Continuing from:
- 387. The Love/Hate Relationship with Art
- 388. Regretting Choices and Definitions
- 389. Are Emotions Necessary to Be Creative?
Quote from “The Love/Hate Relationship with Art” entry: The point is I tried to make My definition of Art fit with what would enable me to use it to demonstrate that it is possible to change the world. However I realized that no matter how many images I make, how many pictures I take, how many great ideas I would have I was entirely mostly having an imaginative outflow of how this could operate without ever really landing it into any serious/real project. I always kept everything at a low-fi level because right after the first year in Art school, I discovered Desteni and my interests veered dramatically – hence the ‘shutting down’ of any pursue to further my career to make a name of myself etc..
Patterns:
1. The idea of Art as an instrument to “Change the World.” Suiting something according to my interests, to justify my ends in order to cover up another self-definition I am wanting to hold on to – in this case wanting to make the definition of art suit my current interests so that I’m able to say that ‘I’m still doing a form of art, even if it’s not conventional,’ without realizing that it’s merely a definition in itself and that as such, I have to stop making this definition suit my interest around art, and merely see the actions/deeds for what they are and imply.
2. Expecting something to ‘happen to me’, someone to ‘save me,’ someone to ‘find me’ instead of me moving myself in order to make things happen, to become my own directive principle instead of hoping, waiting or fantasizing about the things that can happen ‘in the future.’
3. The idea that something outside of myself can ‘change the world’ in itself, in this case that I could ‘change the world’ through creating art, or that art should be used to demonstrate that we can change the world, when in fact this is once again delegating to something/someone the ability to change, without realizing that there can be many catalysts for change, practical presentations for it – but it will only ever work if we implement it, integrate it, live it and become it ourselves and by ‘change’ I mean becoming an individual that takes responsibility for our creation, that learn how to coexist with everyone else as equals and as such participates to create a world where everyone is supported to live in dignity. Where does that begin? Within self only. A system, a structure can support and promote the change, but it is about each one of us integrating such change within ourselves to make it real. Therefore ‘art’ in itself cannot change the world, only we can one by one.
4. Giving up on something based on seeing ‘no result’ in a short period of time, without taking into consideration that everything in this world and reality requires actual work, time, dedication, constancy and consistency as well as patience to have something be developed in order to give fruition. So giving up on something/someone based on not getting any ‘quick results’ is rather a mechanism of self-sabotage where I am expecting things to work ‘instantaneously’ instead of considering a plan, a structure, the practical steps and timeframes, methods and ways to make something function/work to give the expected results. This means: no wishful thinking.
5. Blaming something/someone for sidetracking from my initial purposes, I have realized how we usually blame something/someone in order to not recognize our sole responsibility to our decisions, words, thoughts and deeds.
6. Making decisions in my life based on emotions and feelings, wishful thinking, desires and fantasies – mostly going for what ‘feels good’ and avoiding what according to my ego/personalities felt ‘not right’/ ‘not good’ – instead of considering the actual physical space-time planning, structure, steps, time and consequences of the decisions
Self Forgiveness on these patterns:
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to shape a definition of ‘art’ that would suit my personal interests of wanting it to be the ‘tool to change the world’ without realizing that in this equation I was separating myself from such change and only considering that ‘art’ had to be that ‘for me,’ and because I didn’t see results this way in the short-run then I gave it up completely, without realizing that this is a usual pattern wherein I expect things to ‘do something for me’ instead of me being the directive principle within everything that I do – as such it makes sense that a single image, or drawing or video or else can do the ‘change’ process in itself, and as such it is only a tool that can support with the realization and recognition of change that I have to still conduct, apply, live within myself as everyone else as well.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to hold on to this definition of art as the quote by Ernst Fischer that also later on I had a ‘fuck it they’ve done it all first’ moment when seeing that in the beginning of the Zeitgeist movie they used this quote that I was cherishing as ‘the foundation’ for my ‘art project’ in itself which is the quote from his book ‘The Necessity of Art’
“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it”
And with this, believe that I had to always s stick to these definitions, quotes and theories to justify what I wanted to do with my life as an ‘agent of social change’ and still ‘stick’ to my career, just because of the fear of being seen as a ‘dropout’ or someone that didn’t follow-through with art-creation, which is all based on the beliefs and expectations that I believed people had created upon me, because the career is definitely one that I chose for social-recognition upon something that I considered I was ‘special’ within – therefore the whole conflict of having to justify what I do within an artistic context, without realizing that if we look at it beyond definitions, the process of change and being the example of what it means to change is what I am doing and what I’ve decided to do with my life in function of creating a better world, to establish living principles of creation where there exist barely non at the moment, and as such once again using ‘artistic creations’ and creativity as tools with which to do this, without forgetting that I do not require to justify what I do within an artistic concept for the sake of ‘sticking to my career-choice’ as an idea of ‘who I am.’
