As yet, I haven't followed his advice, because I don't see a distinction between writing and engaging the spirit. I see writing, and living as a writer or I suppose any sort of artist, as spiritual exercise. Any artist will admit to at times slipping or plunging into a condition wherein we seem to receive the story, image, character or whatever. And all who have experienced this condition find it far more pleasant, and more likely to produce quality work, than laboring with the mind.
If someone contends that what I call inspiration is no more than a connection to a different part or function of the brain, I won't argue. I'm not trying to define or explain, only to get inspired more often and perhaps more deeply.
William Blake felt so inspired, he claimed everything he wrote came straight from God. Writers of what we call scripture probably felt the same. Maybe they were nuts. Maybe not.
Robert Pirsig, in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, argued that Quality is real, absolute and elemental. In my approach to the world, Quality and God are the same, and to truly seek Quality in art (or in life) is to seek God. I thought of italicizing truly, but decided that might feel preachy.
Anyway, I'm not ready to spilt my thoughts or my blog in two.
3 comments:
Actually, I only have (had now) one blog and it was mostly about literary matters, with some occasional travelogue stuff tossed in with photos. And now I have none. I got out of the blogging life recently and now maintain no blog at all, so if you click on that link you have to me (which you may as well remove) nothing will appear.
And Ken, you use the term "god" in such an ambiguous fashion as to make it meaningless, but then, so does everyone else who uses that word all the time. That which is everything is nothing, or as my Slovak friends used to say explaining the condition of their surroundings -- if everybody owns it, nobody owns it.
Bon voyage on your spiritual journey.
Don, at the risk of perpetuating an argument I find useless, I think that I need to reply to your assessment of my spiritual views, not by defending mine but by assessing yours.
From the evidence I've read, I see you limiting God to a caricature, then mocking that caricature.
I'll also point out that by presuming you know all about "everyone who uses the word all the time," you have given up all credibility.
God, I believe, isn't a limited quantity, but that in which "we live, and move, and have our being."
If a lot of Christians you've known or read about make God out to be anything less, as you do, that's their fault, not the fault of the faith as a whole.
It probably is a pointless discussion, at least between the two of us, but who can predict the future?
You essentially reinforced in your comment the point I made in mine.
"That in which we live and move and have our being" is meaningless jargon. It makes no sense. Although air would be a pretty good definition of a phrase like that. So if one were to profess the belief that god is air, at least I would have something concrete to try to understand. But if god is everything or anything ... what?
And it's not necessary to "know all about everyone who uses the word all the time." It is a matter of logical fallacy, not empirical knowing. Anything, any word, that is tossed out expected to mean anything and everything in fact means nothing. Any word. God is just a prominent example of a word that has no real meaning because it means everything or anything -- god is whatever you want it to mean. Could you make that claim about another word? Sugar. I believe that Sugar is water in disguise.
Finally, with extremely rare exceptions, every god believer who has ever described to me what it is they do believe has offered a caricature. It is hard for those not in the special circle of believers and knowers to suppose anything else.
Theories about god are indeed caricatures, some simple, some elaborate, some empirical, some wild-eyed, but in each case, a caricature, in spite of the fact the believer does not intend exaggeration.
Ken, you tread awfully close at the end to asserting the claim that what you believe is the correct way, and those who offer "lesser" beliefs are wrong. And that circumscribes completely the core of my problem with believers -- they are all and each Right, and if you don't get it that way, you are Wrong.
I wonder if that's why religious people throughout the sordid history of religiosity on this planet have spent so much of their time at war with one another?
Finally, how can faith have a fault. Faith is nothing more or less than believing the unbelievable. That's all it is. Maybe you intended to reference particular sets of religious beliefs?
But we don't need to keep at this. It is not possible for me to abandon reason, and it seems impossible for you to abandon this kind of believing. I'm sure you have your reasons and it's really none of my business.
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