Truth

Over these past seven years or so, really my whole life and more recently also but currently best invoked by this idea of seven years, I have continued to read books both in print and audio along with watching video documentaries online and biopics about artists through streaming services.  All of that has continued to bathe my mind and heart in an artistic journey.  It is a way of keeping the art spirit nourished.  The truth is my own soul is art just by the nature of it in the timeless, but I do find solace in interacting with videos and books about art and about artists and of course actual art in museums for instance. 

When I was traveling in my early twenties around Europe visiting some of the western world’s greatest art museums and art, I was living art at that time also.  I feel that my whole life has been this art.  Having certain life experiences tuned me into a conscious awareness of this being the case and simultaneously transformed my priorities and conduct.  Through losses and challenges, I became much more consciously grateful for the gift of life itself.  And I came to know what I call the sweetness of being.  The sweetness of being I feel has become apparent to me after much meditation and silent contemplation. 

It is where I can just be sitting whether in a formal seated meditation with eyes closed or at a service desk at my day job with my eyes open simply and gently looking around, greeting passersby, or just simply being not looking at anything in particular.  This way of being is something that has simultaneously deepened while also surfacing as I went deeper with meditation and just an overarching, through-going awakening to life art practice. 

I say it many times sort of like what folks in religion do described by the word preaching though I do not identify that way, though am at peace and union with all who come rightly from a place of Love.  What I say is that to really get it, to awaken to the fact that everything can truly be art, to flip that switch on in the mind and heart is everything.  It illuminates the world in a way that as an artist puts you in the driver seat unlike when the understanding was not being had. 

And as I say many times, it is also a revelation for people who do not identify as artists, for it activates and starts to make flow the innate, natural creativity in their being and nature that can help realize their fully dimensional life.  I feel like creativity is a part of the human spirit.  I use the word art because it is in my blood somehow, in my soul signature and is the world in which I developed.  As I say many times from the story of my life, I had to go on hiatus from the art world, from art and by doing so naturally made the sacred space for the life art understanding arise in my life, in my heart and head. 

One of the most powerful unfoldings that took place was when I answered the call of librarianship while in my heart and soul being an artist.  I was terrified that I might lose my art calling but instead what happened is that who and what I am, an artist through and through, activated a bigger more all-encompassing version of myself with artist at the center but then an extended, expanded sphere of existence that went into what I came to know as life art and in my own way a life art library worker or life art librarian.

It took me a great while to really get it that life art is vastly bigger than libraries.  Libraries had become my everything, outside of my soul and family and friends.  I had dedicated my entire spirit to libraries in a way of selfless service that really fueled a good, healthy, peaceful wildfire of ecstatic knowing and being that was very much soaked in the rich magic of the realm in which the profession operates. 

Of late, I feel a much more expansive understanding taking hold, gently, of my consciousness, one that fully realizes the true good power of life art in the world.  Humbly and with humility, I recognize how any unfoldment is one petal unfurling on a level of majesty that is beyond the mind and from the realm of the higher power that I feel has guided my conduct and understanding in the world as the term and way of being known as life art has arisen in my life. 

It is difficult to capture it all in a writing.  I try but the truth is it will never be captured in a writing of any length.  It is beyond all words and why I describe it as a way of being.  As I have said many times before religion is typically about beliefs, philosophy is about ideas, life art is about being.  Many people have influenced and inspired this conception along with the work they have done in and as their own life, people like spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, mindfulness pioneer Jon Kabat-Zinn, Buddhist monks Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche and Thich Nhat Hanh and many others.

I feel like just as with the dawn or emergence of art in the human species many different schools and styles over tens of thousands of years were brought forth within the umbrella term of art.  I feel also, this may happen with the term life art where ways of being, personhood, development, consciousness raising, and lifestyle cultivation could emerge over the next several centuries. 

I truly feel here on this day, that life art institutes are needed the world over because of how this sea change will manifest in the world.  I had thought that libraries may serve this purpose.  Some way or another in a good way I feel and know that life art shall see the light of day in a much more pronounced way.  This is what my life is about.  This is what a writing like this is about.  The life art good power is very strong.  Again, it is a way of being.  It is worth repeating that again and again to get it gently, clearly across.  As Love, it is who and what you are not simply what you do, think about, or say. 

All opinions expressed here are my own and not that of the library where I work.