from
Keys to the Open Gate by Kimberley Snow
"Art is crucial in changing society. It is important to realize that life itself is art. The problem is that we compartmentalize everything. The artist is not a special kind of person but everyone is or ought to be a special kind of artist. We are whole and we live our lives with art and out of that there may come some specific creation that we call art, but everything about being human is an art." -Mother Tessa Bielecki
Artists of all kinds--painters, sculptors, musicians--find and express spirituality in and through creativity, and many practitioners find their way to the heart of a spiritual tradition through its emotional and aesthetic expression in art or music rather than through theology.
In addition to relating to the art of others, the process of creativity can itself provide a sense of the sacred for women whether they think of themselves as artistic or not. Few things are as creative as dreams--those elaborate messages from the unconscious once believed to be sent by the gods. By working with dream symbols, keeping a prayer journal, or by creating artwork in a meaningful way, we are able engage deeper levels of our being, thus expressing and synthesizing elements in ways that often surprise our surface mind.
Over and over I have found that in writing, the sense of connection comes not at the point a book is published, but in the primary process of creation. When I'm writing hard, a sort of humming starts at the edge of my consciousness; earth slides away, the sky opens. I'm in, quite literally, another world. Something comes to me, through me, something sings me, hums me. When you are able to set aside your judgmental mind which limits you to what you think you can do well, you can participate in this primary creative act, can connect with this source.
Creativity--whether through writing, painting, or creative imagination--releases us into a timeless world where all things are possible. In this magical realm we can reclaim past events, retrieve former selves, live out what almost was, what could have been. Through creating, we are able to fill out the hollows and blank spaces in our lives, to make sense of and give reality to our experience. In this private arena where conscious and unconscious meet and interact, we are granted a unique opportunity to negotiate peace settlements between inner and outer, between self and other, between sacred and profane.
To think and to write about spiritual life is to engage actively in the process of integrating and shaping it. Writing, like breathing, is a way of connecting the mind and the body, the conscious and the unconscious. Through writing, we can slip the moorings of our own personality to look at the world through another's eyes, to walk in their shoes. By imagining into their situation, we develop understanding and compassion, explore new ideas, new modes of being. Through writing and/or visualizing, we can overcome our fear of death by "experiencing" our own, thus leading us to live more lightly in the time we have left. Through keeping a dream journal, we can catch the hints and interpret the stories our unconscious sends us nightly. Through active imagination/visualization we can overcome psychological obscurations that block our spiritual path.
Over the years I found that it is easy to read coolly, superficially, only with the mind, but writing requires emotional involvement, it engages the whole self. By simply picking up a pen and writing for twenty minutes on a given subject, we often find out not only what we think about a topic, but also what we feel, what we fear, and what we hope. Writing about a subject will frequently reveal hidden truths and latent ideas in a way that nothing else can.
Writing in a journal or composing any kind of ongoing record of one's thoughts, activities, events, creates a storehouse of information, even if incomplete and sporadically kept. Writing about your spiritual journey will help to deepen the experience as you write, and teach you to be more aware, more conscious of your ongoing process.
When writing, don't edit yourself as you go along. Don't worry about spelling, grammar, sentence structure, stylistic devices, or any of that. If you do, you engage the left side of the brain, and this inhibits the free flow of imagination and the ability to synthesize. Sometimes it helps to be less blocked if you write with your non-dominant hand.
Putting emotions and buried experiences into words is the first step towards getting them into consciousness. After you've learned that writing can take you below a certain level of mind, then you're embarked on a profound journey that is perhaps best not talked about too much. There is something out there/in here, something conscious that holds the world together, something that is knowable, something that can be understood in silence, in loneliness, something that reveals itself gradually or swiftly, something that can be taken away sometimes for weeks or even years. What to call it? To name it might limit it, but let it work through you, trust it, trust yourself, trust the process that binds you both together. Trust and honor it. You have to be very quiet, very still to hear it, like catching a tune being played in the far distance. Learn to be still and let it work through you, heal you.
