Speaking personally it is really hard for me to define spirituality. I think that everyone has a different definition and that we are all spiritual beings in our own way. The best definition I can give is having faith in something or someone whether they be real or not. I feel that many people think that you have to believe in a certain religion or some being bigger than yourself in order to be spiritual, but I personally believe that you don’t have to believe in anything more than what you know to be a conscious being. One example I try to use myself is being mindful. The core teachings in meditation is being mindful of your breath and being aware of your surroundings, and although many people place meditative practice with buddhism, I don’t believe it means you have to practice or believe the buddhist religion. I myself do not claim to be buddhist or do I even practice meditating like I should. I think that the act of just being mindful is a spiritual one in its own, and something that everyone should be more aware of. To be mindful means you are focusing on what you are doing here and now, and if we can focus on what we are doing now, and have faith that what is meant to be will be, then in that sense I am transcending past myself and letting life run its course.

I absolutely think that spirituality differs from religion. I used to be a very dedicated Christian and a follower of Christ for quite some time in my life. I would attend church every Sunday, youth groups on Monday nights, and dedicate my summers to attending and working and Christian affiliated camps. These were some of the greatest experiences of my life, and I made some of the best friends I could ever ask for, but there were so many things happening within the Christian religion that I now see and disagree with. For myself, I was made to believe that certain acts were sinful, and although we are all sinners we should strive to not do these things and always pray and ask for forgiveness if we do them. Religion was always about doing things with the thought of Christ in mind. For a while it felt like if something was going wrong in my life it was because I wasn’t dedicated enough time to Christ or asking him for forgiveness for sinning, and then in turn sinning made me feel like a bad person and made me feel awful for what I was doing. Religion to me felt like I was in chains. Now that I’ve stepped away from the Christian religion I live my life the way I choose to and I don’t feel bad about things like drinking with my friends. Now I feel more spiritual than I ever did, because my life has its ups and its downs, but without the shackles of religion reigning over me, I have experienced so much more in life and have seem myself in a much more transcended level of awareness to the world.

Defining creativity is also tough for me, but I think I would best describe it as a process that we go through to solve problems and construct new things. Creativity is something that we all have inside of us in my opinion even if we may not consider ourselves as being artistic. For example, how many times have any of us been put in a situation where we had to find a solution or get something done and instead of doing it the way we’re told to we do it our way or a new way. That took time to create and be creative in our way of thinking.

Defining the source of creativity is even more of a challenge because I think there are many different paths in which creativity can come to be. I feel that creativity takes inspiration or a reason to feel inspired because it eludes to the definition I gave of being a process. In order to find the source of creativity I think we need to dig into what it is that is inspiring us to most to want to go through the process of being creative and design the pieces of work that we do or solve our issues is ways we wouldn’t normally.

When I first read what this weeks lessons were going to based around I was really intrigued. At first I thought that we would be reading or watching presentations on how art is based around religion (like angelic figures or paintings based around God from the middle ages), but was surprised after doing the reading to see how much Grey focused spirituality in his artwork around the types of spiritual awakenings he had through things like smoking DMT, and being educated in the power of understanding the 7 chakras. I’ve spent quite a bit of time watching documentaries and reading about people, especially artist, who have taken hallucinogens and captured its power to turn it into something fantastic or revolutionary. Francis Crick even admitted to being high on LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA.

My favorite part of this chapter from Grey’s book was the section about inspiration and how he described how each artist has their own unique process that they go through in becoming inspired to create their next piece. He says that “Inspiration is the most mysterious step in the creative process. The artist is possessed by a create force, overtaken by a vision and driven to create. Inspiration is beyond reason”(82). I really love the way that he way that he makes sense of inspiration by exalting it to this type of higher being. Like spirituality in a way. I think that being spiritual does not always mean that you have to believe in the same higher power, or to believe that a higher power exists, but being spiritual is believing that there are things even in yourself that can transcend you that is bigger than you’ll ever be able to understand. Like inspiration, it is “beyond reason” as he puts it, as if it is beyond ourselves and something bigger than will ever know. Inspiration is in all of us and comes from many different sources and ways of thinking, but I personally believe we will never fully understand or know those sources.