Shonna Wells' AAD250 Page

How do you define “spirituality”?

To me spirituality is about being connected to a higher consciousness or presence. To me, it’s not all about God or the divinity, but rather just more awareness that the world and existence is bigger than we are. We are a mass of energy, but I also believe that we have spirits and when we pass on, our energy and spirit do carry on and change into another form or essence of being.
Spirituality can be religion or meditation or something as simple as walking in the woods. I have always viewed it as what can ground you to the world and simultaneously allows you to see outside of yourself.

Does spirituality differ from religion?

I do believe that religion is a way in which you can express your spirituality. Spirituality is not all religious though. I do believe that religion has a much more structured set of rules and beliefs that defines it. Spirituality is a lot more ambiguous and able to melded to what each person needs it to be. Religion has always been something that tries to explain the unexplainable for me and helps to give people answers to the questions of where we came from and why we are here. I don’t see spirituality as needing to answering the questions, but more as being okay with not knowing the answer and being at peace with where you are and your part in it all.

How do you define “creativity”?

Creativity is such a diaphanous term, that it’s hard to really nail it down and define it. I think it is about the ability to translate your ideas and thoughts and feelings as well as a way to express your ideals and beliefs. Through creativity one can express parts of their imagination and delve into exploration of new ideas and they can transcend the earthly realm. This can be done through an enormous cacophony of mediums: song, writing, traditional artistic methods (painting, drawing, sculpting, etc.), dance, amongst many others.

What is the source of creativity?

I do see the source as being pretty spiritual, even if the person expressing their creativity doesn’t necessarily think of it like that. Creativity comes from within you and is inspired by where you’ve been, what you’ve seen, the varied experiences we have in life, from values and belief structures that were imposed upon us. I think the real source of creativity is the desire to express what we have inside and what we see and feel. It’s the conscious effort to put it on paper, or sing it through song, or to push the clay in just a certain way. Creativity is you.

Alex Grey has always been one of my favorite artists. I was turned onto him back in 2003 when I was in college the first time. My boyfriend at the time was a huge fan of his work and Maynard James Keenan’s music (Tool and A Perfect Circle). I’ll never forget the first time I saw the piece that Nate had on the wall of Grey’s that first introduced me to him. I looked at it for hours throughout our relationship. A lot of hours. And the more I looked at it, the more I saw and the more the piece resonated within me. It was if I could really get a sense of Grey’s spirit and who he was and what it was like to be in his head and what his spirituality was like. This was only intensified after the first time I took mushrooms and stared at that poster while getting completely lost in the deep lyrics of Tool that have a lot of religious implications since Keenan grew up a Baptist family.

It’s like when Grey writes about how his visions were intensified when he first took DMT. It is as if a whole new light was shed on the way you look at things and your brain’s ability to process and interpret.

This entire fall term in this class I have been stating that art is really what resonates within you and that is what can make it ‘art’ for you. To me that means what you see and what you feel and what something evokes in you. I feel like this perfectly corresponds with Grey’s writings in Deeply Seeing. He says, “Seeing occurs when our attention is arrested by a person, object, or scene. Our mind stops and pays attention” (Grey, 71-72). He delves deeper and says, “Viewers appreciate art because they resonate with those states of being” (Grey, 79)

I am a very empathetic person. I’ve always had an uncanny way of being able to feel what it would like to be in someone else’s shoes and to be in their experience. It is about the experience. It’s about how the artist felt when they created the piece. It’s about what thoughts they were trying to pull out of their own spirit to share with the world. I’ve always tried to seek the deeper meaning to lyrics and broad brush strokes and the indentations in clay. Every medium is meticulously chosen to be able to convey the message of the artist. The inner workings of their soul to communicate the message to the outer world.

Grey says that an artist “must be open to the tumultuous ocean of potential inspiration, the entire spectrum of consciousness, and yet reduce or essentialize  that infinite ocean to a few flowing strokes from their own fountain, providing tangible evidence of inner discovery to the outer world” (Grey, 80).  To be completely REAL and HONEST in the moment. That is a rare gift.

Here is where I make ‘spirituality’ real to the context of my own story and where I am in this moment.
I started to write this on 11.12.13. It’s the first day I am living without my husband who’s fallen in love with a woman in his class. I married him on 9.10.11. I joke and tell people that I’m just picking up where he left off. As if that wasn’t enough, on 11.13.13, the first day I spent in my new home with some incredible friends, their 19 year old son was hit by a car and is in the ICU with the right side of his skull removed because of all of the swelling on his brain. It is at this moment that I realize that the spirits that align and make sure we are where we are meant to be, put me here so I could be a vessel of strength and hope for this family. Losing a partner is nothing like losing a child or watching them fight to stay alive. The spirit must always go on though and the woman’s will can find a way to persevere, and I will.

I will find a way to be like Alex Grey’s lovers. Connected for infinity through the mind and through the heart. Nothing but a network of veins and bones and cells that still find a deeper connection than is seen through science.

Spirituality:  believing in the unseen; things like true love and trust and loyalty, even when they can’t be seen or explained. Just because they are and it feels good to you. That is all we need to get by.