In God’s Own Image
While reading through the introduction to The Artist’s Way, I read Julia Cameron’s notion that creativity in our spark that connects us with a creative God, and I was immediately reminded of my numerous assertions that being created in God’s own image meant being born with the urge to create. Discovering that someone had already thought of something I thought of independently used to bother me a great deal. After all, if someone had already discovered and written about what I had just spent my time considering, wasn’t I just wasting my time?
I’ve discovered however that there is a joy that comes from the realization that you’ve connected to someone you’ve never met just by sharing a thought independently of each other. When someone else has thought of something similar to something you thought of, it’s rather like peer review confirmation in the realm of science and academia. It lends credence that you have discovered a universal truth.
Truth is truth. When we truly perceive a truth with truthful eyes, it looks the same no matter who is looking at it. Truth is decidedly non-verbal. The creative process is the path of trying to describe the nature of that truth through the use of images that help bridge our current mental state back to the truth in question. While we may choose different words, we must point back to the same truth in the end. Each explanation might make the connection to the truth more transparent for a different set of people. Though I might be describing the same truths of reality that Christ and Buddha taught in their respective regions, my words might reach out to a different set of people, facilitating a connection that we might otherwise not have made. This is why the creative process and art are so important. Through our art, we leave our ego in favor of the transcendent realm of the divine.
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