A muse (ed)…

I have a secret to tell…. I was kissed by a muse 😉
Yes, I know the muses are “goddesses or spirits who inspire the creation of literature and the arts” and they are supposed to be female. Mine was a man with a flute, who visited me via the internet. And without him the latest paintings would probably not exist, or at least they would be few, small, tugged away shamefully in the corner of a garage, cellar or attic. He has not only inspired me with his own conglomeration of spirituality and creativity but also painstakingly helped me entangle my twisted and conflicting struggle to keep my spiritual and creative worlds together… or rather apart…living a “double life” up to now.

Part of me used to feel guilty when painting, thinking that I was wasting my time when I could be meditating or studying the sacred texts. When meditating and studying I would feel guilty because visions of paintings would flash before my eyes when all I was supposed to be doing was watch my breath. I would struggle to make those pictures go away so I could enjoy meditation in the “right” way, and only when that happened did I felt satisfied and restful.
Yet, alas they kept coming back, haunting me. It was a struggle, like in the Bhagavad Gita, “good” versa “bad”, and as far as I understood the good was meditation, and the good was supposed to win.

Curious enough though, even from the viewpoint of Kashmir Shaivism (which I have been studying for many years), the struggle of Arjuna (in the Bhagavad Gita) to remain sane in the battlefield had only one way out… he had to focus all his might on God.
Ignoring the fight, “good” versa “bad”, realizing it is only in our heads that we discriminate in two, while in our hearts there is only One – God, who is expanding Himself into the world, contracting himself into consciousness. His creation being no different than Himself, all that exists being a coagulation of His Consciousness.

Though theoretical I should have known, yet practically, from my limited perspective, my creative life and my spiritual life just wouldn’t go together, they seemed mutually exclusive, one standing in the way of the other. Creativity with its abundance and out flowing nature, spirituality with its emphasis on restrain and withdraw. How could one withdraw from the world while on the other hand creating a multitude of paintings and ideas?

It didn’t click until towards the end of last year, when I had this short but very intense and heated email discussion with Safai, who opened my eyes and heart, and suddenly it all became very clear: Contracting…expanding, introverted…extroverted, inflow…outflow, all pulsating through my veins all the time, yet I never understood. They are not mutually exclusive but rather one depends on the other for its existence. Without one the other cannot truly shine. Without the existence of this world we would not be able to know the existence of God. Without letting my creativity flow out without obstruction I would not be able to truly enjoy my spirituality, aka peace.

Since it is all coming from the same source, flowing out into the universe, I was actually standing in the way of -what is happening anyway- creation… abundance of creation, happening all around me all the time…. God’s creation. If I really took what I believe to heart, then we are the creations of God and we are his instruments of creating and we are creators at the same time. It doesn’t matter if we don’t create paintings but we are creating our world around us every day, with our thoughts and with our actions….