There are some artists that have unfolded the deepest level of awareness. An awareness discovered with earnestness and solitude that connects the artist with everyone and everything. Stepping outside (of form and society) to go inside. To go so far inside, that the false, the illusion of self is experienced. The self becomes something remote that is merely witnessed as it acts out its destiny.

 An artist practices and masters a technique that allows him/her to access a timeless state, a state beyond the self – the creative state.  When the artist has an intellectual capacity, it can be put into words that make some form of rational sense. Since this state is beyond knowledge and intellect – it can only be pointed out to others. Everyone has the capacity to access it and probably they have accessed it. Only it is filed away in their individual belief-system as an experience that makes no rational sense therefore it is not relevant to their lives. The cultivation and nurturing of the creative state is the key.

 There is a fusion with productive thought (this type of thought allows a framework for the creative energy) but no running with disruptive thought during masterful creation. The “divine” creative energy passes through the artist like electricity through a socket. Electricity runs through all sockets but the “inspired” artist is turned on. When the artist's conventional self  re-enters after the creative act, the experience is filtered through language, belief-systems and intellectual conditioning and described accordingly – “The painting seemed to paint itself”,  “I had no sense of time”, the outsider/folk artist might say, “Jesus told me to do it."

 All spiritual belief-systems and religions (the word religare, means to bind back or to link) are linked to direct human mystical experience. The mystic has these experiences in states of self-abandonment just like the artist.  As Joseph Campbell said, “The artist and the mystic are going to the same places but the artist has a craft that holds him to the world.”  All belief-systems should be honored as vehicles to link the individual to the “Creative Source”, to “Big Mind” or as the Tibetans say , “Rigpa.” It is the common ground or the rule. An integral practice is the key. As one ancient text states; “The truth is one and the paths to it are many.”

Every sentient being is an artist because every sentient being manifests from this creative energy.  Like images projected on a screen we act out our lives.  Everything could be considered art. It manifests itself differently through each person.

With me, it wants to make images and have dialogue, to simply share it with others and encourage them to find it and honor it in their own lives.

~William Rock