A good method for beginning a writing meditation is to set the clock for twenty minutes, and not let the pen stop moving until that time has elapsed. Don't worry about spelling, grammar, style--just write. If you find that you are stuck, simply write the same sentence or word over again until the pen "takes off" on its own.
To visualize or use what the Jungians call "active imagination" (see Robert Johnson's Inner Work), simply relax the body, relax the mind, open the inner eye to whatever images present themselves. Watch for a while and participate when your inner voice tells you to do so. Even through you may not be able to visualize clearly at first, by making the effort, you create the means of a new way of perceiving.
For more on pursuing
writing as a path of self knowledge and meditation, be sure to check out:
Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones and Wild Mind; Joanna Field's A Life
Of One's Own; Frederick Franck's Art as a Way: A Return to the Spiritual Roots;
Judith Hooper and Dick Teresi's Would the Buddha Wear a Walkman? A Catalogue
of Revolutionary Tools for Higher Consciousness (products and services to expand
your mind); Peter London's No More Second Hand Art: Awakening the Artist Within;
Sandra Shuman's Source Imagery: Releasing the Power of Your Creativity; Frances
Vaughan's Awakening Intuition; and my Writing Yourself Home.
For more on painting and creativity, see Betty Edwards' Drawing with the Right Side of the Brain.
Blessings--expressions
of gratitude--are part of many religious traditions. Christians commonly give
thanks before a meal, but in Judaism, blessings play a much larger role in daily
life. Blessings, with their formulaic opening "blessed are you, Lord our
God, king of the universe," function as powerful tools with which to express
spirituality and to forge a community. Many have come to rely on them in their
daily lives to mark both extraordinary and ordinary occasions. However, the
Jewish tradition, while it has great numbers of blessings--for seeing a rainbow,
on meeting a wise person--has no blessings for the onset of menstruation or
menopause or even for childbirth. Nor does it have a feminine variation for
the formulaic opening.
A Blessings Journal is not necessarily Jewish nor does it always need a formulaic
opening. A Blessings Journal is an ongoing record of whatever makes you feel
blessed. Write in it when you experience a spontaneous surge of gratitude--for
a hummingbird that comes to your window, the way the light filters though a
slatted blind, the smile of a passing child. Read it when you feel depressed.
For a comprehensive and innovative treatment of blessings, see Marcia Falk,
in "Notes on Composing New Blessings: Toward a Feminist-Jewish Reconstruction
of Prayer," (Weaving the Visions, edited by Judith Plaskow and Carol P.
Christ, New York, HarperCollins, 1989). Falk illustrates how women can create
their own blessings, and how the feminine can be incorporated into the language
in a variety of ways.
One
complaint against keeping a journal is that it makes a person too self-involved,
but that doesn't need to be the case. You can develop compassion by coming truly
to understand other people though writing about them. Start with a physical
description of someone you know well, then tell their history. Where did they
come from? What were their greatest challenges? Their biggest triumphs? Their
turning points? Write about their personality. How are they different from other
people? What makes them unique? What are their relationships like with other
people? What makes them happy? Sad? Experience their suffering. What is their
life like day by day? Imagine yourself as that person and write about your day.
Write about yourself from their point of view. Become that person, walk in their
shoes.
One of the best ways to deepen and integrate your spiritual experience through
writing is to keep a special journal or diary.
Keep a journal describing the times and ways you connect to the spirit; your deeply felt connections to others or to the world; comments on the books you read or talks you hear; retreats or seminars you go to; low points when you are not able to feel anything at all. Collect quotations that soothe or inspire you.
In A Life Of One's
Own, Joanna Field writes that she started keeping what she called "An Opposites
Journal" to try to maintain her life in balance. She noticed early on that
for every strong opinion she had, she often held (or was capable of entertaining)
its opposite. Also, periods of great happiness and deep despair punctuated her
life, but when she was in one she couldn't remember the other until she sat
down to write about it in her "opposites journal."
