Art, Creation and The Divine

I'm an artist.  I write - novels and poetry.  I also draw (a little), and take photographs - abstracts, and lyrical "Faces of the Divine".  (One day, I intend to paint.)

My understanding of being an artist is this ... but to outline "this" I need to set the stage with some "big" concepts, understandings, and interweave them ... such as ... what is art?  What is creation? ... Inspiration?  What is "Service to the Divine"?  What is the "role" of the "artist"?  What does society "expect" of the artist (those in society who care about this kind of thing, that is)?  What does the Divine offer in return to the artist?  What does the artist expect of herself, or himself.

I consider myself a "spiritual" artist.  I consider myself a spiritual "seeker".  I look around the world that I live in, both physical and social worlds.  I see some people perpetrating cruelty on some others.  I see some people perpetrating violation and rape on Mother EAerth Herself; Gaia, the one and only Planet Earth. I want there to be manifestly less cruelty that we perpetrate upon each other.  And I want there to be no rape and violation of Mother EAerth.  These perceptions and these wishes drive my art.

I also look at and into my society - I live in Western society; born in Scotland and resident in Northern California - and I see changes that I both believe and intuit that are going to create destructive consequences.  The future reveals itself ... in its own time.  So I don't truly know if my intuitions will come to pass.  What I see is a growing lack of Stillness.  Actually, a communal and individual supercharged pushing away from, retreating from, Stillness.  Stillness is essential for being able to hear whispers from the Divine, for feeling the Touch of the Divine.  For Knowing the Presence of the Divine.  And for Loving, each other, all creatures, and Mother EAerth.

Our conscious relationship with the Divine is essential to knowing that all that we see with our biological eyes is Divine - Mother EAerth Herself and all upon Her; all beings, all creatures, the oceans, the forests and jungles, the very air itself, so gossamer thin and fragile relative to the orb of the planet and the surrounding "outer space".  And once we see this and know this, then cruelty will evaporate.  It can be no other way.  These perceptions and these wishes drive my art.

One more point.  I believe that thoughts are things.  Thoughts Create.  This is the way of the Universe, the way it is.  Anything we want we must have the thought of it first.  Conscious ... or unconscious.

All of us human beings - and we share Mother EAerth with thinking animals too - have myriad floods of thoughts.  All the time.  Except when Still.  Rational thoughts.  Irrational thoughts.  Obsessive thoughts.  Completely unconscious thoughts.  And many more facets of thoughts.  Pushing ... driving ... tugging us (this way and that) ... criticizing ... demeaning ... sowing hopelessness, greed, addiction, failure and lack of Abundance.  Since thoughts are things the collective, the aggregation, of all these billions and billions of human-generated thoughts creates an energetic that surrounds and pervades the planet.  All thoughts that are "similar" aggregate and create cultural momentums.  These Groupmind thoughts influence us all the time.  They move us.  They move our minds.  They move our minds to think along the same old lines, same old, same old thoughts, which in turn enter into the Groupmind.  Strengthening it.  They stop us thinking clearly, for ourselves, from first perceptions and principles.  I see this all the time with "news events".  There is a choice available to all of us.  There is the choice to break free from the bondage of the Groupmind that envelopes (and compromises) all of us on the planet.  This choice to be successfully actualized requires several understandings and energies.

One of these is the ability to gather Stillness to us.  Such Stillness is quintessentially Sacred.  So, by gathering Stillness we create a sacred SpaceTime MomentPlace.  For us to Be.  And Learn.  And become energized.  And focused.  And so grow ready and prepared to submit to the Trajectory that we really, Divinely, are.

As a "spiritual" artist one of my tasks is to become more and more aware of all of this and more and more willing to grow into it.  It will, obviously, appear in my work.

I also consider myself an "activist" artist.  I do push my intent to making this world a better place into the spinning maelstrom of marketplaces and tribes that make up our surface world.  Not all my activism is a gentle push for meditation.  For example, read Thank You, Tibet! and Winter did not Come this Year.  My intent as an activist and spiritual artist is both open and encoded in my art.

What are the ways I do this?

By using art as a homeopathic treatment for the collective social/cultural Groupmind that envelops our Mother EAerth.  By using in my art archetypes that harken back, and thus take us back to an earlier, much less frantic, time in our Groupmind.  By offering in my art artifacts - a poem here, a contemplative soliloquy from a character there - that can be used for reflection, meditation and stilling into Stillness.  And by positing in my art, openly or encoded, that True Wisdom exists - and thus, what then is your response to that?

