Throughout my years of spiritual advisory I’ve frequently experienced a strange phenomenon shared by artists. It has repeatedly been a culprit in the extinguishing of their own individual magic and the sentry that keeps them from moving into their specific field of vision. The issue is interpreted as fraudulence. In this writing we’ll clarify the term along with a couple others, prove it to be a false analysis, and reveal the composition of what’s really occurring. My intent in doing so is to set the artist free to the commitment of the creation process without unnecessary human intervention. Once the artist can conceive this as truth, breaking their prior illusions, then their facility for conjuring more art in the world can continue without the manacles of doubt; a deadly assassin of artistic materialization.
Consider this: The chief reason you feel fraudulent, no matter your success, is that your mind is attempting to interpret something that cannot be defined in the corporeal sense. In other words, art is an act of the Soul. It is superior to the deductions of the mind and, if anything, only utilizes it where necessary for the sake of structuring what is being discerned. All too many artists haven’t been educated on the mind’s detriment to the creation of art. Therefore it is pertinent they’re trained to direct the utility-oriented brain appropriately so that their work can flourish unhindered.
Because the manifesting of new art requires the enigmatic process of dwelling within the cracks between knowing and unknowing (both defined as mindfulness), the brain tries to figure what is happening. Since the brain is often negative in its assessments of things unidentified, it will label the space with an unconstructive connotation.
Example: A seasoned choreographer at a dance company must craft a piece for a specific song. She’s gone about this course of action for years and is intimately familiar with her process. She gives in to it, uses her incorporeal senses, and draws up from the well a routine that is carved seemingly from nothing. She doesn’t know how she did it because the architecture of movement isn’t deduced in the same manner as laying brick for a tool shed. There is no existing schematic for new art other than the foundation of training that taught her the craft. So, within the confines of dance and movement (her particular talent), she invokes results from that invisible well of provisions, translates it through the faculties of her own individuality, and births an original work that gives life to the music which inspired it.
Keeping in mind the above, there are all-too-many artists who attempt to intervene on that process by mindfulness. Yet, remembering what I said, mindfulness will mislabel what it cannot understand. It gets in the way of the letting go and before they know it they’ve used an arsenal of thought to hammer down a lid on the well and tether it shut so the creative substance dwelling in the vastness of the Soul cannot be hoisted from its depths.
For all artists, in all levels of competence that do this, you are corrupting your connection, sterilizing your results by questioning yourself, and ultimately treading toward self-imposed mediocrity. This will lead to manifold assortments of misery that have no place in the creative process. I tell you now that the creative process has enough torment as it is without such debilitating caveats allowed through ignorance and the provocations of reason.
So, for those who’ve tampered with the natural flow of creativity and corrupted it with unnecessary deductions, what do you do? Here are the answers:
- Get out of the way
You have no right to intervene against your Soul’s gift. Heeding to the illusions of fraudulence and self-doubt because you’ve yet to understand the “space between” will only hamstring your abilities and deter you from ever bringing to fruition your ultimate artistic offerings.
In order to identify how to get out of the way, you first have to set your false definitions aside. Your feelings of fraudulence are just the mind attempting to construe how you have come to summon new art. It is the mind struggling to define the creative hinterland between the knowing AND the unknowing. It cannot grasp the space in between because that space is beyond it and any attempt is frivolous. You have to let go of your mind’s need for negatively interpreting something it will NEVER figure out.
Just because you cannot classify the means by which you’ve divined your art does not mean your work is fraudulent at all. Set such false illusions aside, illuminate yourself with the truth, and do what all pure artists must: Break the need to define, label, or understand, and let the Soul connect without the burden of your mind’s interference.
2. What is the space in between? What is the place between knowing and not knowing?
Now that you’re removing all false definitions of this space, you can distinguish it properly for what it is:
The space in between is where the supernatural resides. It’s the substance of God. The space between is the combustible material specifically designed for the immaculate conception of new art.
When you let go of your mind and draw from this space, you manifest without the intervention of deduction. You transform the resource poured out to you into a work specifically characterized by your own individual brand of magic. You let go of the hedges, you let go of a need to manipulate, and when you dwell in the sphere without any of the mind’s trespasses, you are pure in your artistry. The flow from the space in between becomes unbound and your receptacle for receiving it is no more hindered by a need to deduce. You’ll find, by the nature of how pure artistry works, if you try to define it with your mind, then you have decided you want to create something that already exists. Shutting down the mind’s intervention will break that dam and finally provide you the most supreme opportunity for the birthing of fresh and novel art.
3. Trust and let go
For all artists (there are no “aspiring” artists, just ones that have yet to develop the foundation of craft necessary for supporting their future manifestations), you now understand the need to trust in the process and let go.
- To let go is to buttress yourself against the mind’s demand to classify what it lacks the biological capacity to understand.
- To let go is to eradicate the insecurities about being good enough. Such thoughts are limited delusions that betray you into foolishly thinking you know what the world would rather want.
- To let go is to quell presumptions of time. When you let go and pull from the well of your Soul, any focus on time or the waste of it loses all relevance. Time doesn’t exist within the infiniteness of creativity and you’ll discover that when you give in to your art, any concerns about time are obscene and vulgar.
- To let go is to forget about fraudulence. You were never fraudulent and your art was never the result of “not knowing where it came from”; it came from the mind-excluding space in between. Now that you realize the wellspring of your Soul is where you manifest your art, there is no more need to reflect on fraudulence. You couldn’t identify or describe the place in between the knowing and unknowing before…but now you can. Now you know the right words to say. Now you know that the fraudulence was false. Now you can move on, fully cognizant of where the magic appears from.
- To let go is to accept the difficulty of conjuring new art. That marvelous struggle is a necessary component of the process. Instead of wasting your time questioning whether it will emerge, just inhabit it, realize that the more difficult the incantation, the more beautiful the magic is once you’ve finally received it. Wishing it easier is to convince yourself to prefer mediocrity. Would you, an artist, rather have a painless artistic process or learn how bolster yourself against the travails of the most tempestuous storms of the mind and Soul in order to carve out new manifestations for the world to be arrested by? I think we know the answer.
In summary, it’s vital for all artists to know, because of their facility for invoking new art from the well of their Soul, they are the witches and wizards of the modern world. They possess an enchantment that is reserved solely for their variety. From dancers, authors, and painters, to architects, musicians and fashion designers, what they summon up for humankind is what makes our lives habitable. Utility alone does not serve us or we would be like the animals. It is the humanities, it is art, which elevates us above all other creatures. It is art that moves us and lights us from within, illuminating the shadows of monotony, bringing color where there was none, instantly fracturing our daily routine and demanding we pause in wonder.
It is art that proves our Souls, and as a species, art is what makes us beautiful.