This kind of journal is extremely valuable for breaking through dualistic or
polarized thinking, especially if you mark some of the pages in columns so that
you can list opposing thoughts side by side. Good Traits - Bad Traits, etc.
In addition to personal entries, abstractions can pose a real challenge in an opposites journal. Such concepts as patriarchy, the visible world, romance and the goddess yield many surprising insights. Just as Jesus, brought up in the tradition of midrash, often taught in parables, the Sufis, who form the mystical branch of Islam, use stories to expand and ripen the minds of their pupils. Perhaps the best know Sufi story is the one in which three blind men describe the nature of an elephant. The first man held its trunk and said an elephant is long and straight like a pipe; the second felt its ear, and claimed the animal to be broad and flat, like a rug; the last man groped around the elephant's leg, then declared it to be mighty and firm, like a pillar. They were all right, of course, about what they perceived, but wrong in trying to apply it to the whole.
A stream, from its source in far-off mountains, passing through every kind of description of countryside, at last reached the sands of the desert. Just as it had crossed every other barrier, the stream tried to cross this one, but it found that as fast as it ran into the sand, its waters disappeared.
It was convinced, however, that its destiny was to cross this desert, and yet there was no way. Now a hidden voice, coming from the desert itself, whispered: 'The Wind crosses the desert, and so can the stream.'
The stream objected that it was dashing itself against the sand, and only getting absorbed: that the wind could fly, and this was why it could cross a desert.
'By hurtling in your own accustomed way you cannot get across. You will either disappear of become a marsh. You must allow the wind to carry you over to your destination.'
But how could this happen? 'By allowing yourself to be absorbed in the wind.'
This idea was not acceptable to the stream. After all, it had never been absorbed before. It did not want to lose its individuality. And, once having lost it, how was one to know that it could ever be regained?
'The wind,' said the sand, 'performs this function. It takes up water, carries it over the desert, and then lets it fall again. Falling as rain, the water again becomes a river.'
'How can I know that this is true?'
'It is so, and if you do not believe it, you cannot become more than a quagmire, and even that could take many, many years; and it certainly is not the same as a stream.'
'But can I not remain the same stream that I am today?'
'You cannot in either case remain so,' the whisper said. 'Your essential part is carried away and forms a stream again. You are called what you are even today because you do not know which part of you is the essential one.'
When he heard this, certain echoes began to arise in the thoughts of the stream. Dimly, he remembered a state in which he--or some part of him, was it?--had been held in the arms of a wind. He also remembered--or did he?--that this was the real thing, not necessarily the obvious thing, to do.
And the stream raised his vapour into the welcoming arms of the wind, which gently and easily bore it upwards and along, letting it fall softly as soon as they reached the roof of a mountain, many, many miles away. And because he had had his doubts, the steam was able to remember and record more strongly in his mind the details of the experience. He reflected, 'Yes, now I have learned my true identity.'
The stream was learning. But the sands whispered: 'We know, because we see it happen day after day: and because we, the sands, extend from the riverside all the way to the mountain.'
And that is why it is said that the way in which the Stream of Life is to continue on its journey is written in the Sands.
Idries Shah
Tales of the Dervishes: Teaching-Stories of the Sufi Masters E.
P. Dutton, 1970
Write a story using natural objects (rocks, flowers) or forces (wind, rain) as characters.
Turn off the computer and look at the screen or visualize a blank computer screen. A blank piece of paper will do. Tune into the blankness there, the lack of activity. Go into the screen and expand. Keep expanding. When you can no longer feel the edges of your consciousness, stop. Pause. Relax. Maintain this awareness as you leave your chair, take it into the home. But first, thank the computer for a good day's work and mentally wish that whatever useful you've accomplished during the day be shared by everyone.
Also
see