So, these are my techniques as an activist and spiritual artist.

My novel Alba: The Great Dance of Leaving and Returning is an example of all of these.  Alba is genre fiction - it is of the category historical fantasy.  It is set in the years 839 and 840 in the geographical location that will become Scotland a few years forward.  There are battles, betrayals, deaths and cruelties.  However these are used purely and always homeopathically.  For the main characters in Alba, those who dance the Sacred Dances, are painfully aware of these cruelties, do not perpetrate any (in the slightest) and live to Serve the people of the Tribe of Alba.  So, my use of battles and betrayals is to inject into the Groupmind the opposite.  The Antidote.  That Love exists.  That Service exists.  That Dispassion exists.  All in the midst of human-created painful chaos.

This is what Mora, one of the Sacred Dancers proclaims and declaims in Alba.  She is debating with the Night Raven, who accuses her of being just like him - cruel and thirsty for as much power over others that one can drink.

"Mora was Danced a short step forward.  “I am not like you, become the blackness that grows in the heart of darkness.  What I do is my duty only.  I take no pleasure.”  A fresh run of tears fell.  “I am Mora of Alba.  Healer.  I fight against all rape of Mother EAerth.  I will be teacher.  I am Dancer.  The Dances that take me are Woven of Love itself, and were upon the Breast of Mother EAerth before the Time of women and men.”"

Alba is full of rich archetypes, uncompromised and not misshapen by contemporary (mis)use.  The archetypes in Alba sing.  The announce (this can never be done too often) that an individual woman or man, or indeed any sentient creature, can be noble, wise, loving, compassionate to all, and a perfect caretaker and steward of Mother EAerth Herself.  Even while the world within which they are immersed seems dark and godless.  Interacting with archetypes will take us back out of the digital, 24|7, always on, hyper-caffeinated, Groupmind-incubating trajectory that we are creating in the developed world, that is increasing its rate of increase within briefer and briefer increments of time.

Interacting with archetypes, listening to them, to their story and the time (of a different order than our "time") whence they came, can change us.  If we choose to change.  We can compare ourselves to them.  Learn from them.  Be guided, mentored, by them.  Be humanized by them.  We can leave this surface world of ours, with them as companions, and each of us become a deeper, higher, truer incarnation of ourselves.  Learning from archetypes we can choose to become simpler, less bedecked with chimerical nothingnesses.  We can choose to become our essence again.  More essential

As for that which offers the opportunity for contemplation, and thus Stilling ... Alba is rich in soliloquies and dreams.  The poems in this book, Gathering Stillness, were all (each and every one) written from a place of Stillness.  They are all very open invitations for you to enter into Stillness.  To gather Stillness around oneself is a noble (and essential) life's work.

If we don't have proportionate Stillness in our society then we will spin faster and faster ... and faster and faster ... until ... we all fall down?  Or, fly off ... into insanity, likely.  Or ... burn up with the heat of the friction against the centrifugal force we are creating.  Seven billion burning and smoking minds does not sound like the kind of place I want to live in and pray Outward from.

And thus to the fourth; encoding and asserting that "True Wisdom" exists.  Definitions first.  I believe that there is an ultimate reality of the Universe that we can all come to "know" - though, of course, the "knowing" will be quite different from all the flavors of our everyday knowing.  Many ancient texts outline this possibility emphatically and directionally.  For example, the Bhagavad Gita and the sutras of Patanjali, and the various expositive and excellent commentaries on them, as well as an abundance of Sufi texts.

In Alba this assertion is completely implicit.  Though it is supported by the mythology of the "world" that is created for the land of Alba.  And, so what ... if this truer wisdom exists?

Well ... As far as I can perceive there are only four responses.  I don't care.  I don't believe you.  I believe you and I am going to do nothing about this fact and possibility in my life.  And ... I believe you and I am going to do ... "something" in my life to pursue this.  My audience for Alba is all four.  And, naturally, my audience for the assertion of the existence of True Wisdom is the fourth.

The poems in Gathering Stillness also assert or allude to this.  But it is obvious in Gathering Stillness - it is a collection of "spiritual", "mystical", "religious" poems after all.  The audiences for Gathering Stillness are identical to those for Alba.  My expectations are different, though.  I don't realistically expect many readers from those who don't care or don't believe.

