THE ARTIST BEHING ERA

"In the heart of the artist is a studio.

The soul works constantly there, shuttling between heaven and hell, spirit and matter. Each moment, every sound, vision, taste, smell, and feeling, is a brilliant creation, dynamically colored with emotion and meaning. By touching our deepest center, great art transmits the condition of the soul and awakens the healing power of spirit. Art is nutrition for the soul. The soul cannot thrive on junk food. Many artists develop technical skills, but seem to have little that is fresh, original, or worthwhile to say. Other artists really have something important to express but lack the skills or courage to express it. A well-crafted work of art requires discipline. Devotional labor lavished on a work of art radiates love and care to the viewer. Technique is just the way to arrive at a statement.

Great art is a concentration of transformative insight into skillful and original forms. The quest of contemporary artists for individuation and originality leads them to an internal universe, beyond the external authority of family and society, where they must find their own creative principle and internal authority. Let us offer our art not only as medicine to heal the alienation and sickness of the human soul.

If artists have explored themselves deeply, they will have encountered a complex of fears that come from the shadow land of their psyche. Being aware of the crisis that humanity and the world are facing, the artist makes artwork directed at the development of personal and collective higher consciousness and healing. Artists build a bridge to the soul by doing their art. Building that connection can take an artist through unknown and treacherous regions of the psyche. To pass beyond the worldview of reason cannot be done through logic and discursive rational thought. The artist leaps into the unknown until love ignites the mystic eye. Art can brighten the shadows and pains of ego's death, and art can midwife the soul's brilliant rebirth.It can empower!

The soul calls individual artists beyond their sense of isolation into a life of love and deeper meaning. The soul demands that we experience our own divinity and find a way to express it in service to the wider world. The creative drive must come into alignment with the divine will. "Not my will but Thine." The soul-our greater, higher self- can work with the smaller egoist self through art. Art becomes the bridge to the spiritual in everyday life.

Artists of good will create their work as a service to spirit's presence and as an offering of insight, healing, and joy to others. Art is in essence a gift to the artist from the spirit. The drive to share one's artwork with others is healthy and necessary. The gift must be given to the world. Sharing one's work completes the cycle of creative endeavor.

Materialistic desires for power, fame, and money can obscure an artist's higher calling, like clouds covering the sun. Ambitions to dominate, acquire influential friends, produce and sell more, tend to blind artists to the shining source of their own creativity. As long as artists remain true to their authentic experience and vision, there is healing value in their creative effort.

The trick for most artists is to get themselves out of the way and let the spirit do its work. As a person matures, consciousness unfolds in a sequence, from lower to higher, from the primal survival feelings to the concepts of the ego self and on to the socio-centric or possibly world-centric self."