Creativity As a Spiritual Path
As every artist can attest, the creative act is a spiritual one. Regardless of belief, there is a universal sense that the art, whether visual, performance, aural or other, flows through the artist almost as a separate entity, with a sense of enrichment.
Humanists also ascribe to this concept, in identifying art in all its forms as one of the most glorious aspects of humanity, and something that feeds our individual spirits and enhances our societies. Inspiration – the very word meaning to breathe inward that which is outside of and all around us – comes to artists as a force, a Muse, a substance that is not the artist but inhabits him or her for a little while. Those who are most in tune with this force, we call genius; the well-known writer Elizabeth Gilbert suggests that we reframe this concept in keeping with that of the ancient Romans, and view the artist not as someone who is genius but who has a Genius, a spirit that inspires.
Writers often speak of characters and stories that develop in spite of the writer’s intention and in unexpected ways. Musicians and composers talk of music ‘in the air all around’ that flows through them; one scholar even went so far as to suggest music as the matrix, the inherent fabric, of the universe, correlating it to subatomic matter and string theory. Performers permit their characters to ‘inhabit’ them. There is a sense of otherworldliness connected to the creative act, and to art itself.
What about those of us who aren’t artists, or who don’t self-identify as such?
It is a given that all humans are creative. We must think creatively every day in order to solve problems, make the most of our lives, get what we want and need. While some of us exercise this ability