Art as a Tool for Spiritual Growth - Part 1
Paola Marchi
The artist is a channel, through him ideas and contents take shape. This is the blessing and at the same time the curse of the artist, being the creator of a reality. But which one?
"The artist, with his freedom of spirit, is above nature and can adapt it to his higher purposes. He is its master and its slave. He is its slave because he must use earthly means to make himself understood. But he is its master because he subordinates these means to his own higher intentions. The artist wants to speak to the world by creating a totality. But this totality is not in nature. It is the fruit of his spirit or, if you like, of a divine inspiration" (Goethe).
We should shed some light on what reality is or at least what is meant by this word. In my experience, I have experienced the existence of many levels of reality, levels that are accessed through changes in perception.
Art, becoming a channel of contents that emerge through the artist, acquires a therapeutic value. Seeing outside of me the content that passes through me, I have the precious opportunity to detach myself from it and observe without judging.
This step, that of judgment, is a fundamental step because to the extent that there is judgment, there is identification. The exercise for an artist who is using art as a tool for spiritual growth is to arrive at a neutral position and observe. Initially observe.
The phase of observation can last a long time and ultimately never ceases, because it is from the force of self-observation that what George Ivanovich Gurdjieff called "the observer" develops.
Paola Marchi
