What exactly is happening inside artists when

they create? Is art a gateway to the

Divine, another way to

connect with the ultimate

creative

force in the universe? What does the artist discover through the process of

creation? How does the art change the artist? Five individuals who engage in

art as a spiritual practice share their insights.

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ScienceOfMind.com MAY 2016

All three paintings here by artist Sharon Bagley © 2016

Discovering the Self Through Art When photographer and writer David Ulrich was a student, his instructors taught photography as a

means of awakening awareness. This inspired Ulrich to engage in a study and practice of art as a spiritual

practice for the past four decades and to author the manuscript “Art and

Spiritual Practice: A Pathway Toward Consciousness.”

“I think art opens many doors for people,” Ulrich says. “Certainly, it opens to self-knowledge, a sense of

knowing oneself. It can open to the different layers of oneself. Before we get to the divine, we have

to go through some of the more fundamental layers, like the subconscious, unconscious, and art can

really give a sense of our own essence, who we really are.”

A GATEWAY TO THE DIVINE (CONTINUED)

Ulrich has experienced this himself. When he was younger and meditating a great deal, visions

and words he did not understand would come into his mind. On one occasion, the words, “Bear Creek”

came to him. He had no idea what it was or what it meant, so he looked in the phone book. Bear Creek

was a steak house across town, just an ordinary building, he discovered after he drove there. However,

when he turned around in the other direction, a frozen pond came into view.

“On the surface of the pond, there were ice formations that with stunning precision reflected the

shape of my inner world, my inner landscape,” he says.

This demonstrated what Ulrich calls “moments of mystery” — magic or synchronicity that he believes

are available through sincere engagement with an art form. “But I think it’s important to remember that

I’d been deeply engaged in spiritual work,” Ulrich says.

Art alone is not enough, according to Ulrich. “Art functions in an ideal manner if it’s a support for one’s

spiritual work,” he says. Being part of a spiritual teaching, not necessarily having a specific

religious affiliation, allows a person to connect with art as a spiritual practice, he believes.

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Science of Mind practitioner Sharon Bagley uses all kinds of mixed media, including marker, in her daily spiritual practice of meditation and creativity.

In addition to the nature of our own minds, art has the capacity to open one up to what lies beyond the

mind, Ulrich says. “I think that art at its deepest level has the capacity to help us touch something

miraculous that is at the core of existence that we can’t understand with our ordinary mind, and the

beauty of art is that it speaks a language beyond rationality, beyond words, beyond the ordinary mind or

the ego,” he says.

Healing Through Art Art was a critical part of healing for

Rev. Heather Venegas, staff minister at Center for Spiritual Living

Seattle. When she took a 12-month leave from her corporate job for

treatment of an illness, spiritual practice and making art took center stage.

“I needed to create art again, and I needed to deepen my relationship with

God,” Venegas says.

She discovered that art was the means by which she could go deeper. She

spent her days in spiritual practice and art, journaling for hours and

throwing pieces on her potter’s wheel. “I courted the Divine through

spiritual practice and art,” she says.

For Venegas, art has become a vehicle for connection with Spirit. She

becomes focused and centered when creating art.

Says Venegas: “The chatter in my head stops. I’m very aware of my

oneness. It’s one of those places where I recognize and commune with the

divine. There’s also that sense that something is moving through me, and

I’m getting out of the way. It’s a place where I’ve really developed my

faith and trust and my ability to surrender.”

Breaking Through Barriers

I had observed Holmes Institute classmate Rev. Edee Charlton, spiritual

director of The Village, a Center for Spiritual Living in Monument, Colorado,

drawing in her notebook during some of our sessions. What were doodles in

the margins of lecture notes led her to discover the power of art as a

spiritual practice.

At right: Heather Venegas communes with the Divine through all types of

art, like pottery and SoulCollage® cards.

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A GATEWAY TO THE DIVINE (CONTINUED)

“I started recognizing that the doodles had elements in them that spoke to elements of the lecture,”

Charlton says. She experimented with incorporating drawing into her journaling, and found that the

pictures helped her to delve much deeper than words ever had, exposing the barriers she had built in

her life.

Charlton goes into meditation and then allows whatever shows up to spill out on paper in the form of

intricate pen and ink drawings. Sometimes she takes a question about something she is trying to work

through into the process.

“The drawings actually inform you in some way of where your consciousness is right now and also

where you would like it to go,” she says. This practice has brought up the joyful as well as the painful.

Releasing Self-Judgment

Sharon Bagley, a Science of Mind practitioner at the Seaside Center for Spiritual Living in Encinitas,

California, employs a myriad of media including woodworking, acrylic painting, watercolor, oil, pastels,

mixed media and even markers in her art as a spiritual practice. Like Charlton, she begins her nightly

sessions with prayer and a meditation, knowing that whatever needs to be dealt with will present itself

to her.

“Whatever comes up, I just start there,” Bagley says.

She doesn’t know when she begins what will end up on the canvas before her, but when she is

finished, there is clarity about some aspect of her life.

Focus on the Process, Not the Product Art as a spiritual practice is about process, not product, which is why it is important to silence the “inner

critic” and allow oneself the freedom to create. Venegas jokes about thanking her inner critic for sharing

and dismissing it to get a cup of coffee while she “plays.”

“It’s not so much the end result of what I do, it’s what’s happening within me when I do it,” she says.

“It’s that beautiful communion, that being in the zone that is so magnificent for me.”

Letting go of any ideas of perfection in the outcome and just allowing oneself to create is an

important part of the process and one that infuses the practice with a sense of freedom.

“Oftentimes, if I’m doing something freely — I don’t have any attachment to it — I’m just having fun,

it comes real easy,” says Bill Holman, a sculptor and member of Center for Spiritual Living Dallas.

“You kind of have to get over this thing of perfection.”

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Lessons for Life

These artists say that the lessons learned during the process translate into other areas of one’s life. For

example, Bagley cites the inner critic. “You start out as critical of yourself, but if you stay with it as a

practice, you start to love your creations, even if they’re imperfect, and that translates out to the

world,” she says.

Holman sees creating as a way of broadening and opening up oneself. “I think the act of creativity opens

up the universe for you. It’s another portal to tapping into what’s out there, and I think it applies to all

phases of our lives,” he says.

Charlton champions the freedom of expression that comes from the connectedness achieved through

creating art. “If you allow yourself to connect thoroughly into a spiritual place and create from that

faith, then you’re discovering the freedom of expression in other areas of your life as well,” she says.

“The people who are just so in tune with the heart of themselves that they allow themselves to freely

express — it’s beautiful. There’s no hesitation, hindrances, judgments about what somebody else is

going to think about it. It’s all an internal voice that is speaking that feels connected.”

she says. After changing “artistic” to “creative,” think about using art as the expression of that creativity. It can start with something as simple as a box of colored pencils. At retreats, Heather Venegas introduces people to SoulCollage® cards as a means of incorporating art as a spiritual practice. It is a collage process in which participants create their own deck of cards to deepen their understanding of the relationships between their personality parts, their family/ community/world and Spirit. “I think the creative process is available to anyone and everyone,” says David Ulrich. “I like to say to be an artist of life is an aim worthy of our humanity,” he says, noting that creativity can be incorporated in many areas of life including business, parenting and cooking to name a few.

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Sharon Bagley suggests swapping out the word “artistic” in favor of “creative.” “We’re always standing in fertile soil so we know we’re creative,”