Hi All....
I just read Arlene Goldbard's article called Higher Ground: Community Arts as Spiritual Practice. In the narrowest sense, my spiritual practice is a specific kind of Buddhist meditation called Vipassana. In English, this practice is called Insight Meditation. The practice consists of sitting still and following the breath for about 20 minutes or more each day. The purpose of this is, in part, to help you wake up to what's happening inside you and around you in everyday life. In other words, instead of getting caught up in the story you're telling yourself, you watch the story unfold in your mind without getting entangled in it, without buying into it. You also of course watch your sensations and emotions to monitor what's happening. Again the purpose is to wake up and to see your thoughts and feelings for what they are: thoughts and feelings. In this way, you liberate yourself from being caught in the dream your mind is fabricating and you have a choice. You're not operating on automatic pilot anymore, you're able to step back and see it for what it is and then make decisions that are in keeping with your ethical and moral values.

As I have mentioned previously, I have a lot of trouble letting go of things. And so its very difficult for me to do this practice because it involves letting go of thoughts and feelings, detaching from them, and seeing them rather than being enmeshed in them. I think producing art is somewhat like this as well because in order to make art, it is necessary to let the process tell you what to do at least to some extent rather than imposing your will on it.

For me I think this is difficult because I am afraid of the unknown, I want to control things, I want to know what's coming next, I want to shape what's coming next. But how do you control what is uncontrollable? How do you control the creative process? The very nature of the creative process is that it depends on a process that is greater than you are. And so the more you try to force your will on it, the less you accomplish. But of course there needs to be a balance between letting go and exerting some measure of control. I find this very tricky.

For me, doing community arts work is a lot like painting. I have to let go in the sense that I have to open to ideas that seem on the surface to me as simply wrong-headed. Why are they wrongheaded? Because they came from people I don't have all that much respect for, or they deviate in good measure from what I envisioned at the outset. I want to hold onto this vision. It's mine and no one else's! The problem with this is that if I stay in my own mind, in my own visions, I'm not opening to the visions of others, I'm not opening to something new. And as a result, I stay stuck.

In teaching this course for example, I wrote a syllabus. And my tendency is to stick with this syllabus because its mine and I'm the teacher. So how do I listen to you, my students, and open up to new ideas and to ideas that deviate from my original vision without losing complete control? The irony is that if I am too rigid I lose the opportunity to build something that really works, that comes from a collaborative vision. For me at this point, my challenge--is this spiritual?--is to strike a balance between following my own vision and letting go enough for the vision to change and grow with your input.

Hope this makes sense....
Wendy