I realize that instead I can share how I can apply these principles to what I do/ who I am and the practical ways in which I’ve realized we can conduct this change in our decaying society – whoever I commit myself to no longer wanting to justify what I do within this imperative need to make of my life and my decisions as ‘still’ artistic or part of my career choice, as that single theoretical link that I’m attempting to create is what re-enacts the relationship conflict in relation to me and the studies I took on, without realizing that what really matters is not a tag, a name, a definition but how these principles are lived and applied in real-practical living.
Another pattern is ‘giving up’ on something if it doesn’t satisfy my expectations and not putting it all the effort to make it work, because in the mind I always expect quantum results and having immediate effect of my expectations in this case and example, the entire intent behind everything that I would do as an ‘artistic creation/ project’ was to ‘fit in’ my own desires to make my inner process ‘artistic’ as well, and it can be done and for sure it’s even compatible – though the point here is to point out how within this starting point, I was once wanting the ‘artwork’ to do its effect by itself, and kind of hoping that someone would just ‘notice it’ and make me famous type of ideals, which is really unrealistic because nothing in physical reality really works that way
And within this I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to imprint a form of hope and ‘waiting’ with myself and my career, my ‘art’ because I was kind of expecting that someone would knock on my door and discover my creations and make me famous type of ideal and unreality. And this is what I see I had built also around my own ‘career choice,’ wherein I had not defined a plan for my future in fact, but just kind of getting myself into the art world and having something/someone come to me or happen to me that would ‘lead me’ to become successful at it, so there was a lot of wishful thinking, positive thinking involved in wanting this to materialize ‘by itself,’ kind of only having ‘the work do its work,’ which is certainly not how reality works and as such
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to give up on my creative skills because of not seeing ‘any results,’ which is the pattern of giving up on something if not getting the expected results right away in turn, which is what happens when I do not consider the actual effort, the actual process of making something work, something be successful, any enterprise that I embark myself on and not expect it to be ‘successful’ right away, but rather work within the accumulation principle wherein the amount of time, work and effort invested onto a business/ an enterprise or anything that I have committed myself to do, is not going to be ‘minimal’ or ‘very little’ as in this reality everything takes time, effort, patience, constancy, consistency, developing further skills, developing further relationships and all of this implies that what I attempted to do with my life and my wishful thinking about my artistic career was not founded upon physical, practical planning and considerations but that I absolutely just ‘jumped into the boat’ because it sounded great and it satisfied my intentions back then when I made the decision to study art – so within this,
I realize that when we make decisions based on emotions/feelings and dreams, it will most likely be crashing down on the pavement back to reality because it was all a temporary foam that I created in my mind as ‘my future,’ without any real consideration of the work, the time, the money, the people, the places, the relationships, the materials, the skills or anything of that, but only wanting to kind of have something/someone ‘make me famous’ or ‘make me successful,’ which is no different to how we as human beings tend to be hoping and waiting that something/someone will come to save us, just because we haven’t yet realized or learned that we can only make things happen if we move within it, if we invest the time, money, effort, patience, consistency that goes with making any plan, any enterprise work.
