1. How do you define “spirituality”?

From my point of view, spirituality is one of the ways for people to understand what is going on around their life. Spirituality is not a technique or a kind of knowledge that people could master in several days or a short period of time. Spirituality is formed based on people’s experience and background in a very long period of time. Spirituality shows people’s personality and the ability to understand things. In a word, spirituality cannot be educated but formed based on people’s experience and the environment around them.  

2. Does spirituality differ from religion?

Based on my understanding, spirituality differs from religion in some degrees. Religion can be educated. People in different religions have their own thinking system and beliefs. They think about things in different kinds of ways. These differences are not formed in one day but a long period of time. In another word, these differences are because of the traditional culture of distinct religions. Even though spirituality is not the same as religion, spirituality was influenced by religion.

3. How do you define “creativity”?

Creativity is a kind of activity of people’s brain. Creativity shows the diversity of personality all over the world. Creativity is a ways for people to show their talents and their thoughts in a physical method. People may have different kinds of ideas about the environment around them. Their creativity helps them change the world they live. They maybe want to increase the efficiency of some equipment or come up some new ideas to help their life. Creativity is main elements for them to come up the method to change their life. 

4. What is the source of creativity?

The source of creativity is the life experience and backgrounds of people. Different experience of different people leads to distinct kinds of creativity. The environment is also a kind of creativity. People who live in nature should have more creativities than people who live in a city with high-tech equipments. Creativity was formed in a place where people want to change their life and where people are willing to think about the problems they meet and then create the most appropriate way to solve the people. Therefore, the source of the creativity is the environment and background of people.

After I read Chapter 3 Deeply Seeing of The Mission of Art for this week’s material, I thought this chapter impressed me. The author summarizes some normal process or phenomenon into academic language and states how a piece of idea could be developed into a fantastic artwork.

The author mentions the creative process with six steps as following: “1. Formulation: discovery of the artist’s subject or problem. 2. Saturation: a period of intense research on the subject or problem. 3. Incubation: letting the unconscious sift the information and develop a response. 4. Inspiration: a flash of one’s own unique solution to the problem. 5. Translation: bringing the internal solution to outer form. 6. Integration: sharing the creative answer with the world and getting feedback” (Grey, 75).

From these six steps, I could know that artwork is not only a design or object to show off, but also a combination of artists’ thought and soul. In the formulation and saturation process, the artist could find the topics they are interested in and they are willing to contribute their time and life to. By doing researches on the topic, they could have a better understanding about how difficult this topic would be or how successful this topic would be. From my point of view, the incubation and inspiration processes are the processes that artists associate their souls with the artwork. They do not just want to make an artwork to show off without deep meaning. In these two process, the artists make their artwork unique because of distinguish ideas and thoughts of different artists. Based on my understanding, the translation and integration are the processes of harvesting. The artists could share their thoughts and soul via the artwork and they could harvest respects and understandings from other people.

In fact, from my point of view, I thought everything in our daily life associates with the six-step process. We all need to figure out what we want and then have more understanding about what we want to do and have to do. The last 4 steps are processes for us to work out our ideas and share with others.

Therefore, art exists everywhere in our life. 

Grey, A. (2001). Art as Spiritual Practice. The Mission of Art (1st ed., pp. 205-233). Boston & London: Shambhala.