Art & Contemplation
Contemplative art-making is a way of deep knowing that supports psychoemotional-spiritual integration.
With a focus on the creative process itself rather than on producing an art object, we can engage the arts as contemplative practice.
Art-making & Contemplative Practice
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Contemplation
In a making process we can hold in abeyance the automatic dominance of conceptual thought and develop a more receptive inner state, clearing a space in which we can open to Spirit. We can be illuminated, inspired and moved by our sense of and alignment with the Presence of Spirit.
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Attunement
If we commit to a regular creative practice, we can hone our attention and subtle-sense perception, increasing our sensitivity to sensation and the flow of energy in contraction and expansion, resonance and dissonance, vitality and dullness. We can bring consciousness to the embodiment of our intra- and inter-action and the process of energy becoming substance, deepening presence and connection.
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Compassionate Inquiry
A creative process can be a crucible for the alchemy of compassionate inquiry, enabling us to explore our experience in experimental, appreciatively curious ways. We can develop our capacity for engaging with complexity, ambiguity and the unknown, learning to relate to these phenomena as thresholds of possibility rather than threats. And we can allow the intelligence of our body and our emotions to “speak” in multiple modes, increasing awareness and coherence.
More about the value of the arts
With respect to broader implications, in both appreciating art and in art making processes, relational principles are of greater currency than utilitarian ones.
Our attention is drawn and gathered by the connections between subjects rather than focused on the relative usefulness of objects. This can foster deeper relationality and disrupt the automatism of interactions based on seeing and using each other solely as means to an end.
Also, in appreciating art and in art making processes, we can experience ourselves as thresholds of revelation as we work at the juncture of divine indwelling, inner impulse and outer movement.