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Creating with the Sublime |
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Creating with the Sublime |
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The rules of the Sublime are guidelines for the creation of work that transcends the individual creator and their contemporary culture. These works carry the potential to influence the history of mankind. While the work retains the individual and unique expression of the author, the mastery of craft and symbolism allow the piece to speak universally. Sublime work fulfills the original role of the artist/writer as being in service to the community. Their original purpose of translating the divine, communicating news, proliferating ideas, marking history and serving as the portal for communication between the conscious and the unconscious world (including the collective history of the human species) is fulfilled through the return to the creation of the sublime. Artists who choose to incorporate these rules into their process are aware of the responsibility involved in creating symbolism that then is perceived by others and influences them on several different levels. The Grand Conception Rule #1: The Power of the Grand Conception, requires that you have a statement of intent or purpose that drives not only your work, but your life. This statement is the source for your consistency and direction. Not one thing is done without some form of awareness of the purpose or intent in your life. Each of us is born with a particular role to play in the formation of the future or the reconciliation of the past, and some of us are born to do both. Our individual "gift" is a natural inclination towards the expression of a certain intent. One of the easiest ways to begin to identify what is the grand conception behind your work is to look at your titles or recurrent themes. By doing this you can begin to see a connected motivation. Once you begin to be aware of the overall intent of your work, you can begin to focus yourself by asking whether or not your efforts are in keeping with this grand conception. There are sub-conceptions as well wherein once you are aware of your grand one, you can choose to direct your work to focus and explore smaller pieces of it. For example, my grand conception is Love - some of my sub-conceptions are the loss of love, belief in not being loved, faith, romance and grief - all of these tie back into my grand conception and are fueled by it. Now, gift and purpose are not so much for us to decide as to be aware of. The more you become aware of your grand concept as it applies to your individual experience, the more you will become aware of your purpose as it relates to Universe; inclusive of the entire history and experience of the world as we can understand it and, the history and experience of the Universe as it is beyond our understanding. Purpose and Passion When we were children, we had a much more intuitive sense of our purpose in life. Before the structure of school and activities were placed upon us, the things that we were naturally drawn to revealed much more about the purpose of our lives then the question of later years: "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Even if your childhood was such that all you had were quiet dreams, within those dreams lies the key to re-discovering the purpose of your life. To begin with, you have to have a clear understanding of what purpose is, and how passion is defined. Purpose is the unique potential of each human being that may or may not develop. It is our capacity to express a kind of genius in certain area of our lives, it is where not just our talent thrives, but also, where the perfect union of our mental, emotional, spiritual and physical selves occurs. To live in your purpose is to live with every aspect of your self fully integrated and engaged. The act of giving your purpose a focus, is called passion. When we have passion, we are living within our purpose towards a specific goal. The focus of our passion may change and evolve over time, but our core purpose remains the same. To live in your purpose is to experience your life with a kind of focus that makes colors seem brighter, problems easier to solve, and every day holds an excitement of possibilities for you. To have a focus is to have a direction. To be passionate means you are directing your purpose in a meaningful way according to what you believe is good. How is Your Purpose Defined? Is it a thing? Is it, for example, to save the world? Or to be the best parent? The most brilliant artist? Those examples are details. Details and direction belong to passion. Your purpose is your reason for being. It is where your primary motivation comes from because it is the source of your creativity. All of us have creativity. Creativity is not limited to artistic expression but is present in all activities in which something is made; business, parenting, medicine, the arts, management, production - all of these begin with a creative endeavor and every aspect of their existence involves or should, a constant creative effort. A good example of the difference between purpose and passion is this: if your purpose is teaching, it is your passion that will give you direction in what to teach. To act on your purpose without passion means you could spend your life teaching and living in your purpose, but without passion, you could be teaching the wrong thing and wind up leading a deeply unsatisfying life. Passion is a direction that understands your purpose and also integrates into your direction, an understanding of where you are mentally, spiritually and emotionally in the moment. Without passion you could remain teaching what only suited you when you were young and does not recognize the person you have grown into being. Passion changes to best utilize your skill, talent, abilities and genius and continues to change as you grow. This is a slightly different