The truth if you ask me . . .
The reason so many people struggle with making really good art is that it requires you to allow yourself to become vulnerable.
When you share your best art it exposes something needy inside you.
What if our fetid neediness renders us unlovable?
So we develop a seemingly inescapable obsession with engaging in whatever substances, practices, endeavors numb us enough to get ourselves to believe we might somehow gain control over our life. If only we can manage to do EVERYthing just right..
Out of fear we restrict ourselves from going to the places inside us that don't feel safe where we don't feel in control.
But if we are to be brave and if we are to honor ourselves and our audience then we must surrender ourselves to the absolute certainty that some people will cast our art aside as "self-indulgence" and write us off as frauds, and therefore failures.
Which can freak us out! It stirs up the deepest-seated fear inside most of us: That terrifying worry that we are wasting our precious gift of life!
We fear that there might be something so revoltingly defective in our own personal spark, so unworthy as to allow our teeny, ephemeral ignition from God to flicker out before we can get anything really good cookin'.
But if you didn't already know it, let me inform you that: Your Soul is no fleeting little "spark," my friend!
Your Soul blazes with a glory greater than TEN THOUSAND SOLS.
How could it possibly be otherwise since it is literally made out of God?
We know on a Soul level that we have Purposes in this life. Yet so many of us are so stymied by our fears that our self-discovery becomes stunted.
How can we hope to understand our Purpose without what often is excoriating self-discovery?
Well, hey: let's try to go easy on us!
The following perspective is what I think might help a lot of my brave fellow travelers in this Earthly plane:
We knew we would forget what we came here to Earth to do, so we worked it out ahead of time with Creation. And together, we and Creation put everything we need in order to do what we came here to do into our own path.
Every thing.
Every person.
Every lesson we need: Is there for us. It is always there for us.
Absolutely everything we and Creation together decided that we need in order to fulfill the role that we designed for ourselves here on Earth will be in our path. Nothing could possibly prevent it.
But of course that doesn't mean we won't experience pain and suffering while we're here.
Pain is inescapable: It's the price of the ticket.
Regardless, none of us has a "need to know" all of our innumerable Purposes might be, except that we invariably are all here to influence each other, challenge each other. But above all, to Love each other.
All we need to do is keep on keepin' on, and love each other as bravely and as honestly as we can.
If we're not careful in life we will end up chasing happiness.
We strive for social status and the comforts of being surrounded by loving people who we hope will help us feel less cast aside when the chaos of existence pushes us beyond where thar be dragons.
We crave family and togetherness because we suffer under the illusion of separation from our Source. But we are NOT separate from our Source!
We are always one with Creation! We are the Universe experiencing Ourself!
Neat, right?
We all have the power to help sooth each others' souls.
But instead we might waste time jockeying for each others' reassurances. Tripping ourselves and each other up. We compete in our hearts, hoping to prove that we are good enough. We don't want to let down Love. We don't want to go back empty-handed.
We seek above all else the Embrace of God.
That's why humans are so hungry for validation from each other.
We are freer to create art once we have cultivated the ability to calmly submit to the inevitable pain in life without allowing it to control us.
Learn to forgive. Do it in a healthy way. If it's a big forgive then get some guidance from a counselor or trusted confidante. When you forgive in a healthy way you are doing a kindness to your own heart, freeing it from any duty to cling to old hurts like a ball and chain.
Learn to always seek and focus on what you can be grateful for. This is not "toxic positivity" and is not a self-betrayal. Accepting the things you can't change, again: frees you. Whatever you are going through you will always have something positive to focus on.
Only a teensy little fraction of our experiments as Artists are “successful” if success is defined by profitability or even hard won ego strokes. I recently noticed that I have over 42,000 photos on my phone. (What a miracle, by the way! Holy SMOKES! How is that even possible?!?) and I can promise you that most of my photos wouldn't knock your socks off.
If my overall strikeout rate is any indication of my successfulness as a Fine Arts Photographer or Amateur Philosopher, then I'm wasting everyone's time here. But strikeout rates don't matter. Yay! There's no such thing as failure.
This is our chance to create!
Anyway, I’m not trying to preach. These are just the thoughts I might have liked to have heard someone tell me earlier in my artistic career.
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