Further support for business and non-business people on this point: Time = Money – The Soul of Money
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to in my mind covertly ‘blame process’ for me not having followed through with my career, without realizing that such ‘blame’ is in fact looking at the actual regret and realizing the nature of the decisions I made in my life, wherein instead of taking absolute responsibility for my life and realizing the lack of practical planning and decision making processes that I had to make, I instead realized the flimsy planning – if any – I had created for me and my life and as such only finished school for the sake of ‘finishing it’ but my ‘heart’ as they say was not into it any longer, because I realized the expectations, dreams and ideals that I entered to school with, which all came ‘tumbling down’ when realizing the reality that I had missed in my decisions – therefore
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to spite myself in this extreme of going from the absolute experience of being ‘into my career’ and giving it the most to giving it the minimum required based on the realization of my intentions behind studying art, and here instead of just forgiving myself for that and being able to walk through it without reactions, I slowly but surely built a certain experience of overall ‘regret’ about it which is how the love-hate relationship was formed. It all happened in my mind based on the positive experience I had imprinted to the idea of studying art/becoming an artist and how when realizing such positive-feelings and imaginations and hoping and dreaming about what I could do in art, I went into the polarity opposite of deeming it as something negative/bad/superficial instead of just realizing what I had done, take self responsibility for it which in a way I did in relation to finishing studies, but within myself as well wherein I am able to stand sound with understanding the context of my past decisions, walk through the consequence without imprinting ‘the consequence’ with negative experiences, as that is where the whole inner conflict was created – and yes, it is quite unnecessary when it is just a matter of walking physical moments, experiences, processes that require my participation and direction and that’s it.
I realize that what’s done is done and as such the only gift I can give to myself is being able to prevent me from once again making decisions in my life based on ‘how I feel’ about something or someone, and instead learn from the ‘mistakes’ so to speak in order to learn how to take into consideration physical reality, practical planning, realistic considerations and of course in such ‘career decision’ processes, look at the practicality of where I can employ myself and genuinely develop a financial stability with it, because I of course now realize that I could have done it differently if my decision was to remain doing artwork, it was about investing a lot of time to it, which is what I had initially planned to do – but of course, after realizing the actual practical process required in this world, my ‘decision making’ process was almost immediate when choosing to dedicate myself to walk this process that in turn I can apply into and within any other realm that I see is most practical to assist and support others to walk the same process.
I realize here that art once again can be a tool of support for this process that I’ve decided to walk – however I could not realistically see myself investing most of my time in developing certain skills that I knew I wasn’t going to be using any longer.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to feel like a ‘fraud’ to the teachers and the people that supported me throughout my stance in art school and I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be ashamed toward them because of believing that they invested their time ‘incorrectly’ and even the ‘spot’ I had in such important school could have been used by another person that genuinely wanted to be an artist
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to want to take me to see ‘the bright side’ as in ‘not everything is lost because I learned a lot from some of the books, teachers and interactions in school as well as the skills,’ which in part it is so, but here it is not to once again want to ‘white wash it’ and get a positive experience out of it –here I then see things for what they are, realizing that yes I probably won’t be making etchings and using all of those techniques I learned, however if my starting point of that is ‘wasting my time’ or ‘someone else’s time,’ then I also forgive myself as that comes within the idea that I took something from someone by attending that school, without realizing that I did want to be there, I did want to learn that and as such, because we cannot turn back time I simply walked through the whole educational process till the end and that’s it. I took responsibility for my choice and now I also take responsibility for my life wherein I recognize other ways in which I can direct myself to support myself and others within this process which is my purpose in life and ‘my life’ in itself, and as such whether what I do is deemed as artistic or creative or not, is not something that matters, as this is not about definitions or how actions and words are categorized, but instead how they are lived and applied.