way of thinking about passion and purpose then you are probably used to. Most people are used to defining these words in reverse, with passion being what motivates us, and purpose being the direction. But your purpose is your motivation, it is what you are born with; passion is what you learn and develop. If you are having difficulty right now in identifying what in your life is creative, there is one thing which we all have that is our primary creative endeavor, and that is our self. The self is never fully formed although we can reach a point in which it is realized. The self requires a constant creativity to develop and grow. The realized self means only that we have become aware of our process and can balance our reason with our emotions to form our responses in order to continue creating. To create means to bring into being. The act of creating is the common purpose of all of our lives. Creating unites us in the human experience, it is the defining experience of life. If you are not living a life that is rooted in the process of bringing things into being, then most likely you are experiencing a deep sense of frustration if not developing a growing flirtation with depression. Unfortunately, most of our societies and cultures have developed in ways that do not support creation. Instead, the majority of our modern cultures are based in maintenance. Maintaining life can keep one very busy, but in the end, leaves you feeling a deep, emotional void and sense of being unfulfilled. We start our lives "hardwired" to seek to fulfill our purpose, to be creative, and to live a life that is based upon the passionate direction of our purpose. We lose that ability as we are trained to participate and function in a society based in maintenance. We lose our ability to live in our purpose because we adopt the purpose of the society; which is not based in a life affirming process of bringing things into being, but is a closed cycle of perpetuating the existence of what has been. Society ceases to advance for the betterment of all humanity and becomes an unhealthy and limited repetition of behavior. Your purpose is your innate expression of your self. Are you imaginative? An organizer? A leader? A manager? A thinker? These are the kinds of words that describe your core purpose. In our play as children, we naturally sought to create and fulfill the roles of our purpose. When I was younger, I had two close friends and all of us have gone on to re-discover our purpose that we lived in as children. In our play, I invented the story lines, one made whatever thing it was we needed for the fantasy, and the third, came up with all the names and histories to make it all believable. In our adult lives - I have become an artist and writer; the second is an industrial designer; and the third has become a high level research librarian. In between, before we got there, we lost our selves in other jobs that we were told were better than these interests, but our lives eventually demanded a return to our born purpose. We have all excelled since realigning our lives with the purpose that we knew intuitively as children. Exercise "...look at life from all sides and see how all things - the extraordinary, the great, the beautiful stand supreme, and you will soon realize what we are born for..." (Longinus) - Draw a line on a piece of paper. It does not matter if it is horizontal or vertical. It does not matter how long it is. - At one end, mark "Birth," and at the other, mark "Death." - Divide the line up into pieces according to how you perceive the milestones in your life. Is it by age? Schooling? Places you have lived? Relationships? However you tend to view the "chapters" in your life, divide up the line and put headings next to the sections so you can remember which section is for what time in your life. For each section you have made, answer the following questions: 1. What was something you were doing in that section of your life where you would lose track of all time while doing it? 2. What were the core elements of that action? Was is puzzle solving? Physical activity? Building? Planning? Thinking? An easy way to answer this question is to start with the details. For example: say that ten years ago you remember that every time you worked on a car you lost track of all time (and can recall the details of those days with surprising clarity). One project you remember is replacing a fuel pump. Doing work like that involves both physical activity and puzzle solving. But it is more then that, if you sit down and think it through you are making connections and creating solutions. From connecting the series of symptoms to a problem, finding a solution and then implementing it. 3. What was the major relationship at that time that gave you joy, comfort and/or support? 4. What was the nature of the relationship, the core elements involved, that made it so? For example, you may recall (at the time you were working on the car) that the casual relationship you had with the guy next door who would come over and talk to you about the car, is the one you got the most satisfaction out of. Why? Because there was a shared mutual respect, curiousity and problem solving that was the core element of the relationship that made it the relationship that stands out in your memory. 5. What were your influences during this time (art, music, books)? 