Objective
- 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
Original Post (Click here)
How do you define “spirituality”?
1) In my point of view, spirituality is about that something from your deep heart, it is kind of an inspiration but actually more than that. It is something that people do not know they have and something can help people to create art. Personally, spirituality is kind of a mystery and cannot be interpret somehow. For example, as for artist, they can have the spirituality to create art without purpose, it is just kind of a feeling, and those artists express these feelings into different artwork. Additionally, I believe that spirituality is a gift, not everyone can have it. The artists create artwork based on different personal experience, skills, growth environment, and more importantly spirituality. As a result, not everyone has spirituality, but artists have spirituality which can help them to create different artwork.
Does spirituality differ from religion?
2) In my opinion, spirituality and religion are different. The religion is a particular system of faith and beliefs. Many people can have it, and actually it is very organized and be treated as a whole for a large number of people; also, people can get it from others in different ways. Moreover, people can share religion with others which can help them to find similarities to share values. As for spirituality, it is quite different. It is something personal and only can develop in person. It cannot be found from others, and somehow, it is natural and it is gift.
How do you define “creativity”?
3) I believe creativity is the ability to think about some original ideas and to make something differently. As for creativity, it is not like spirituality, but many other people include artists can have it. For example, the American inventor Thomas Edison was very creative and he invented a lot of device in his life. I think there are many factors can influence creativity. The basic thing is knowledge, only if you have knowledge you will know what things you want to make and how to make. The other thing is about experience which may help people a lot when they create something. Therefore, I think many people have creativity, writers, painters, musicians, architectures, and many other people in different fields.
What is the source of creativity?
4) I think the source of creativity is the growing environment in people’s childhood. Otherwise, it might relate to how parents guide and educate their children. The education plays key role in people’s life especially when they are very young. As for Western parents, they give more freedom for their kids to explore the nature and explore themselves. But for Eastern parents, they used to set up many rules for their children. Actually, it may limit their children to create thing and to discover things in daily life, and it is relate to different culture. However, it may be a part of the reason, growing environment includes a lot of other aspects, such as living environment, but I think education is very important and significant. Many inventors have more freedom than other peers when they in the childhood, they can think freely and be brave to try different things in daily life.
Reflection
This unit is the most impressive unit for me in this class. It took me a lot of time to think about how creative spirituality relate to myself, and how I can affect others as well. Before studying this unit, I did not think about the relationship or connection about religion, creativity and spirituality. They have differences, but they also have similarities. Many people have religion, but not all of them have spirituality. Spirituality is from your deep heart, it can not given by others but only can develop by yourself. But for religion, many people share with each other, it can influenced by others.
Spirituality is really important to artists, it is the origin to support artists to create artwork. In other word, it seems that only if you have spirituality, then you can be inspired to have creativity to create different art pieces. To see the objectives for this unit, I think I meet those objectives. People can be creative, which means they have the abilities to come up with many special ideas and also to make many special things that other cannot. Creativity comes from personal experience, living environment, knowledge, etc. Therefore, I believe people can discover their creativity, because people never know or most of them do not know how creative they are.
I am not religious, but I think I do have spirituality, and sometimes I am creative in some field. I think discovering myself is really necessary.
Future Goals
This original post really makes me think of myself, and think of who am I. As I mentioned above, discovering myself is really necessary and significant. Most of the time, I just waste or ignore my creativity of many things. Then, I decide since now, I will discover myself to gather all my spirituality and creativity together. Just use them, do not ignore them. Additionally, I think I will try to learn more knowledge of many other religions.