We are artists!

We are all artists.

And we are art!

All of creation is art.

If you can find it in your heart to accept these premises, what does this mean for all of us moving forward?

I am not the first person to state this. Joseph Beuys, a German artist, stated that all people are artists back in the 1970’s. I continue to learn about Beuys but in the meantime, I have some ideas of my own in this regard.

Thinking differently.

The key to this, the major question is, what can happen to our lives when we begin to regard ourselves as an artwork and by extension an aspect of a larger work of art? Do we treat ourselves differently, perhaps better? Do we begin to actively relate to others and the world in a more connected and humane way sensing a more and more profound interconnectedness? This is not necessarily the only reaction but I think there is a case for this happening to large extent.

I think that there is so much power in this idea that we are art. It is a way of renewing our image of ourselves and seeing that perhaps this was always the case. Implicit in my offering here is that art brings with it value. It is in this positive sense that I believe and continue to state that art is the craft of life.

We have immense power.

The spark of art ignites a flame that spreads into a wildfire throughout all creation.

We hold within us the spark, the flame and the fire!

Open the door to your heart.

I think it is right to think that many people (perhaps most or even all people) are innately good in their heart of hearts and worthy of love. All people certainly deserve love in some form or another. Love finds a way after all. I think that thinking of ourselves, each other and the world around us as art offers us another avenue into seeing how this is so.

We are brought forth into the world through our actions yet at the same time we are an expression of something that is beyond us, something that goes beyond our deepest depths and stretches out further than our highest conceptions.

Finding a connection to the everyday is a way of drawing a line between the banal and the marvelous which in a way unites the one with the other making our every action and conception a kind of eternally driving piston, sparking gloriously at every turn. This is when a conception of ourselves as art can get really exciting. It is connected to mindfulness practices but takes that conception even further teasing out in a good way what it is that the mind in mindfulness constitutes in the first place.

Thinking of our source as art though perhaps simultaneously a great many other things as well is a way to build world community and I think that is very important. So many people around the world have art in their culture and lives. Is it such a stretch to say that we are all individual works of art that are a part of one giant living artwork? We have not really thought in the past that art could live. Perhaps we should.