Art is a kind of trial run at becoming. An artist feels the desire to create, and channels that into music, painting, poetry, sculpture, dance, whatever. Those external things aren't what the desire is for; they don't answer the need. Works of art are an example of relying too much on mind and mental categories rather than encountering life with all your faculties. The artist feels a deep urge, and the mental category that's close at hand for channeling deep urges is whatever kind of artwork that person has experienced or is drawn to, so the urge gets shoehorned into that. The tortured artist is really any artist who resists self-deception; an artist will never be satisfied with the artwork because the artwork can't satisfy the desire to become, which is why the artist became an artist in the first place.
Creating art can be of value to the artist in the early stages of development; it can be a way of approaching development. It's one of the more advanced activities for the early stages, and can serve to bridge the gap between external and internal development; internal development begins in the middle stages. Inevitably, the artist is dissatisfied because the hunger goes far deeper than the reach of any external expression, any art form. In unhealthy development, this leads to despair, drugs, mental illness, all the unpleasant trappings of the tortured artist syndrome. In healthy development, the artist is able to bridge the gap and turns to development, eventually choosing salvation over despair.
All creation is aimed at becoming. Creativity comes from being, and being is interested only in becoming. If you approach your life as an artist working on your masterpiece, you'll see it differently and be able to work more effectively. In an old joke, a sculptor is asked how he sculpts a horse; he says he simply carves away everything that doesn't look like a horse. Being the artist of your own life means getting rid of everything that doesn't look like you. Enter this practice thinking of yourself as a cutter, a carver. Not a decorator. Development is a process of cutting away.
Look at your life. See if you can take it in as a whole. It's a mess: unformed, chaotic, cluttered, confused. If that's not how it looks, look again; you're being dishonest. You need unflinching honesty to make progress. If you can see what a mess your life is, and acknowledge that it is indeed a bloody mess, you'll be able to start working on it. You'll begin to see things to do: this over here is just clutter and needs to be cut away, that looks promising but needs sharpening or refinement, these two elements need to be grafted together somehow. This kind of proactive development is an early stage of engaging your life, and it takes a larger view than simply following the guidance provided by your life as it is now or living life at face value so that you're always ready to make good use of an option point. This is you becoming the creative director of your life, with the vision of an artist.
The artist doesn't just see what is, the artist sees what your life can become, and this is where you truly begin to engage your life as an ongoing creative process. You may not think you have this kind of vision; how can you know who it is you may become? But being knows, and if you look at your life with an artist's critical eye, being will inform your vision. That's how you already knew what looked promising and what was just clutter. As you engage your life you'll see not just what fits and what doesn't, but what needs to be developed and what you can become. If you persist in looking at your life as an artist, you'll know what to do.
The artist's way of looking is valuable when you find something new that being responds to. It's easy to go overboard and devote all your energy to the one new treasure. While that may be appropriate and even necessary at times, the artist's way of looking helps you know how long and hard to throw yourself into the new development, and what needs to happen to all the other parts of your life in light of the new thing.
The artist's way of looking is also valuable for the harsher parts of contending. The artist sees the dark, troublesome parts of life as elements of drama and contrast, needed in any work of art. If you can see how the dark parts relate to the whole, how they provide counterpoint or energetic contrast, they become easier to bear; they become interesting. You start to see what their purpose is, what they're good for. That makes it easier to turn toward the dark parts and actively engage them.
Your everyday conscious self is not the artist; being is the artist. That's why when someone mentally decides to step back, analyze their life, and come up with a new plan, nothing interesting ever comes of it. Your mind is completely inept when it comes to the artistry of life. The practice of being pleasure aims to support being in wresting control from your thoughts, feelings and habits so that being can begin serious work on becoming - creating your masterpiece.
The first step in turning artistic control over to being is cultivating awareness of being. You start with the process described in Begin: learning to recognize the subtle pleasure of breathing so that you can recognize and profit from the experience of being pleasure. When you experience being pleasure, you're becoming, taking a step forward in the creation of your masterpiece. The artist carefully examines each step of becoming so that every possible clue about what to do next can be uncovered.
Creativity, like prayer, can't happen until you shut the hell up. Ideas, plans, comparisons, insecurity, smugness, likes and dislikes etcetera all kill creativity. Being is an inexhaustible fountain of creativity in you, but you're not paying attention. Creativity requires a different kind of focus: instead of focusing your attention onto getting things done, you have to focus your attention into silence.
Silence has nothing to do with stillness or quiet; silence is a manifestation of God's grace. Stillness is absence of movement; quiet is absence of sound. Silence is not an absence or emptiness, but a profound presence. God's presence is the universal comfort all beings rest in. Silence is a deeper experience of the presence of God; it requires turning away from the content of your life. Silence isn't disturbed or dissipated by movement or sound; it's still there underneath. To find silence, turn away from all the movement and sound, all the noise and garbage, all the content of your life. Turn away from everything. You don't need to know what silence is, you just have to turn away from content. Silence is there.
Wrap yourself in silence; silence has a texture, a very particular feel to it: it feels thick, velvety, rich, deep. It's extraordinarily comforting. But describing it to yourself or naming it is just part of the noise you have to turn away from. As you begin to have glimpses of silence, you need to recognize it without naming it. That's a very important clue about work on subtler levels, which you can apply in many ways: see without looking, hear without listening, know without formulating or verbalizing, recognize without naming; these are all acts of being. At the other extreme, "looking for," "listening for," "trying to come up with" are all very crude, noisy mental activities; turning toward silence happens well after you're done with those. Getting beyond the somewhat less crude noises of simply looking, listening, or naming is subtler work.
When you experience silence, solutions, ideas and inspirations will come to you. Pay attention to these. Don't try to apply them to whatever you happen to be interested in at the moment; take them at face value and consider them on their own. They're more likely to be about internal work than your external projects. Being is interested in completely different things than whatever's going on in your brain, so do your best not to shoehorn the gifts of being into the nearest compartment in the train wreck of your life. Let being lead you instead. Take the gifts; give them to yourself.
A fuller manifestation of the grace we call silence is the experience of God's emptiness. You wrap yourself in the thick comfort of silence, but you sink into the vastness of emptiness. There's no texture to emptiness, and it can't really be described as comforting. But if you experience the emptiness of God you have no need to be comforted. There's little else that can be said.
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