t, he has learned that being an artist isn’t about your specific output; it’s about your relationship to the world. Creativity has a place in everyone’s life, and everyone can make that place larger. In fact, there are few more important responsibilities.

The Creative Act is a beautiful and generous course of study that illuminates the path of the artist as a road we all can follow. It distils the wisdom gleaned from a lifetime’s work into a luminous reading experience that puts the power to create moments – and lifetimes – of exhilaration and transcendence within closer reach for all of us.

Source: The Guardian Bookshop
Review: The Guardian

Rick Rubin: The 60 Minutes Interview (transcript)

Order a copy of The Creative Act from Amazon UK

Creative Action

by Edward Matchett.

In 1975, this book kindled my interest in what you might call a ‘spiritual’ (wrong word but I cannot find a better one) way of creating the new. You can read some excerpts on the Edward Matchett page of this website. A second, revised edition was published shortly before Matchett’s death in 1998. This has been out of print for many years, but Darrell Mann sells facsimile reprints of the original 1975 edition through his Systematic Innovation website.

Order a facsimile copy of Creative Action (GBP 20.00)

Creative Victory

Subtitled Reflections on the Process of Power from the Collected Works of Carlos Castaneda, Creative Victory is an extraordinary book authored by a man calling himself Tomas.

Review of Creative Victory by an anonymous reviewer (view source)

5 stars
I’m finding it hard to figure the best way to open this review. Tomas is one of the most, if not the most, impeccable warrior of the Toltec Path I have had the pleasure to read from in a long while.

Not much is known about this man, excepting what the publishers have cared to share. His other work, The Promise of Power: Reflections on the Toltec Warriors’ Dialogue from the Collected Works of Carlos Castaneda, is a substantial bibliographic reference to the work of Castaneda, truly remarkable is an understatement because only somebody who immersed deeply within the work of Castaneda, so as to realize that Castaneda was but a vehicle to a purpose, could come up with such a thing.

Now here comes this book, Creative Victory, which an entirely different matter, this book here is indeed only for the learned in the Toltec ways. As you read it, it will go directly to your left side awareness1, there is little here, if anything at all, that you will be able to digest using your right side awareness. Therefore it stands to reason that most people will prefer something more “clear”, or more organized, and will wander elsewhere looking for more “accurate, informative, and useful sources of Toltec knowledge”. Which is normal by the way, I want to empathize this again.

This book is not for everyone, this book is not for newcomers to the Toltec ways, you will barely find something here that you will be able to waste your life away rationalizing upon.

Ultimately, As I write this review, trying my best to pay a dim homage to a man who indeed is second only to Castaneda, I’ve come to realize that what is hard is not to speak about this book, what’s hard is to find “justiceable” words to define what Tomas stands for. Together with his true to the path anonymity, comes this, quoting directly from the book:

“As with The Promise of Power, I intend for this work to stand as a payment to what the Toltecs call ‘the account of the spirit of man’.”

There you have it, it does not get much more impeccable than this, instead of looking to fill his pockets, funding forprofit organizations, claiming the legacy of mankind for himself, coming with schemes to claim superiority over others, in other words, instead of looking spending his creative power to devise clever ways to fill his own bank account, he is looking to make a “payment” to The Spirit

I could name more than one author out there, writing about the Toltec path, preaching to be impeccable warriors, they all could learn a thing or two from this man, yet, naming them in this review would be a vastly unjustifiable act towards an impeccable warrior of the Toltec path.

This is the work of a truly impeccable warrior of the Toltec path.

Need I say more?

1. In the Toltec tradition, left side awareness and right side awareness refer to the left and right side of the body, not left and right side of the brain. The brain’s left hemisphere governs the right side of the body, and the right hemisphere governs the left side. My terms Leftside and Rightside approximate Dr Iain McGilchrist’s left and right hemisphere designations. So to make sense of this review, left and right must be reversed.
Visit the Google Books page for Creative Victory and view 25 pages of the book

Order a copy of Creative Victory from Amazon UK

Innovation Methods Mapping

De-mystifying 80+ Years of Innovation Process Design

by GK Van Patter and Elizabeth Pastor, co-founders of design firm Humantific

Innovation Methods Mapping, by GK Van Patter and Elizabeth Pastor, co-fonders of Humantific
Click on image or here for a preview of the book
[Innovation Methods Mapping] provides a travel guide for touring the wide and so far mostly uncharted area of design and innovation methods. The work reveals the great variety and – at the same time – the striking commonalities of the process models. An invaluable resource for learning and research in design.

Dr Wolfgang Jonas, Professor of Research in Design, Braunschweig University of Art
Order a copy of Innovation Methods Mapping from Amazon UK

The Newcreator’s Glossary

A collection of terms and their definitions for creators of the new.

