Art, Meaning, Green Living & Health

Professional artists or not, we all love to be deeply creative. Where does that come from, anyway? And why does it come and go?

Whether it's the artistry of paint, or perhaps music, clay, dance, words, cooking, gardening, crafts or architecture, most of us have urges to express beauty in our lives. 

From a lifetime of creative expressions of various sorts, I've found that the drive to create comes and goes in cycles, which usually seem to be out of my bidding. At times I lie awake at night as beautiful visions and inspirations download full-blown into my mind as though from some cosmic studio. More often, I'm in more of an artistic holding pattern, producing decent but predictable work. And at other times, the drive to create is just not there and, honestly,  I'd rather putter about the yard, take a nap or go on a walk. Or even organize the closest: no kidding.

This is all OK. No problem. Read on.

A long time ago I attended a seminar for professional artists in which the presenter suggested that an artist needs to find balance in their life to succeed. He suggested we spend about 1/3 of our working time finding inspiration, about 1/3 actually creating art, and about 1/3 getting it out into the world (marketing, business and shows). 

Looking back some decades later I have to agree with his formula, give or take a few percent for the heck of it.

So let's get down to it.

Losing the MoJo

Lately I've felt less inspired than at times. And for good reason. It's easy to overlook such a slippery and ethereal thing,  as compared to the tangible rewards of creating and showing your art. Well, looking back, I see that the last 12 months even the creating part has lessened as I've spent a disproportionate amount of time with the least artsy part of that triad:  marketing, business and shows.  

Specifically,

-I opened my own gallery (staffing it 3-4 days a week, hosting monthly receptions and new shows, showing other artists as well)

-was the featured artist in a solo and a group show elsewhere

-participated in a 3-4 local art association shows,

-painted in the weeklong Sedona Plein Air Festival

-taught two month-long weekly classes and a 2-day residential workshop

Not to mention "having a life," with weeks of family visits and travels, and in the prior year having cared for and lost both parents and then conducting their funerals and closing their two homes. Oh, and one of my gallery artists was murdered last summer by his crazy roommate.

"It's all good," as the bumper sticker says (well, not all of it really) but I found that in the course of all this,  I was simply not able to spend as much time painting as I wanted to or thought I should. And even when I was painting, the dictates of some of the venues and their timing limited the size, location, subject matter or the pace I might have otherwise chosen.

At the same time, some vague inner discontent was nagging at me to slow down and re-examine the whole ball of wax.

My body chimed in on that, manifesting some aches and pains and a reduced energy level that have forced me to do a bit less for the time being.

The Scaryness of Self-Inquiry and Change

With or without other challenges (like losing a job, health or relationship),  times of self-examination or transition can be scary. For all we know, a deep self-inquiry might even lead us to completely abandon something that has been successful without any assurance of something better coming to take its place.

In my case, I quietly wondered at times whether I should even continue a "career as an artist," despite deciding earlier that it's what I wanted to do the rest of my life and despite a fair amount of success at it. I just didn't feel that motivated anymore. Just after I was really making something of my art, had I peaked? Was  I already heading for life as a "has been"?  Well, there's something to be said for early retirement.....  :-)

Not wanting to burn my bridges down to the last railing, I continued painting, teaching and going through the dance. Meanwhile I waited for life to guide me.  I've explored some of it with artist friends, with my husband and, best of all, more recently I have actually asked (almost begged) for inner guidance.

Oh yes, that's it....! Inner guidance, the source of all inspiration, artistic and otherwise!

 That's what got out of balance in the rush of all those outer activities. How quickly we can lose touch with it.

Inner guidance is something we can definitely ask for and make space for (if we remember). That would be wise. Otherwise, we may take the other route of just find ourselves slowing down and letting life have its way with us, so to speak. So lately I've been taking more time to just putter about home and garden and to sleep and do nothing in particular. When I'm more motivated to do so, I have taken some time to listen to or read favorite spiritual teachings. Eckhart Tolle is my favorite such guide, though there are more and more nowadays with similar messages that are amazingly universal, wise and helpful both for people of faith and of no-faith.

Much of the process of getting re-inspired also involves watching and learning from those less-than-inspired, even depressed, feelings. Rather than thinking of oneself as being in a state of decline, it's helpful to simply accept it as a natural cycle of "Dark Then Bloom," as motivational speaker and author  Dr. Mylene Dressler describes these periods of going within, which she considers to be a necessary part of true creativity.

