Last night A.R. Rahman won an Oscar for Best Original Song and this is what he said:
All my life I have had a choice of hate and love. I chose love and I’m here.
This is a powerful statement on many levels. Today I'll focus on just one: every time an artist sits down to work they choose love. Even if they are expressing pain or anger or darkness they are facilitating the presence of the Divine Artist on Earth. They tap into the fecund well of Divine Creativity and allow it to flow into the world.Matthew Fox, founder of creation spirituality, describes the same thing slightly differently:
The artist names holy “isness” in all its forms—joyful and beautiful, sad and tragic. We need the artist to name our common experience of “isness” —to tell us when “isness” has just passed by and to assist us in expressing our gratitude.
The artist opens the door to the present moment which is the only place to truly experience of the Divine. It is silly to try and pretend that darkness does not exist in the world, that we could exist without sadness, anger or pain. Artists help us to name and experience these emotions, this is what Fox means when he says "isness"- to locate these feelings in the universal experience. Their part in the never-ending upward spiral toward the Universal Maker which snakes from light to dark and back again.Art helps us to stop resisting our emotions and the present moment. When standing in front of a work of art, we breath and absorb the moment. We experience our feelings. We project our personal issues and see them reflected back safely. This process allows us to move forward out of darkness instead of being stuck there. By experiencing the darkness in our lives we are released from it, by resisting it we are trapped. A work of art can help us face our darkness and this is an act of love. Art acts a loving midwife to the soul urging us onward in our spiritual development.A.R. Rahman: