Creative Spirituality Reflection
I think that “spirituality” is defined as a connection with the self and the world that is not immediate and mostly not physical. Spirituality is the practice and actions that make up a personal proximity with the beyond. To be spiritual is to be connected with the idea of beyond physical, with that cannot be seen but can be sensed. This can be different for everybody but the general idea is the same. It is a progression of the non-physical self.
Spirituality absolutely differs from religion, however the two are closely related. A religious person may be able to use them interchangeably, as the feeling of the Holy Spirit is probably what a non-religious person defines as personal spirituality. So for the non-religious spirituality is less defined and for the religious spirituality is the practice of the religion. So the two terms are necessarily related however they are certainly different and spirituality is more loosely defined and is the practice of the spiritual.
Creativity is the act of being creative, it is also an ability that could be learned. Creativity is to see what is and somehow imagine something new, something that is different from what is but is also valuable. You could also say there is an instance of creativity, a moment in time that the idea of the creative comes to the creator. So creativity is the moment and action of a person with the ability to be creative to form an idea that is new and different from what is and crates value.
The source of creativity relates directly to the reading and presentation from this week. The source of creativity could be seeing deeply, to see what is with deep understanding and realize how it could be different, new and better. This can be a spiritual process to have such a deep understanding, and to have that moment of inspiration where what can be becomes clear is a spiritual experience of art flowing through you and then manifesting itself.
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In the reading for this week, Alex Gray’s The Mission of Art, he is really trying to make a distinction between looking and seeing. “There is a vast difference between looking and seeing- a difference which is fundamental to the artist’s experience.”(73) He says that seeing determines every aesthetic decision, it is our source for finding inspiration. I think what the author is saying is that when we notice something that exists in space and time, we are looking at it. Looking is pure sensory perception with no further thought given to what the object is beyond what it looks like. It is simply noticing that the thing exists. Seeing is going beyond just looking, when we are seeing something we are really seeing it for what it is, what it is “as such.” When we apply this to art we talk about deeply seeing, when we are deeply seeing something we are seeing the art and the beauty. This is how the artist gets inspiration, they are seeing the aesthetic in the object and that is what allows them to create art.
The author also talks about the creative process; inspiration is a part of this process, however it is the most important part. The author lays out six steps of the creative process which includes; formulation, saturation, incubation, inspiration, translation, and interrogation. The goal through all of this for the artist is to reach a state mind where the “art flows irresistibly through them”(80) This almost sounds like the Christian idea of the holy spirit flowing through you. I think this is what the author means by the spirituality of art, where the artist who is creating a masterpiece is in a state where they are almost possessed by their art, they have the idea of the art in them and then through this spiritual state they physically manifest that art by reaching deeper access this spirituality which cant be seen, but can be felt.
Citation:
https://blogs.uoregon.edu/aad250shuette/files/2010/09/7-grey-1xrwu9h.pdf
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