You often hear how an artist feels that they would die rather than relinquish their art. Singing, painting, sculpting keep them sane. Without the creative outlet of writing or poetry or dance they would pack life in altogether.

When it comes from a mediocre talent we are wont to smile at the innocuousness of the water color artist or minor sentimental poet who, rather than resort to pharmaceuticals or excessive alcohol, has found a creatively harmless method of retaining their sanity. When it comes from a major talent, our favorite artist, singer-songwriter, or classical musician, well, that's another matter of course.

All things arise out of the matrix of Consciousness and resist their inevitable demise. Having children, leaving memorials in our name, or works of art to remind existence that we once were here are in reality all symptoms of ego-aggrandizement. It's really very obvious, isn't it? The need to retain our sanity in creative expression and the sublimated catharsis of life is merely the resistance to non-existence. As such it stands in the way of liberation.

We often confuse the means with the end. Art in and of itself is merely means. Art in and of itself bridges the worlds of inner and outer realities and at its best and most sacred builds bridges between the material and the invisible, the mundane and the miraculous, the human and the divine. As such it is nobody's possession. Art is not mine or yours. It is as divinity also is: impersonal, void of personality, of individual form. It is both no one's and everyone's.  It should simply be left impersonally, as you might leave a path without expecting that no one else may follow you there.

There are two possibilities and they are both sacrificial in nature and spirit. Relinquish your art form for the Divine, offer it up, and allow it to infill your life in breath and movement and speech and sacred living. If you retain it, offer it to the Divine Source, allow yourself to receive the guidance to consecrate and purify the act of impersonal creation and integrate it into your life effortlessly without personal interest.

BLOG entry #11