THE HABIT OF INTEGRAL
Artistotle's Advice to Today's Soul Artists



An oldie but goodie from Aristotle:

We are what we repeatedly do.
Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.
As artists, it is our business to be in regular contact with our sources of inspiration. Those sources of emotional spark can be almost anything. All are ever-present, but our receptivity to the source shifts. Different things inspire us in our lives, and through our lives. If you look back at your own sources of inspiration, I think you might see a range of objects that have sparked you. My own model of this range of spark is what I call a spectrum of muse.

This spectrum of muse includes the physical environment, folkloric/animistic spirits, personal fame/celebrity, God/Goddess/Spirit, technological novelty, human-to-human collaboration, self-actualization, planetary stewardship, pure manifest/unmanifest sentience, and on. These objects are touchstones. They spark us to a mode that is more open. Through openness to our muse objects, vibrant energy passes through our awareness and towards the production of artwork. Each muse object helps us to channel our creativity towards an public display of our art for others to embrace, absorb, and contemplate.

Yet it is not our sources of inspiration that allow us to grow. It is not our muse that develops our excellence as artists. After all, our muse object tends to change, fluctuate, and move as our cognition expands and our consciousness moves. What inspired us five years ago perhaps has less pop and sizzle now. We look for new things to goose our activity, to propel us from motionless inertia towards an inner need for expression. This is another of the open-ended aspects of artistry that is better just accepted as our lot. Anything can move us, but the why of that movement is a deep mystery. The spectrum of muse goes all the way up and all the way down.

I think that what does allow us to grow as artists are our habits. Our habits act, in part, as an interface between a growth into a deeper and wider subject. Taken as a whole, all of our habits form our artist practice. Concretely, our practice is made of the blocks of time in our day within which we do our activities, exercises, rituals that support creative play. All operate in concert to do something very important: through our practice we give attention to our intentions.

Our intentions become material reflection (i.e., our artwork) because of the delicate pillars of support that surround our interior. We have a range of being. Our habits - our practice - acts as midwife for our inspired being. When we honor our practice through our committment to it, we in fact honor our muse and our sources of inspiration. We offer trust and our muse returns the favor.

The point is that there are various levels of being that can be supported through our practice. There are biological means of support, psychological means, and spiritual means. A variety of methods exist for each level. An integral practice can involve and activate our own levels through well-chosen activities. Such a practice is multidimensional.

All in all, our practice is a conglomeration of behavior and activity on multiple levels of our being. Integral theory provides a general structure so that these levels of our own being are exercised through the particular aspects of our practice. An integral artist practice is a means for the artist to receive, house, and tranform inspiration into artwork. It brings about an attitude, ambition, and practice of whole-person realization - a practice of fullness.

And the hypothesis in all of this?
If our artist practice is more full, then our artwork can be more full. The more we can absorb, the more our art can reflect.
This is a pretty exciting hypothesis, yes? The logical conclusion actually suggests that inspiration actually is never a problem. The muse is always there. It is everpresent in various forms, according to a spectrum, as I suggested above.

No, the issue instead is is two-fold: one is our ability to be receptive to inspiration, and two is our ability to follow-through, to carry that inspiration to a manifest shape. I think that to develop a coordinated habit of receptivity and follow through is to develop and mature as a true artist. Anyone can be creative. But it takes maturity to be creative and be able to commit to a follow-through. It takes maturity to be able to be both drunk and sober in the same moment.


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