How do you define spirituality?
I usually define spirituality as something that is connected to a God figure.  Spirituality isn’t something I think about very often.  I would say that it is something that heavily connected to religion, but isn’t necessarily a religion itself.  People say they are spiritual without being religious.  I think for some, it is about feeling connected to the earth, or some other force that we can’t really see or touch.  Also, when people talk about being spiritual, it is more about how they feel than anything else.

How does spirituality differ from religion?
Spirituality and religion I think are very similar, and very connected.  But they are different because people can be spiritual without being religious.  And religious people from different religions can be spiritual in the same way.  I have always associated spirituality with being religious, because they just seem to go together, but it’s not always true.  Religion is following one God, or one set of Gods, and following the rules of one religion.  For example, if you are Christian, you won’t worship Buddha.

How do you define creativity?
Creativity is using your imagination to come up with something new or interesting.  When someone is creative, then they are coming up with ideas, or putting them together in different ways than is usual.  Creativity can also show in creating art, or writing, or creating music.  Creativity can also show in the way we dress, as we learned the other week, and how we choose to present ourselves.  I think that creativity is important to keep life exciting and new.

What is the source of creativity?
I think that the source of creativity is imagination and imitation.  We can think of new things or new ways to implement old things with our imagination, and through imitation we can mimic others’ ideas and change them to make them new again.  I think that spirituality and religion can be a source of creativity because of the material, but I wouldn’t say that spirituality and religion are necessarily the source of creativity.  Being creative is harder than doing just one thing, and it comes from a lot of different sources.

This week’s reading was very unique.  The section about the different types of chakras was especially interesting.  I don’t really think about things like this, and the way they are explained caught my attention.  Each chakra is apparently focused around a different area of the body, and they all handle different emotions or desires.  On page 98, the explanation of the second chakra is that it is “the emotional and sexual focal point… the six basic emotions — anger, sadness, surprise, disgust, happiness, and fear — are second-chakra manifestations.”  So our chakras control our emotions, or emotions are an effect of our chakra, that controls how we feel.  I haven’t heard it explained like this before.

The fourth chakra is about love and compassion.  The confusing thing here though, is that I always considered love and compassion to be feelings.  It seems like the second would control them, then.  But according to the reading, they are different.

The sixth chakra is a “third eye” and gives us visions or prophecies.  I never believed that this kind of thing actually happens, but it’s interesting to consider.  Really what they describe in this section is what I would call imagination or creativity, not prophecy.  Some people like to attribute this to different things though.

I think that this week was entertaining, but not particularly informative in a factual way.  I believe that some artists really believe this, and it may help them create their art, but it wouldn’t help everyone.  Since I have watched the video from this week as well, I saw how the artists used religion and a sense of spirituality not only as an inspiration, but as a content focus as well.  Spirituality is something that a lot of people enjoy talking about and experiencing, so it makes sense that it would be included in art.  I think art should be able to be about whatever the artist wants it to be about, and then the people who share the same ideas will seek it out.