HAS NO REALITIES OF MURDEROUS POLARIZATIONS….
ONLY THE GRACEDFULL
OLDER THAN GOD
GREAT DANCER
DANCING ALL…
IN/OF/AS
A KALEIDOSCOPIC ALL…
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4:51 AM - 12/25/15
carry deep within themselves a regenerative force,
accessed through their own woundedness,
that is capable of bringing forth a cure not only for themselves,
but also for the community as a whole.
Paul Levy
Every transformative or creative process comprises stages of possession,
of surrendering to, being taken over and moved by
something greater than our own ego.
Transcendent to and greater than the momentary act of creation,
these primordial creative forces existed before and after the act of creation, existing within the plenum of unmanifest potential itself.
Paul Levy
The creative artist is giving utterance to the authentic and direct revelation
of the numinosum, which raises their function to the level of the sacred
(please see my article “The Artist as Healer of the World”).
Artists are oriented towards the invisible,
towards what is beginning to become visible and reveal itself,
towards the indescribable mystery alive at the heart of who we are.
Paul Levy
who must deconstruct the old
in order to make possible the dawning of the new.
In making and living their own laws,
the creative artist transforms,
dethrones and overthrows the conventional,
soulless world of the traditional canon filled with its life-killing routines
to seek and follow an unknown directive,
a higher authority, what Jung would call the Self,
the wholeness and guiding force of the deeper personality.
Paul Levy
and have a flower presented to him as a pledge
that his Soul had really been there,
and found that flower in his hand when he awoke -
Aye?
--and what then?"
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge
www.dreams.ca
See Read More below for more quotes and the Paul Levy website for full article
Paul Levy
At top of the page/link below:
WARNING: THIS ARTICLE IS DESIGNED TO ACTIVATE
THE CREATIVE SPIRIT. PROCEED AT YOUR OWN RISK.
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/homage-to-the-creative-spirit/
Excerpts:
Oftentimes when a person is on their way
to stepping into and connecting with their authentic selves,
speaking their true voice,
seemingly darker forces manifest trying to stop them.
This archetypal dynamic has been symbolically represented
from time immemorial in numerous myths and fairy tales.
Instead of aborting my pursuit of the creative spirit,
however, my father’s oppression only added fuel to my creative fire,
forging in me an “inner necessity”
to connect with the living primal creative instinct
I was discovering within a deeper, authentic part of myself.
As Jung writes,
“The creative spirit cannot be discouraged anyway,
otherwise it would not be creative.”[ii]
************************************
The creative artist becomes a hero
who must deconstruct the old
in order to make possible the dawning of the new.
In making and living their own laws,
the creative artist transforms, dethrones and overthrows
the conventional, soulless world of the traditional canon
filled with its life-killing routines
to seek and follow an unknown directive,
a higher authority, what Jung would call the Self,
the wholeness and guiding force of the deeper personality.
**************************************
To quote Neumann,
“When unconscious forces break through in the artist,
when the archetypes striving to be born into the light of the world take form in him, he is as far from the men around him as he is close to their destiny.
For he expresses and gives form to the future of his epoch.”[iv]
The creative artist is giving utterance
to the authentic and direct revelation of the numinosum,
which raises their function to the level of the sacred
(please see my article “The Artist as Healer of the World”).
Artists are oriented towards the invisible,
towards what is beginning to become visible and reveal itself,
towards the indescribable mystery alive at the heart of who we are.
********************************************
Humanity does not possess creative powers,
but rather, is possessed by them.
Every transformative or creative process comprises stages of possession,
of surrendering to,
being taken over and moved by
something greater than our own ego.
Transcendent to and greater than the momentary act of creation,
these primordial creative forces existed before and after the act of creation, existing within the plenum of unmanifest potential itself.
**************************************************
The artist stands alone,
delivered over to the creative impulse of the daemon,
as if to create is the very act that opens up the channel to themselves.
Being from elsewhere,
the daemon has a drop of alien blood,
which is what makes creative artists practically an alien species,
as they see, hear and feel things that are invisible to most people.
*******************************************************
As psychologist Otto Rank points out,
the neurotic is an artist who,
failing to access the creativity hidden within
the daemonic energies from which they suffer,
are unable to transmute their inner conflicts into art.
One of the most toxic things in the human psyche is repressed creativity; unexpressed art becomes our symptoms.
***************************************************************
The daemonic,
which contains encoded within it the deepest evil
as well as the highest, divine creativity, is the daily companion,
as well as the inspiration of every creative artist.
It is through coming to terms with the daemon that art is made.
It is an ecstatic experience to allow what is highest and lowest in ourselves
to take form and shape together.
To quote Neumann,
“Creative genius is never possible without the proximity of the devil.”[viii]
In immersing themselves in archetypal forces greater than their own egos,
artists allow themselves to become captivated
by a power which threatens to destroy them
if not brought forth and expressed creatively.
An artist synthesizes their higher transcendental inclinations with the dark undertow of the powers of underworld,
as if their higher angel needs a grounding connection
with its brooding double to complete itself.
*******************************************
Artists, like the archetypal figure of the shaman,
carry deep within themselves a regenerative force,
accessed through their own woundedness,
that is capable of bringing forth a cure not only for themselves,
but also for the community as a whole.
***************************************************
A creative artist is someone with very permeable boundaries
between the conscious and the unconscious
such that the contents of these two realms can easily pass back and forth to mutually inform and reciprocally influence each other.
****************************************************
Those who find their uniquely creative voice, to quote Jung,
“create from the very depths of the collective unconscious,
voicing aloud what others only dream.”[ix]
*******************************************
Artist Vincent Van Gogh regarded Christ as an extraordinary artist
who didn’t make paintings, but rather,
worked in living flesh to turn human beings into immortal souls.
Similarly, visionary artist William Blake wrote that,
“Jesus and his Apostles and Disciples were all Artists –
--A Poet, a Painter, a Musician, an Architect:
The Man or Woman who is not one of these is not a Christian.”[xi]
If we are not, in some fashion, an artist in and of life –
--offering ourselves as a channel of creative expression for the spirit that in-forms, moves us and sustains our life –
--we are not, as Blake points out, a genuine follower of Christ.
******************************************
of the whole world in which the artist is living,
and of the millions of people who surround him,
and of the thousands of currents of thought
and the myriad streams of activity which flow around him.”[xiii]
*********************************
Art speaks for the unconscious as the plant speaks of nature and the earth.
Artists are the nutrient rich soil, the breeding ground for the work of art;
they are the petri dish for the “culture” of art to flourish.
Jung writes,
“A great work of art is like a dream…
...It presents an image in much the same way
as nature allows a plant to grow.”[xiv]
The same divine creativity which has filled
the numberless heavens and spheres of the universe around us
is now welling up and emerging within the human psyche
and is seeking to creatively express and extend itself outwards into our world.
Our many world crises will be soluble only creatively – that is,
by a profound and thorough alteration of our inner life
and thereby of the outer forms in which life finds expression.
For full article/writing and footnotes see:
http://www.awakeninthedream.com/homage-to-the-creative-spirit/