Creative Spirituality Reflection

  1. Spirituality Definition
    In My view, Spirituality is a belief in something, someone or in one’s own self. Belief in someone or something is usually seen by worshiping of a God or of an object that have been given godly attributes. However, Belief in one’s owns self is the belief in the inner good of a person or in other words belief in one inner self. Spirituality in western terms is also defined as Enlightenment, which is defined as the belief in individualism rather than traditional practices or religion practices. Thus, in this definition spirituality have both religious implication and also implication of being just spiritual.
  2. Spirituality Difference from Religion
    Though in many Religions spirituality plays a vital role it thus stands neutral in its association. As in spirituality can be practiced without religion. This is because spirituality stands more abstract then religion. Moreover, spirituality in any instance does not follow a code of ethics like religion but stands as a belief of all moral practice that tends to do moral good for humans or its society. Example of spiritual practices can be seen in the practices of Buddhist monks, as they do not belief is not a religion but rather a life style, which sold purpose the practice of doing good for others and living a simple life.
  3. Creativity Definition
    In my view, anything that is beautiful in the human eye is the product of creativity. Thus, creativity is the act of making something beautiful or the product of a beautifying process. Creativity is mostly considered as an art in the human eyes and the maker of such a creative object is always considered as an artist. However, nature is also beautiful and thus considered creative but in this case the artistic value of such creativity are always credited to God or to the science of nature rather then a human artist.
  4. The Source of Creativity
    In my view, the source of creativity can either be spiritual or evolutionary. As if its evolutionary, it is our “survival instant” to makes things beautiful and thus in the process of making thing beautiful creativity in the human species comes by our evolution. However, if its spiritual, creativity is fueled by both our reasons as humans and meditation of our internal self of what is creative and relating it to our beliefs in nature, science or religion.

 

Creative Spirituality Discussion

I have always believes that meditation is an important aspect of art. As Shahzia Sikander points out that it is important to keep “respective for tradition and respect for tradition” in the field of creativity, she thus implies the meditation needed for such work. Furthermore, Sikander art is mostly based on traditional values of both Muslim and Hindu Community. This was mostly shown in her paintings of the Indian goddess with the veil used to cover her face. The abstract knowledge of Sikander art is basically based on her personal belief and memorize. Thus, in this respect she uses the spirituality of both religion (Hindu and Muslim) and personal values in her artwork. Examples of these can be seen in the painting in which she uses the letters of the Quran to make meaningful art.

James Turrell showed another aspect of spirituality as he shows the aspect of spirituality that is associated with light and how this tells us our place in the universe. As he uses the crater as a place to observe the light from the moon, sun and stars he points out how with such view we can see that out notions about the universe is wrong that the sun does not rise from the east and sents in the west as it is us who is actually moving but due to the really slow speed of the earths movement we do not actually notice us moving. Thus, Turrell connects the idea of inner peace and spirituality with light as in order to gain inner peace or to mediate one must sit under the bright light of nature or the light of cosmos in order to attain spiritual peace. The Roden Crater project by James Turrell was in order to bring the cosmos closer to better attain the spiritual peace from Cosmos light.