I forgive myself that I had accepted and allowed myself to step into a career with the sole purpose and idea of ‘making a name’ for myself, to further my recognition ambitions for doing something that people would consider ‘great’ without realizing that in this, I was only spiting myself because I am the one that had to face the consequences of not properly planning my decisions in life, to make sound/physical and practical decisions and not just go for how ‘good’ it made feel and how ‘nice’ my imaginations were in relation to day-dreaming of being an artist and being famous, being recognized and having the ‘time of my life’ within the context of having money, be able to ‘change the world’ – according to my dreams – and at the same time be happy and feel ‘blessed’ as that is the kind of spiritual attitude I was into when I got into art school, quite imbued with spirituality and positive thinking which is why I also allowed myself to want to ‘attract’ success and not consider physical-doings like practical planning, assessing my skills and aptitudes etc. but only choose a career based on my ‘feeling’ of ‘being special/unique’ and having this apparent ‘gift’ to create something, without realizing that we are all capable of creating something and that me taking a decision within this delusion was most likely prone to generate consequences that I am walking through as well.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to make decisions in my life in terms of choices, people, places, careers, what ‘I like’ or what makes me ‘feel special’ and what I accept in my life based on experience, based on what ‘felt good’ what felt ‘right’ according to my personalities, and veer off from that which didn’t satisfy my ego, my desire to be doing something ‘more creative’ based on how I defined ‘creativity’ on plastic arts mostly, which as I’ve walked is rather limiting if we only recognized our ability to create based on making ‘art works.’
Therefore, I realize that in my life I made many decisions based on feeling, on the experience, on the beliefs, on the expectations, on the dream-like state that I would usually fuel myself with in order to actually evade looking at the reality that I had considered was ‘too awful’ to face and to walk thoroughly as any other individual. Meaning that my decision to be ‘an artist’ was precisely to be ‘eccentric’ and to be ‘acceptable’ within such eccentricity meaning outside of the regular circles of society because of having a judgment toward ‘the system’ and ‘society’ as a whole based on seeing how politics, education systems, money works and the lack thereof, which is why upon facing this ‘insanity’ I kind of decided to make myself ‘insane’ as well as the ‘good reflection of society’ that I was planning to be and become, and so be able to ‘create’ from such image and likeness of the system. Hence the nature of self-destruction portrayed in what I created, even if I was not able to say ‘why’ I only see death and destruction mostly, sadness, depression and overall madness, which was just me trying to become that and do that to myself and the world to not face the responsibility to it, as it’s easier to ‘destroy’ than deconstruct, reconstruct and create something new and stable again.
I forgive myself that I haven’t accepted and allowed myself to see and realize or ‘remember’ that my ‘initial intent’ of what I wanted to be and become in my life was in the very beginning before art was ‘in my life,’ to study a career that would make me have a lot of money and be able to ‘travel around the world’ – the usual ‘dreams’ that came with me initially wanting to become a financial advisor wherein I could use my ‘skills’ in a profitable manner. I also recognize that studying art was my way of apparently ‘spiting my parents/others’ that believed that I was going to study some ‘great and complicated career’ based on the supposed intelligence I had, wherein I realized that the only way to ‘turn the tables’ and not follow the pattern, was to study something wherein what I do wasn’t able to be graded with A’s for ‘being right’ but where I could challenge other skills and abilities that to my perception were not able to get ‘ratings,’ without realizing later on that they would still be rated in the same manner any other school work gets rated, which got me irate and furious the very first time that I considered I had placed ‘all my effort’ into something, for months on, working even in my supposed ‘leisure time’ with the attempt to get an A and I got a B and that was ‘heartbreaking’ for me because I was expecting my work to be recognized as ‘good.’ In this I realize that even if I wanted to supposedly ‘escape’ the grading system and the apparent skills I had by ‘studying art,’ I later on realized that art and the art world is no different to any other part of this system that we live in, wherein it is not this wonderland where system-laws don’t apply – and that is how I was able to also burst my own bubble of escapism when realizing that art was no different to any other part of this reality that is managed by ourselves, individuals and that it doesn’t really imply something entirely ‘different’ to any other career because it is still existent within the context of a world system where what you do is assessed and valued in order to be sold as a product so that one can have money to eat. And that makes it no different to any other career or profession – so even within this, I realized that there was no really a way ‘out’ of the system, which then became another reason to be disillusioned at ‘the art world,’ without realizing that any ‘disillusionment’ is really created based on the initial positive ideals that I had formed around it, which means: I did this all to myself and as such, it is not a ‘guilt trip’ now, as that would evade me from walking now the self-responsibility to my decisions and my life in itself and the decision making processes that I will now consider in practical and physical terms, not based on feelings/emotions and ideals.
Suggest watching the following Desteni I Process Google Hangouts:
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Angry at the World and Want to do Something about it?
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Empowerment Through Practical Solutions in a Hopeless Time
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