For those who seek to live the creative's destiny and to live their destiny creatively.
[A creative: an artist. Not just a painter or musician or writer. She is someone who sees the world a little differently than others.]
[COSMIC. 1 a : ... the extraterrestrial vastness, or the universe in contrast to the earth alone. b : ... concerned with abstract spiritual or metaphysical ideas.]
I'm Ezra, a musician & artist from Texas. Hope the read adds something to your life. @ezravan
Q: How are we to live?
This question, How am I to live? was like a chant I mumbled all of my long miserable previous life. It's not a bad question. In fact, it's a great question! The only problem with the question is I was seeking the answer from other people, never asking myself. How am I to live? When I started asking only myself this question and no one else; consulting no books, no scriptures, no experts, no professors, no priests or prophets; that is when I found the answer I had been looking for. Not in the form of a plateau or a final secured resting answer to the universe. No, I found the answer to that question only when I asked it every single day–It was answered with my choices of the day. And the choices of the day were better when I knew I was the only one that could answer my question. I could answer it only with the choices and decisions of a single day.
“...you are all as much extraordinary phenomenon of nature as trees, clouds, the patterns in running water, the flickering of fire, the arrangement of the stars, and the form of a galaxy. You are all just like that, and there is nothing wrong with you at all.” - Alan Watts
Another question that I kind of kept to myself so I didn't sound like a vagabond extraterrestrial was:
Q: Who am I/What am I?
It's a good question too. It has a simple answer by adding another question. Like so...
Q: Who or what am I?
Q:How am I living now? > A: That is who and what I am.
Seems too simple. That's good. We humans, especially we cosmic creatives (artist) way over complicate things.
If I think about what that answer really means it can cut deep sometimes. It means I am (and my life is) the result of what I do. Not what is done to me. Not what I think I Am. Not what I was. But what I do each and every day.
It was a hard answer to digest back when I lived a life so unworthy of the breath I breathed. Pain, despair around the clock; endless crippling panic attacks were my everyday reality year in and year out. My life was a tsunami–far from repair. I couldn't catch a break if it fell in my hands. My mind, marriage(s) and career were in constant turmoil. And, there were a lot of people, institutions, mood disorders, genetics, wife and just plain bad luck to blame. 'How could the results of my life be 'Who I am.' Or, put in another way 'My Definition,' defined by me. "I am what the world made me, what poverty made me, what my parents made me, what society made me, what those run away brides made me. I just couldn't take the blame for what my life was. I might take a little blame. But not all of it. Life happens...right?"
Of course, life happens. But, I found that, if I may use the other term we use more regularly, shit happens, much less often when I am taking complete responsibility for everything that happens to me. Not blame but responsibility. To blame myself, my past or anything else is always a waste of precious time and the cosmic mind. It has no good outcome.
When I took my life on my shoulders. Every single bit of it. Even the stuff that just fell on me. Even the stuff that was unjust. Even the stuff that was in no way my fault. When I took that on my shoulders, not as shame, not in blame, not even because I deserved it as karma, just simply for the reason, that it is MY LIFE and no one else, then the answer started to make sense. I started feeling for once, that my life was my own. That I owned my life. And that it was my MEEE! I was living. There is a wonderful line from the Bhagavata to illustrate what I mean by 'MEEE!'
"It's better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection."
That was the beginning of an answer but it leads to another question and good thing, because when I got all that 'Shit that just happens,' (The shit I don't control) on my shoulders as well as the shit that is my part (the shit I do control), it was heavy as shit! I couldn't bare the load.
The next question I needed to ask is another very simple even childlike question.
"Q: Where am I?"
It's amazing how I dodged asking this question for a lifetime. I mean really stopping long enough to ask it. The stopping part being key. Now, wouldn't you, if you just woke up somewhere and you didn't know where it was. Even if it was slightly familiar, would you not think that was your most important question to find the answer to: Where am I? You would want to know. You probably wouldn't stop inquiring until you found out. This is the situation of our human life, isn't it? I mean, do you know how you got here? Really know? In the quiet of your room or cafe, without your bible teacher, or professor looking over your shoulder, do you know where you are?
It's strange to me of how we generally deal with this question in our modern society. I can't say that I did not in any way seek it. I was spurred into seeking this answer, usually by an uncomfortable feeling in my skin, or by some circumstance that scared me into asking the questions in some form. In many ways, I sought to know where I was constantly. As many of us all, I searched in religions, in ancient scriptures, in science, the learned and the best selling books. But, What is strange to me, is how quickly I would accept the answers offered; if they were presented well. Almost as if I really was uncomfortable with asking the question, and just wanted a father/mother figure to tell me something that made sense so I could go back to watching TV. I'm a very introspective and inquisitive person but when I dig a little deeper under the skin the truth for me is, I really didn't want to know. I just wanted someone else to know. When I found a someone (and there were quite a few, because the answers of one would lose their glitter and I'd move to the next) who confidently knew where the fuck we were.. that was enough. At least someone somewhere knows. Back to netflix and Chubby-Hubby Ben & Jerry.