I create my art in Service to the Divine.  Yes, all artists can accrue fame, fortune, adulation and more in the surface world.  This is likely largely a more recent phenomenon, from way before the industrial revolution that originated in the Western world.  Back "then", art was for the Divine.  There was nothing else for it to  be for.  Back then, art was always an artifact that asserted or alluded to the fact that the attainment of True Wisdom was a factual possibility. 

Nowadays, there is so much noise around the creation of stories, music, songs, poetry, dance, visual art, in all the digital and non-digital media, with all the available channels of distribution and marketing. So much noise.  So much money.  So much scrambling (based upon a belief in a structural lack of Abundance at the individual level and social realms).  But the act of creation itself is still the same.  I believe all creation comes from the Infinite and Eternal Divine itself.  We, artists, creators, are the medium though which we make Divine Creation manifest in our world. 

There is also an aspect to the noise of it all to do with a confusion between "art" and "entertainment".  But ... the act of creation is still the same.   No matter the constraints and boundaries put around a script writer for a daytime television drama, say.  Creation is the same. 

The act of Creation is still the same.  How do I, Rennie Walker, do it?  I become still, or undistracted.  I listen out for “whispers.”  I keep my "deep" eyes open, the seeing that sees only the Presence of the Divine everywhere.  I wait, patiently.  When "inspiration" (i.e. the touch of the Divine) comes and touches me I always accept the gift of what I am given.  I may not use it - ever - in a poem or story.  Nevertheless, I always accept the Divine Gift.  And write it down  I always say "thank you".  Always.  Every time.  For I know it is not me who writes.  I am, simply stated, the scribe.  I develop an ongoing and increasing dispassion about the surface world. That world is "only" the surface world.

And, yet, even with dispassion, I consider myself an activist as an artist.  My aim is to be a touchstone for some to choose to become a questing Heart.  It is not a task in my Wisdom Journey (my "life") to touch everyone on the planet, or even many.  My only task I accept for myself is to do what I can.  What I only can do.  Those who begin to quest begin to treat all of Creation, all of Mother EAerth and all upon Her Breast, with love and compassion.  They begin to Serve All of Creation.  In small ways - rescuing a snail fallen from a flower bed - and larger.  And, some times, big.

Not all artists choose to understand art as I do.  As Service to the Divine.  I honor them all.  They are on their Wisdom Journey (whether they realize it or not).  And I am on my Wisdom Journey. 

I also choose to understand art as I do because I have been Guided by the Divine, by some non-personal, non-personality, energetic to where I am today.  And in Truth, I believe, I feel, that I was "born" an artist and to be an artist.  "Who" or "what" am I To say "no!" to that direction, that imperative, that directive? 

What is "Service to the Divine"?  Simply?  An acknowledgement that the Divine is all there Is.  And from that a devotion to hold that truth foreground in all moments, in all places, and in all activities.  And from that to let go and to be Guided (and Protected) at all times.  Thus, action will come to always be right action.  That, simply, is Service to the Divine.

What do I "expect" in return from the Divine?  I am such a small smallness ... and yet I know the Divine is always present (never retreats, disappears or "goes away").  That is all I need ... as an artist and a human being.

What does the Divine "expect" of me?  Nothing.  I have free choice in all moments and, deep within and intrinsic to me, is a seed that will inevitably become its true and ultimate expression.  I, and all of us, will Become.  Bodhisattvas await and wait.  None will be left behind before this world closes.

Thus, to gathering Stillness.  To reflection.  And reflection upon reflection.  To gather Stillness is to engage in a sacred, devotional ritual, a shamanic practice.  Once Stillness is Gathered, "you" are not really there, yet a You not of the surface world is most certainly there.  Perceiving.  Accepting.  Being.  you and You are joined, together.  At the hip?  Only metaphorically.  At the root chakra?  Maybe not.  you and You, what you are and your relationship, is one gem of wisdom that True Wisdom holds for us to quest towards and to find.

Lastly, I make no claim to be one of the best poets of my generation, or wave.  I simply pass on what I was Given (which I subsequently "crafted" and "polished").  Thanks has already been given by me for each of these poems.  If you feel Gratitude to be expressed, go ahead.  Gratitude always finds its Destination!

Namaste!  I bow to and honor the Light within you …

Rennie, Clayton, California, 2012