There’s a thing about activities such as painting, drawing, writing, etc which distinguish them from other more mundane activities such as hoovering, sweeping, washing and any other mundane type task – and that’s the amount of consciousness which goes into it.

From an esoteric-tantric view, though, all action – including the mundane – has the possibility of being imbued with divine consciousness.  Practically speaking though, if you’re not a tantrik, it’s difficult to conceive of how sweeping could be considered a divinely enjoyable activity.  But truthfully, nothing separates painting a masterpiece from performing the most mundane task imaginable.

Having acknowledged this though, there’s a contradiciton to this which also supports this truth.  And that is that while “mundane” tasks seem to be lacking awareness/consciousness/divinity, the reason for this is simple.  While creating a work of art, there are far, far more opportunities for becoming conscious than there are in the “mundane” tasks.  Seemingly infinite opportunities.  Truth is shining out at us at all times but it’s while creating art that this seems far more obvious.  So, to make life easier for ourselves, we must start to become artists in order to start to see everything from all angles, remain conscious and let the fire of creativity purify us from the inside out.  This means that when we do perform mundane tasks, they will seem imbued with a more conscious energy and will finally start to become enjoyable.

The thing about being an artist is that presenting yourself with opportnity after opportunity to become more aware serves as a vehicle for speeding up your own evolution as a human being.  Rather than dumbing yourself down with machinistic, mundane tasks, with apparently no incentive to become more conscious of what you’re doing, do yourself the service of doing something small in which you know you’ll become more aware.  Meditate deliberately for 10 breaths only.  Do some drawing on a piece of paper only 10cm by 10cm in size.  Try to draw upon your higher wisdom and come up with the most wise and compassionate piece of insight you can, but make it only one sentence.  These are great ways to open up your true creativity when the mundaneness of life has taken hold.

Ultimately though, there’s no limit with activities like this.  They quickly snowball into fantastic things and you have to watch you don’t get carried away with yourself… Remembering to stay on the middle path where you can listen to your inspiration as well as retain the ability to communicate it on the physical level is the crux of how to continue to develop as an artist.

S.