Visit The Newcreator’s Glossary

The Red Hand Files

The writings of musician, songwriter, composer and actor Nick Cave bring me great joy. I hope you will enjoy them too.

The Red Hand Files

The Red Hand Files began in September of 2018 as a simple idea – a place where I would answer questions from my fans. Over the years, The Red Hand Files has burst the boundaries of its original concept to become a strange exercise in communal vulnerability and transparency.

Nick Cave
Subscribers to The Red Hand Files receive a weekly mailing in which Nick Cave answers one or more questions submitted by fans and readers. Every one of his answers shows extraordinary humility, wisdom and compassion.

The Red Hand Files website | View archive and subscribe (free)

Talking with Angels

Talking with Angels is a collection of esoteric oral teachings voiced by Hanna Dallos in Hungary during the Second World War and transcribed by Gitta Mallasz.

The Angels’ teachings are of great potential value to the Newcreator, these being the main themes:

Read more about Talking with Angels

Order a copy of Talking with Angels from the publisher, Daimon Verlag

Theory U

Theory U
VoJ—Voice of Judgment. VoC—Voice of Criticism. VoF—Voice of Fear.
Theory U is an innovation, change and problem solving approach originated by Otto Scharmer, a senior lecturer at MIT, co‑founder of u-school for transformation and author of Theory U: Leading from the Future As it Emerges.

Theory U has some parallels with Newcreate but it was not one of my inspirations. However, Newcreators will find Scharmer’s writings and concepts valuable.

Read more about Theory U

See also

Leading From the Emerging Future – From Ego-System to Eco-System Economies (book excerpt—pdf, 40pp) by Otto Scharmer and Katrin Kaeufer

u-school: our tools

Think and Grow Rich!

A book by Napoleon Hill.

Think and Grow Rich! was written by Napoleon Hill in 1937 and promoted as a personal development and self-improvement book. He claimed to be inspired by a suggestion from business magnate and later-philanthropist Andrew Carnegie. First published during the Great Depression, the book has sold more than 15 million copies. It remains the biggest seller of Napoleon Hill’s books. BusinessWeek magazine’s Best-Seller List ranked it the sixth best-selling paperback business book 70 years after it was published. Think and Grow Rich! is listed in John C. Maxwell’s A Lifetime “Must Read” Books List. While the book’s title and much of the writing concerns increasing income, the author insists that his philosophy can help people succeed in any line of work, to do and be anything they can imagine.

Source: Wikipedia — Think and Grow Rich.

Riches cannot always be measured in money!

Money and material things are essential for freedom of body and mind, but there are some who will feel that the greatest of all riches can be evaluated only in terms of lasting friendships, harmonious family relationships, sympathy and understanding between business associates, and introspective harmony which brings one peace of mind measurable only in spiritual values!

Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich! 1938 edition published by The Ralston Society, Meriden, Conn., USA
This book contains some profound insights, such as Infinite Intelligence, sex transmutation (repurposing sexual energy) and the two types of imagination.

Read more about Think and Grow Rich! elsewhere on this website

Think and Grow Rich!
Obtain a copy of Think and Grow Rich! — The Original Version, Restored and Revised
With Revisions, a Special Foreword and Annotations by Ross Cornwell

When ordering Think and Grow Rich! from other sources, ensure that it is this version.

Toltec School

Dedicated to the teachings of the Toltecs of Ancient Mexico, graciously brought to us by Carlos Castaneda, Florinda Donner, Taisha Abelar and Armando Torres, thanks to the impeccable generosity of the naguals Juan Matus, Julian Osorio, Elias Ulloa and their lineage; as well as the nagual woman doña Silvia Magdalena, nagual don Melchor Ramos and don Berna of the ticis lineage of healer-sorcerers.

The subjects cover Toltec Indexes, Magical Passes, Dreaming, Recapitulation, Abstract Cores and Stalking the Self, as well as the Energy Body/the Dreaming Body/the Double/the Other.

Toltec School
Visit the Toltec School website

Some other teachers of Toltec wisdom

Della Van Hise, Quantum Shaman (1955–2021)

Lorraine Voss, Female Warrior | The Toltec Path: A Warrior’s Perspective on Ancient Knowledge (pdf — 60 pages)

Sheri Rosenthal | Intent versus Intention; is there a difference?

Théun Mares (1952–2011)

The Totality of Oneself: the Tonal and the Nagual

Excerpted from Tales of Power by Carlos Castaneda.

Download Tales of Power in its entirety (pdf)

With his characteristic wry humour, don Juan Matus explains the nature of the tonal (i.e. mundane world) and the nagual (primal world).

Download The Totality of Oneself: the Tonal and the Nagual (pdf)

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