Objectives
- Become familiar with ways in which spirituality influences artists
- Discuss the differences between spirituality and religion
- Examine spirituality as a generative force and a well spring for creativity
I define spirituality as the ability to see yourself and how you grow in relation to the world. That is spirituality is being able to see who you really are, not what people see you and judge you for, but rather how you truly see yourself and if you are actually growing or standing still. It is the inner being within you that only you can feel and whether you want to portray who that really is, is up to the person.
I believe that spirituality and religion are different things. Religion is a belief in a higher being that you want to please in order to have a good afterlife, and spirituality is the belief in your true self. I think that religion pushes spirituality because they know that in order to truly be one with god or the higher being you have to have a connection with your true self. Spirituality can allow you to view religion differently if your true self has come out and you identify your true self as someone close to the higher being.
I define creativity as the ability to create something the is new and original. It can be art, music, food, or a new invention. I think that creativity is a process in which you have an idea in your head and the way that you portray that thought is new and original. It definitely comes from within our selves but at the same time you see what other people have done and alter it in a way that makes more sense to you and can be useful for your idea.
To me the source of creativity comes from multiple areas. First is a persons spirituality because it is their true self and in order to be creative you have to trust it in your heart. Second I believe there are two types of people in this world, the art type and the analytical type. The art type have a brain that can see the image of what they want in their head and can translate that into the activity that they are doing. An analytical brain (like me) need to work harder at in and requires a lot of trial and error with some modifications every time. And lastly like I said in the previous paragraph, I think our creativity comes from observing other peoples creativity and expanding on it or modifying a process of it.
Reflection
This assignment was meant to focus on how I view spirituality and religion. I do believe that everyone has spirituality, but not everyones spirituality comes from religion and it is the inner voice of everyone at any given time. If you believe that that inner voice is from some god then you can associate spirituality with religion, but it is not required. Religion is the belief in a higher being or that how you impress something or show devotion to in this life directly reflects how your afterlife will be. The second part of this assignment was to analyze creativity and where it comes from. I believe it is a subset of your spirituality and the ability to portray that onto a page or to the world. The one caveat to creativity is that it has to be an original idea.
This assignment has helped me with the objectives by understanding what drives artists to create something and how similar and different artists are when creating pieces. Because of this I was able to understand what the difference is between spirituality and religion and where they intersect in people because there are people are are not religious and yet still are spiritual. And that allowed me to see that the source of creativity is the spirit and not religion.
Future
This topic is interesting to me and I will continue to think about it and talk about it for a while to come because I love to know what drives people and where people get their inspiration. Every time I look at a piece of art I wonder why the artist created it and what drove them to do so. I probably wont talk to people about their spirituality too much because I feel like spirituality is something you show people and not tell people because only when you are being your true self will the spirituality really show through.
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