For me this has all been fruitful and exactly as it should be. After a long cold winter, spring flowers are blooming, both outwardly and inwardly. Today, at least, I feel as though I've awakened from a temporary dream in which I (once again) got too caught up in the fascinating forms of this life. This time the dream was about the rewards and also the limitations and challenges of "being an artist", among other recent life adventures and dramas.

Part of the dream is that I'm my body and it's undeniably aging (61) and oh-no, I'm in decline....!

Well, folks, this surely signals that the best part of life is yet to come, if we butwelcome it: 

Dis-Identification

There are lots of things we can talk about, but few are more worth discussing than Dis-Identifying with mind, body, ego, self-images, etc. Especially if  you've ever experienced anything other than pure delight and vitality your whole life. (Could that be?)

What learning to dis-identify is teaching me, at least at this shining moment (feel free to remind me later!),  is the truth of these things:

1.  I am not an artist. In fact, I'm not even this mind-body thing called "Susan."  (Wait, don't tell everybody she's stopped being an artist. Or that she's flipped out. No, no! Read on! Please!)

2. I am simply Spirit, temporarily caught up in playing the fascinating roles of artist, wife, American and, er, human....  (Can you relate? I mean, look at it closely. What else could we be?)

2. Mistakenly and totally identifying as or with any role, self-image, person, place, thing or belief (thus, any form, whether positive or negative) is normal, yes. But it's a sure path to suffering, or at least losing your mojo.  The simple reason is that, sooner or later, all form comes and goes, be it people, places, beliefs, self images, sunny spring days, health, cultures...even planets. Yes, all these are fun when they go well, but all are subject to change and loss and all have their opposites (seeming enemies, poverty, sickness, evil, loss, failure, etc.)  Aspiring to "be" other than what we already are (inherently happy Spirit, temporarily expressing as this person)  is the main thing that actually takes us away from true happiness.

4. Spirit is One. As the changeless awareness-consciousness (words fail here) we each are, at our inmost core,  we are all One. This formless intelligence (aka God, Spirit, Source, Life) operates in all life forms with brilliant interconnectedness and incomprehensible orchestration, way, way, way beyond the puny capacity of mere thought to comprehend. And in some crazy way it's connecting us all. Have you ever had a profound sense of being One with somebody, such as in an intimate relationship? My husband and I had an amazing  mutual "Vulcan mind meld" the day we met.  I'm also reminded of a friend who said "my wife and I are one person" (not realizing then that the deeper truth is that we all are one in that same way).

This principle of One Being (non-local consciousness might be a better name for it) explains telepathy and a whole lot more. It's not easy to grasp, it seems, while "trapped" in these bodies or identifying as our personalities. But reports of NDEs (near death experiences) commonly include this realization. Thus the God we may pray to is really that Kingdom of Heaven everywhere and within all,   beyond seemingly separate minds and bodies. And it guides events wisely if our minds follow rather than try to lead.

5. Spirit loves to express beauty and drama, and in the end to know itself, to get lost and then to journey "home."  And this seems to be the deeper reason why we are called to be  creative, whether  in painting, film, dance, music, architecture, gardening or even just in the  infinite set of artistic dramas we all engage in that endlessly offer us lovely opportunities to express patience, compassion, forgiveness, courage, generosity and so on. Why not?  The themes of all these artistic expressions point again and again to journeys, struggle and resolution, wholeness, love, harmony, peace, happy endings and so on.

(For my observation about how the principle of Oneness evidences itself again and again, consciously or unconcsiously, in all forms of art, read my article, Awaken to Beauty.)

The problem? None, really. We are free to carry on in all these things. Spirit loves the contrast and play of worldly dramas and worldly beauty, it seems.

But ....there's a built-in self-destruct to all that. When inspiration fails us, when health slips away, when winter comes or a mate dies, when a job or fortune is lost, when the reputation is stained, when innocence is lost, when we feel forgotten or lonely, when the attendants come to get you....Then, and preferably long before, it is time to remember who and what one really is:

loving Spirit, shining and expressing beauty and drama everywhere and nowhere.

And then it is increasingly likely that soon that particular aspect of the One in that expresses in All will find its way Home.