6. What was the core message of each of these influences? When you are done - make a list of all the core elements that you identified. This list is how you will begin to identify and understand your purpose. Some of us are problem solvers, some of us nurture life, some can find connections and solutions. By understanding what is your core element, you can better select passions to pursue. Passions are the actions of purpose. What your passion is will change over time as you grow and evolve. However, you will be happier and more effective if you can guide the choice of your passions according to an understanding of your core purpose. Next Go back to your line and divide up the part between where you are now and the end according to how you are used to seeing the chapters in your life be marked on this line. Write down the core elements of your purpose in each section. This is just a mental prompt to help keep you on track as your passions evolve and change through life. Keep this exercise somewhere so you can go and review it on a yearly basis. Use it to keep your life in balance with your purpose. Body and Soul The Artist plays the role of the shaman and the gatekeeper because we, willingly or not, access the Universal Unconscious on a regular basis. One of the grandest of concepts is that you will be able to understand enough to communicate what is beyond understanding to your viewer. On a smaller level, that is the grand concept of any Artist; that you have something to say that someone else might be interested in hearing. Work that is created and executed under the false pre-tense of being "private work," or not meant to be viewed at all but still art, is work that exists in contradiction to the will of the Universe. You are setting yourself up to conflict with things that have been around since before the beginning of time, and you will not win. You can bury yourself in this fallacy but you will wind up ceasing to work. The process being too fraught with pain, the "inner and private voice" you rely on for your creativity falling silent and refusing to speak to you. Then, possibly, you might get physically ill, and have many and sundry coincidences come to pass that will attempt to force you to return to your work - only on a more open basis. If you are not aware of the role you have been chosen to play then the act of creating can become horribly frustrating. If you are aware of the role, then you realize that the act of creating comes with a terrible responsibility - one you need to begin to accept and work towards being capable of doing. As much as we like to assume that it is human culture that has created these roles, it is not. Just like how each animal plays a certain role from their birth to the rotting away of their bodies in contributing to the existence of the universe - so do we have a role to fulfill. The only difference being that our role is also meant to be inclusive of being caretakers of what is around us because we are capable of more adaptations then any other species. We are not meant to conquer but to care, create, and nurture. That can only come when we begin to embrace the idea that what we do means something and that often, the totality of that meaning may not be understood in our lifetime, if it is understood by the human mind at all. Frankenstein Remembered When you choose to create, you are making something that will eventually exist outside of yourself. You are creating a "body." It is really almost a Frankenstein kind of scenario. You gather a series of parts from different places and combine them to make something new. Then the task becomes to not only breathe life into the Body, but (as Frankenstein found out) to make sure it has a Soul so it does more than just take up space. Even if what you create is perceived as the most soulless of all creations - furniture, a chair for instance, you must remember that all creations possess the capacity to hold a Soul. A Soul, for the purpose of this course, is that which gives a Body placement in the world because it gives to the Body, purpose. Purpose is what places us in relation to the universe. Every Soul contributes to the well-being of the Universe by fulfilling its purpose. Even though Souls may share identical purposes, each Body is a unique vehicle for the Soul and will fulfill its purpose through the expression of a passion unique to the individual. That chair is more than a chair. A chair, symbolically, can be a support for the Body that is weakened and needs to rest; it can be a place of judgment; it can be a placeholder for a visitor that has not yet arrived. The Body of the chair influences and effects everything around it. If it lacks a Soul or purpose, it takes up space and requires that everyone else move around it to avoid cracking their shins on its legs. With a Soul, that chair becomes part of the defining atmosphere of a room or house and adds to the life of its visitors. No matter what you create, you must do so with the mindset that the Body you are making will be the vehicle for a portion of your Soul. You lend a piece of your purpose to that Body and you let it stand alone in the world. What you create communicates long after you are gone. Be aware of what motivates the speech it will make and how the words you give it to use will be interpreted. Purpose to Meaning This concept of your purpose probably seems rather vague, it is not, it's a different way of defining it. Your grand conception is how you are used to defining your purpose, by giving the purpose the definition of meaning. For example, your purpose may be that you solve problems and then can interpret the solutions and communicate them easily to other people. Your grand concept, your meaning, is that you are devoted to communicating to people the value of their life. You need both an understanding of your purpose and a definition of meaning for your grand conception to begin to create with the Sublime. These two things together become the motivation behind all of your work and will make your entire body of work, coherent. This motivation will also carry you further down the road of artistic growth and exploration as you have an overall goal for your efforts. Each effort may only realize a small portion of that larger goal, but all of your efforts will come together in service of it. Exercise Write down a few sentences that clearly state your grand conception. The clarity of this definition will evolve over time as your understanding of it increases. This is an exercise that you need to revisit at least twice a year. |