art as a gateway to the divine
TRANSCRIPT
What exactly is happening inside artists when
they create? Is art a gateway to the
Divine, another way to
connect with the ultimate
creative
force in the universe? What does the artist discover through the process of
creation? How does the art change the artist? Five individuals who engage in
art as a spiritual practice share their insights.
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ScienceOfMind.com MAY 2016
All three paintings here by artist Sharon Bagley © 2016
Discovering the Self Through Art When photographer and writer David Ulrich was a student, his instructors taught photography as a
means of awakening awareness. This inspired Ulrich to engage in a study and practice of art as a spiritual
practice for the past four decades and to author the manuscript “Art and
Spiritual Practice: A Pathway Toward Consciousness.”
“I think art opens many doors for people,” Ulrich says. “Certainly, it opens to self-knowledge, a sense of
knowing oneself. It can open to the different layers of oneself. Before we get to the divine, we have
to go through some of the more fundamental layers, like the subconscious, unconscious, and art can
really give a sense of our own essence, who we really are.”
A GATEWAY TO THE DIVINE (CONTINUED)
Ulrich has experienced this himself. When he was younger and meditating a great deal, visions
and words he did not understand would come into his mind. On one occasion, the words, “Bear Creek”
came to him. He had no idea what it was or what it meant, so he looked in the phone book. Bear Creek
was a steak house across town, just an ordinary building, he discovered after he drove there. However,
when he turned around in the other direction, a frozen pond came into view.
“On the surface of the pond, there were ice formations that with stunning precision reflected the
shape of my inner world, my inner landscape,” he says.
This demonstrated what Ulrich calls “moments of mystery” — magic or synchronicity that he believes
are available through sincere engagement with an art form. “But I think it’s important to remember that
I’d been deeply engaged in spiritual work,” Ulrich says.
Art alone is not enough, according to Ulrich. “Art functions in an ideal manner if it’s a support for one’s
spiritual work,” he says. Being part of a spiritual teaching, not necessarily having a specific
religious affiliation, allows a person to connect with art as a spiritual practice, he believes.
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Science of Mind practitioner Sharon Bagley uses all kinds of mixed media, including marker, in her daily spiritual practice of meditation and creativity.
In addition to the nature of our own minds, art has the capacity to open one up to what lies beyond the
mind, Ulrich says. “I think that art at its deepest level has the capacity to help us touch something
miraculous that is at the core of existence that we can’t understand with our ordinary mind, and the
beauty of art is that it speaks a language beyond rationality, beyond words, beyond the ordinary mind or
the ego,” he says.
Healing Through Art Art was a critical part of healing for
Rev. Heather Venegas, staff minister at Center for Spiritual Living
Seattle. When she took a 12-month leave from her corporate job for
treatment of an illness, spiritual practice and making art took center stage.
“I needed to create art again, and I needed to deepen my relationship with
God,” Venegas says.
She discovered that art was the means by which she could go deeper. She
spent her days in spiritual practice and art, journaling for hours and
throwing pieces on her potter’s wheel. “I courted the Divine through
spiritual practice and art,” she says.
For Venegas, art has become a vehicle for connection with Spirit. She
becomes focused and centered when creating art.
Says Venegas: “The chatter in my head stops. I’m very aware of my
oneness. It’s one of those places where I recognize and commune with the
divine. There’s also that sense that something is moving through me, and
I’m getting out of the way. It’s a place where I’ve really developed my
faith and trust and my ability to surrender.”
Breaking Through Barriers
I had observed Holmes Institute classmate Rev. Edee Charlton, spiritual
director of The Village, a Center for Spiritual Living in Monument, Colorado,
drawing in her notebook during some of our sessions. What were doodles in
the margins of lecture notes led her to discover the power of art as a
spiritual practice.
At right: Heather Venegas communes with the Divine through all types of
art, like pottery and SoulCollage® cards.
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A GATEWAY TO THE DIVINE (CONTINUED)
“I started recognizing that the doodles had elements in them that spoke to elements of the lecture,”
Charlton says. She experimented with incorporating drawing into her journaling, and found that the
pictures helped her to delve much deeper than words ever had, exposing the barriers she had built in
her life.
Charlton goes into meditation and then allows whatever shows up to spill out on paper in the form of
intricate pen and ink drawings. Sometimes she takes a question about something she is trying to work
through into the process.
“The drawings actually inform you in some way of where your consciousness is right now and also
where you would like it to go,” she says. This practice has brought up the joyful as well as the painful.
Releasing Self-Judgment
Sharon Bagley, a Science of Mind practitioner at the Seaside Center for Spiritual Living in Encinitas,
California, employs a myriad of media including woodworking, acrylic painting, watercolor, oil, pastels,
mixed media and even markers in her art as a spiritual practice. Like Charlton, she begins her nightly
sessions with prayer and a meditation, knowing that whatever needs to be dealt with will present itself
to her.
“Whatever comes up, I just start there,” Bagley says.
She doesn’t know when she begins what will end up on the canvas before her, but when she is
finished, there is clarity about some aspect of her life.
Focus on the Process, Not the Product Art as a spiritual practice is about process, not product, which is why it is important to silence the “inner
critic” and allow oneself the freedom to create. Venegas jokes about thanking her inner critic for sharing
and dismissing it to get a cup of coffee while she “plays.”
“It’s not so much the end result of what I do, it’s what’s happening within me when I do it,” she says.
“It’s that beautiful communion, that being in the zone that is so magnificent for me.”
Letting go of any ideas of perfection in the outcome and just allowing oneself to create is an
important part of the process and one that infuses the practice with a sense of freedom.
“Oftentimes, if I’m doing something freely — I don’t have any attachment to it — I’m just having fun,
it comes real easy,” says Bill Holman, a sculptor and member of Center for Spiritual Living Dallas.
“You kind of have to get over this thing of perfection.”
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Lessons for Life
These artists say that the lessons learned during the process translate into other areas of one’s life. For
example, Bagley cites the inner critic. “You start out as critical of yourself, but if you stay with it as a
practice, you start to love your creations, even if they’re imperfect, and that translates out to the
world,” she says.
Holman sees creating as a way of broadening and opening up oneself. “I think the act of creativity opens
up the universe for you. It’s another portal to tapping into what’s out there, and I think it applies to all
phases of our lives,” he says.
Charlton champions the freedom of expression that comes from the connectedness achieved through
creating art. “If you allow yourself to connect thoroughly into a spiritual place and create from that
faith, then you’re discovering the freedom of expression in other areas of your life as well,” she says.
“The people who are just so in tune with the heart of themselves that they allow themselves to freely
express — it’s beautiful. There’s no hesitation, hindrances, judgments about what somebody else is
going to think about it. It’s all an internal voice that is speaking that feels connected.”
she says. After changing “artistic” to “creative,” think about using art as the expression of that creativity. It can start with something as simple as a box of colored pencils. At retreats, Heather Venegas introduces people to SoulCollage® cards as a means of incorporating art as a spiritual practice. It is a collage process in which participants create their own deck of cards to deepen their understanding of the relationships between their personality parts, their family/ community/world and Spirit. “I think the creative process is available to anyone and everyone,” says David Ulrich. “I like to say to be an artist of life is an aim worthy of our humanity,” he says, noting that creativity can be incorporated in many areas of life including business, parenting and cooking to name a few.
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Sharon Bagley suggests swapping out the word “artistic” in favor of “creative.” “We’re always standing in fertile soil so we know we’re creative,”