Getting Stuck on a Particular Path

Often the journey Home takes the form of a particular path at first. We are drawn to special forms-- teachers, practices or religions that call us to God, to Home.  Or it could be the idea of the perfect soul mate. All these engender the most powerful pulls as well as the most heart-rending disappointments when fail to see the universal beyond the particular, like when the religion is found to be faulty and divisive, or the perfect soulmate files for divorce.

Yet,  should any of our most precious and sacred forms fail us, that is actually  a blessing, a huge invitation to awaken.

Awakening is not something that can be forced. People have glimpses of it, deep experiences of it and sometimes enduring mastery of living in that manner. Self-inquiry seems important, and sometimes it helps just to be in association with others who are awakening. Once, when I was at a spiritual retreat, I woke in the middle of the night with a deep sense of there being just this great energy that seemed to be from something vast and timeless and ancient. At first, there was not even the usual sense of being a person, let alone being Susan. It was very strange, yet very familiar. Gradually I woke up as claimed the usual identity as Susan. But in a way, that was falling asleep again... to that amazing mystery.

Nevertheless, it appears and beckons again and again in my life, and probably in yours too

And each time it is like a calling card to remind me of  who I really am, which is the same in essence as who you really are.

And there is the sense that we are all destined to know this, perhaps again and again.

Not to worry: it's just a movie.

The Life that we all are is both universal and endless, its spirit surely interconnected everywhere within every form. The experience of living as an individual, trapped in a body-ego-role, can feel quite the opposite. But, in truth, how can it be otherwise?  How could all of THIS amazing and vast universe operate in any other way but as a deeply-interconnected matrix of Life, being all of us? It simply wouldn't work. It would be hopelessly chaotic and random.

Thought: The Perfect Set of Blinders

So what blinds us to knowing this? Living as humans necessarily means living with the world of thought, which has over time completely taken us over. Our ordinary mental conditioning affixes labels and images on everyone and everything. Though this is part of playing our human roles, and it is also exactly what blinds us from directly sensing the Oneness we all are.

Once you begin to glimpse this, the most remarkable aspect of the whole process is actually, how completely and how easily we are fooled, by ourselves really, living most of the time under the false assumption that we are somehow apart from the wholeness and embrace of all Life, from God, from love. 

These things we know, or once knew. Don't you think?

Yet, somehow, here we are, living as apparent individuals in a world built of dualities and contrasts (male-female, animate-inaminate, electron-positron, light-dark, in-out, up-down, my religion-their religions, my family-everyone else, left-right, allies-enemies, good-bad, rich-poor, gain-loss). And here we are, despite ourselves,  continuously staking an identity as some small piece of the game. For example, artist...

How could this lead to anything but limitation? How could this ever encompass All That Is?

How could this mis-identifying ever understand truth?

How could any part of life be apart from Life?

I mean, really!

Yes, folks, I'd say it's definitely time to disidentify. And, even though later on you may finding me speaking otherwise, right now I am clear that I am not:

-an artist (or any other profession)

-a success

-a failure

-good

-bad

-healthy

-unhealthy

-rich

-poor

-my thoughts

-my possessions

-my creations

-my beliefs or non-beliefs

-my political party 

-my religion

-my country

-my ancestry

-this country

-my gender

-my species.

Nor are you. So there.

Nope. Sorry, I just don't want to confine us anymore.

So, what ARE we, really? I don't know. Seems like we are Life being none of this and all of this, expressing as each of us.

But if you like, we can keep this a secret..... just between us. OK?

:-)

----------- 

PS- By the way, I'm now feeling re-inspired and ready to dream up my (Life's) next artistic project:

"Oneness: The Art of the Universal " A three-week celebration of paintings, poetry, music and spirit, opening Friday 11.11.11 at 11.11.

An experiential exhibit of deeply-inspired art and writings by gifted artists sharing their sense of life's interconnectedness and wholeness. Also: a full-color show book, with DVD slide shows, prints and calendars for holiday gifting. 

The opening reception from 4 to 7 pm on November 11 features the artists reading poetry and sharing insights about art and spirit.

We will also host a reception during Sedona's First Friday Artwalk Dec. 2 from 5-8 pm.

Featuring: Susan Pitcairn, Vince Fazio, Libby Caldwell, Richard Drayton, Lyn Jeckyl, Polly Cullen, Mary Lois Brown & Peg Doig

Sedona Arts Center Special Exhibition Gallery.  Nov. 11 to Dec 6, 2011. Open most days 11-5.