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Ken Wilber, in the Foreword to Alex Grey, The Mission of Art, writes:
When an artist is alive to the spiritual domains, he or she can depict and convey those domains in artistic rendering, which wrestles Spirit into matter and attempts to speak through that medium. When great artists do so, the artwork reminds us of our own higher possibilities, our own deepest nature, our own most profound ground, which we all are invited to rediscover. The purpose of all truly transcendent art is to express something you are not yet, but that you can become…
It calls us beyond ourselves, it takes us beyond ourselves, to a transpersonal [not impersonal] land where Spirit is real, where God is alive, where Buddha smiles and the Tao sings, where our own original faces shine with a glory that time forgot and space cannot recall. We are confronted with the best we can be, the deepest we can feel, the highest we can see, and so we go away … a little better than we were the minute before.
The Spirit is the artist, and Reality, all of It living through matter, body, mind, soul, and spirit, is the artwork, and each of our lives and all creatures, together, as well as the world we live in, is an invitation to transformation into the Likeness of God. Thus, the artistry of Incarnation calls us to live more deeply with ordinary life and ordinary persons, like you and me, for in that ordinariness is the Kingdom of Heaven, here and now, always.
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And the Christian sees the fleshly body of Jesus as signifying the Christ that becomes, as Word “descending” into the world, the material expression of our deepest possibilities and the fullness of our undiscovered potentials. Therefore, Jesus Christ, human and spirit integrated, immanence and transcendence made one, is a God-summons to do more than worship or follow Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is the Living Portrait of God the Artist, a Portrait that pulls us onward to become all we can become. Thus, we do not only look back to Christ, we feel the pull of the Christ toward an End Point, an Omega attraction, that is inherent in every beginning, every birth, every life, and every death, as one Energy of Grace.
Love-the-Artist is expressive, calling us, confronting us, consoling us, moving us, and echoing our True Selves through the feelings of heart and thoughts of mind. To be present to God, to be “in Christ,” is to be transformed into Aliveness to a Reality. And to be awakened means that progressively and habitually one lives awe-fully before a Creation that sings gleefully “I Was, I Am, I Am Coming!” And, now, right now, even as you read these words, this whole drama of the Divine Display, “descending” and “ascending” in a perfect Harmony, made more beautiful by its giving of Itself with and through the diversity in which It expresses and offers Itself, freely, is being lived in you, with you, and for you, and your heart is awakened to the Beauty of the OneLife!
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