Vanity or Virtue? Ugliness or Art?
The future depends upon the Artists
Clintavo’s Curated Corner
Here are a few pieces that caught my eye this week:
Please see more curated pieces after the article…..
Vanity or Virtue? Ugliness or Art?
In each moment, we face a choice; we must answer the following question: vanity or virtue?
The ego tempts us down the highway of vanity where names are mere identifiers and, if it feels good, do it.
But the voice of silence calls to us in each moment, it whispers our true purpose, our true name, our iconic name, which, if we step into it, will dispel the illusion and grace us with a glimpse the truth of the Kingdom.
There is a voice that doesn’t use words. Listen.
Rumi
Virtue or vanity? Icon or illusion? Heavenly or worldly? The Lord’s Name or our worldly names? This is the crux of freewill.
When we choose our true name, virtue flows through healing, beauty, love, truth and goodness. When we choose the ego, vanity consumes all it can, creating anxiety, ugliness, hate, falsehood, and evil.
Your True Name, you see, is a mantel, a title. Do you not know that you are a child of The Divine? You are noble and, to step into your nobility, you must take up the responsibilities of your mantel. Your True Name is your noble Kingdom; your inheritance. It is, as Stephen Pressfield says in The War of Art, your territory:
We humans have territories too. Ours are psychological. Stevie Wonder’s territory is the piano. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s is the gym…
When I sit down to write, I’m on mine….A territory provides sustenance…A territory can only be claimed alone…A territory can only be claimed by work…A territory returns exactly what you put in…
When the artist works territorially, she reveres heaven…The sustenance they get comes from the act itself, not from the impression it makes on others…The work comes from heaven anyway. Why not give it back?
Stephen Pressfield, The War of Art
Siddhartha Gautama was his given name, but his title was: The Buddha.
Many believe Magdalene was a title, an icon, her true name that means The Tower. She was there as He was entombed, and she was the first to see Him risen. She became an apostle to the apostles; a Tower of strength, love and devotion, even in the absolute worst of circumstances; even when the others had lost all hope.
And, of course, the ultimate example: Jesus was the identifier of the man, but His True Name, His mantel, His title, His iconic name: The Christ. He became the living embodiment of the intelligent Christ force of the universe.
You too have a true name, a true calling.
And if you’re reading this, I bet it involves creativity. I bet it involves Art.
If you are called to be an artist, and you turn away from that to serve your vanity in some other way, you are taking your true name in service of your vanity. You are taking your iconic name in vain.
The current state of the world is such that it is embroiled in a cult of ugliness. Humanity is in desperate need of evolution. People need to see hope again. They need beauty again. They need light again. The need art again. They need The Artists, you, to find your courage to lead them into humanity’s next phase.
Everything in life that is on a certain level, whether it be a slug, an animal, or even a stone, secretly relies in its own way, in acute and sorrowful hope, on that which is already on a higher plane than itself to help draw it upward. One does not have to look far to see a manifestation of this mysterious law in the human world also, with the immense need some people have for inspiring music, elevating works of art, and great literature to assist them to rise to the more luminous regions of their being.
— Michael Salim, The Law of Attention: Nada Yoga and the Way of Inner Vigilance
It is the artists, you, that are going to assist humanity in “rising to the more luminous regions of their being.” It is the scientists that got us from the middle ages to modernity, but, for us to go further, it is time for the Artists to take us into what’s next.
There is a shift in the air.
More and more people are awakening.
More artists and creatives in all fields are pushing back against the pedestrian, bland and negative mainstream and a new, grassroots form of creative romantic counter-culture seems to be at the beginning stages of flowering. The time is ripe for the artists to find their courage to go forth and get on with the work of saving humanity.
The time is ripe to turn away from our vanity and come home into virtue.
Please join us.1
Clintavo’s Curated Corner (Continued from top)
Here are a few pieces that caught my eye this week:
We’re Looking for Great Art!
If you know of a great piece of real visual art (no AI art) that we should consider for future illustration of our articles or to feature in Clintavo’s Curated Corner, please click the button below and leave a sentence or two explaining what you like about a piece with a link to it on the web. It may be your own art or someone else’s (please do not send via email as we are much less likely to see or respond to those, thank you):
PS - Wouldn’t You Love to work with a website hosting company that actually promotes their artists?
As you can see, at FASO, we actually do love and promote our artists, and,
we are the only website host we know of that does.
Click the button below to start working with an art website host that actually cares about art.
Absolutely brilliant ! The concept of science taking us this far and now the need of the Artist to elevate. Wonderful.
Needed this this AM.
Ann Sexton wrote ‘God lives in my typewriter’ ( or something like that)
Ps , Joseph Campbell’s conversation in Power of Myth, ….pairs of opposites .
Thanks Clintavo