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The Presence of Awareness
What is an artist?
…As a starting point, let us say that an “artist” is one who feels a need to “make” beyond necessity, to recombine what is given into new forms, and to create something extraordinary out of the ordinary. The Greeks called this poesis; a type of making, or bringing forth, that implies a heightened sense of devotion to a creative potential, and service to what Jung called the “creative spirit.”
Some creators have described their calling as a chronic nudging or disturbance, others have likened it to being driven by a daimon or an angel, and still others as something akin to possession by a force that has at various times been called fate or destiny…
… “The way of the mystic and the way of the artist are very much alike, except that the mystic doesn’t have a craft.” (Jean Erdmann) The artist with a craft remains in touch with the world; the mystic can spin off and lose touch and frequently does. And so it seems to me that art is the higher form…artists, even while surrendering to inspiration, do not completely lose themselves in the experience. They return from their descents into the unconscious — or what non-Western cultures have sometimes called journeys into the spirit world — with boons of insight for the collective, which they craft into experiences and objects to be shared. What this describes is the eternal and universal path…
