The development of our spiritual dimension is far more complex and difficult than material development, and the two should not be measured by the same standards.
Unfortunately, the word “spiritual” is used for a wide range of activities and personalities that often have little to do with spirituality. Few terms are as elusive or ambiguous. Even within the broad New Age movement, spirituality is sometimes turned into a profitable business for a few and a placebo for many.
The spiritual dimension is the least tangible and most elusive aspect of our existence, but it is not the least important. Only when we recognize its significance do we devote time, energy and resources to spiritual development.
When we become aware of our cultural, emotional and psychological limitations in the face of life’s mystery, we may feel disheartened or empty. We experience a lack of meaning, a sense of finitude without purpose. Yet it is precisely at such moments that we may feel the need to direct our lives toward the search for meaning that reaches beyond death.
We know that art can be a source of meaning and transcendence—not in the commonly assumed sense of achieving lasting fame, but in a deeper sense.
But who can teach us to experience art in this way?
Older generations are leaving a desert behind them. Their approach has too often been to exploit everything until its source is exhausted: metaphorically, they are vampires. They have also excluded younger generations from the dialogue through which the new can overcome the old, creating a social and cultural rigidity that feels like a draining of energy and culture. Yet human history did not begin two hundred years ago; if we know how to look, we have many teachers.
Some are contemporary artists who have lived in isolation or voluntarily withdrawn out of fidelity to their convictions, hoping for a change in society’s values. Others are masters from the distant past. Nevertheless, we believe that the most important teaching will come from younger generations.
We must change our attitudes and our system of beliefs to meet the needs of new generations, who seek a strong, clear connection with what is profound, authentic and transcendent.
If we do not want to remain trapped in the cycle of “victims” and “perpetrators,” we need to rediscover practices and attitudes that are both new and ancient, allowing us to regard art once again as something sacred—something to nurture and help grow.
Funding and active participation are certainly essential, but above all we need an inspiring force capable of mobilizing and harmonizing people, establishing new values rooted in a humanity no longer divided between its subtle, spiritual dimensions and its material life.
To recognize the artist’s contribution to building a new society as indispensable to human evolution means committing ever more energy to the development of spirituality in art. This must be a new spirituality, free from domination and superstition, understood as access to a deep and hidden force that can help us move forward—or rather, leap into another personal and social dimension.
>>> Further reading
Developing Spirituality in Art: A Choice for the Future
Spiritual Development in Art and the Need to Work
Why Spiritual Development in Art Is Necessary