Much of the art being produced and created today, whatever the form it takes, reflects the profound immaturity and destructive nature of a culture gone mad.
This immaturity is a byproduct of a lack of true eldership. This colossal loss is reflected in the disintegration of our wisdom traditions, the absence of the cultivation of meaningful experience, the loss of critical rite of passage experiences, and the inability to engage the necessary and deeper healing of personal and ancestral trauma. Such experiences prepare the human psyche to engage the currents of life in a meaningful way while aspiring towards one’s highest expression.
As a result, most human beings remain caught in the net of their own suffering, constantly projecting their undigested sorrow and trauma out into the world, identifying primarily with the victim archetype, unable to seek beauty and truth, and therefore unable to truly alchemize any deeper soul experience.
This then is reflected in the quality of art being created and perpetuated by our culture at large. This translates into an obsession with sexuality, violence, division and hatred, a fixation on that which divides us ( including race, gender, religion and politics at the expense of unity and tolerance ), the total destruction of innocence and beauty, and an attachment to the utterly meaningless and superficial expressed primarily through narcissism on the grandest of scales.
When creativity springs from the deeper well of beauty and truth it has an entirely different quality.
Steeped in ineffable mystery, such creative work allows for the truth of paradox to exist. It is not this or that, but rather this and that. It is not only the division, anger and sorrow, but these experiences are digested, harmonized and illuminated through the eyes of the spirit. Through such digestion, suffering transforms into its highest form. Only when the human being takes the courage to see through the eyes of the spirit is such transmutation and illumination truly possible.
Joy and beauty in the face of ignorance and horror is the deepest of resistance in any creative expression. It selflessly serves to move the witness deeper into the human heart, where we begin to understand that all suffering is the same. No one is immune, and no one single persons suffering is more important than another’s. Such expression of beauty does not ignore the darkness, but rather shines a flame in the black of night for all to bear witness.
This is the highest form of creation, one that is not based upon the proliferation of trauma and fragmentation, narcissism and disharmony, but rather seeks to reveal the deeper mystery at the center of every human heart.