This answer is also one that has no plateau, no safe landing place. The question itself is a journey. A Question that can not be answered wholly and completely, yet it sometimes feels complete when you stop long enough to really ask, alone, with your own capacity, with all of your being. The answers may change; maybe I'm influenced in a direction via scientist one day, by a shaman the next and a priest the next. But in the end, it is a large enough question that it will consume all answers over time. Answers will fail when faced with circumstances, with death and birth, with ecstasy and despair.
I choose to journey this question alone. I consider that every human on earth is working with the same material I am. So who better to answer –'Where am I?"– than me? And what a beautiful, awe-inspiring journey it is to answer it each day in my own capacity.
It is one that must be asked patiently and in silence. One must STOP to consider it. STOP for long enough to realize whatever the answer may be, you are certainly HERE. NOW.
When finding out that you are here and you are now, there might creep in some regret, because you will realize you were always here, you were always now, but you were to consumed with trying to go somewhere to notice. Go to where? TO HERE ... NOW! So, there is nowhere to go, right? You are always here, you are always now. So why regret not being there, you were always here. Go with it.
So how does that relate to the last question that lead us here? It hopefully gives us a crucial element needed to ask the next question, a question that will hopefully relieve some of that 'Shit that happens,' we're carrying so we can make some art. This question, some might put earlier in the sequence of seeking a new way of life. But to me, I don't think you can get to this question without first relaxing a bit. The incredible relief of finally realising you have nowhere to go, because werever you go, there you are. Frees your time up for the really big question. The question that will tie it all together. But first a little more about the "where am I," that I feel needs to be included.
My son, when he was about 8 or 9, had heard something at a church that really brought on the realisation that he was going to die someday, he got real upset and was afraid. I wanted to comfort him, but at the time, I didn't want to go the old route of oh.. don't worry you'll go to heaven buddy! it so fucking fun up there, lots of toys and clouds and stuff.. I didn't really know that was true. I was starting to disbelieve in things like that. What I said was:
"Can you remember when you did not exist? When there was no Noah?" He thought and answered, No, I can't. "Now, can you in your wildest imagination, imagine being no more? Not being at all?" He thought and answered a 'no' again. He seemed satisfied and ran off to play.
While the realization of being in the NOW is touted as some kind of miracle cure for everything. For me, the awaking to the NOW, came with a lot of fear. I still carried the fear of the future NOWS. haha. And the absolute huge fucking magnitude of the cosmos, of the mind, the unknowability of its depths and it's hights, quiet frankly, it birthed a terror in me like none before. I remember in a meditation, it just slammed into my forehead how enormous life is, how unknowable, unsearchable my own mind is, and I went into a complete freak out for days. Driving down the road I'd look at the sky and through the blue dome of atmosphere see into the billion miles of infinite ???. The '???' is intended, because it is infinite ???: (The unquestionable Question) ... and that's scary to float around in the infinite with no tether. I once had a tether, it was a dude with a masters degree told me what was out there in the infinite. Once I started questioning everything, there was no tether. Just me driving down the highway about to sideswipe the cosmos.
In regards to my answer to my son, that we can not sense when we 'were not,' nor can we sense 'being no more,' I told him that because it's one thing that I rely on when I feel I can rely on nothing else. I trust my senses, I really have not much of a choice, and I especially trust the sense of my heart and spirit (my intuition).
Surely many religious dogmatists are getting prickles on their arms, as would the scientists and the materialists in their own way if you push too far the trusting your own sense of reality. I would go into my thoughts on that, but that is for another post.
For now, think of this: You are always relying on a sense of understanding the world and the reality around you; either your own sense of reality or another man's sense of reality, either way you are relying on a human sense. And it doesn't matter how far back and who they point to before them, they too are relying on one man's sense. So why not your sense?
Q: Why am I?
I am an artist. People tend to use that word, 'artist,' mainly with the visual arts. So in searching for a description of what I define myself as, I landed finally on 'a creative.' Still kinda vague. What I really consider I am as an artist or creative is that I do a very special job in the human family. I perturb people's minds. I cause them to look at the world and their reality just slightly skewed for usually just a few moments. Notice I did not put the word 'entertainer,' in the definition of creatives at the top of the article. I am not an entertainer. I have entertained, and entertainers are occasionally artist, but they are not acting in their capacity as an artist when they are entertaining. They are just trying to get some income and who blames us. Entertainers are nothing more than another distraction from this question. Just like most movies are, many books are and a hundred other things. Distraction is okay, but don't fall into the trap. You the artist, the creative are not an entertainer no more than the President is a TV Celebrity (well...lol) .... you get the point. An artist is at the core of this question, 'Why am I." All through history we were looked to to answer this question. But as I pointed out about myself earlier, we don't want the question asked. I don't know why it makes us so uncomfortable. We like to play with it, fondle it, philosophise about it, but an artist has the capability and the connection with something higher, to actually ask it so loud that people can't look away. We do it sometimes, and I think we all can think of those times when artists have done this to our souls.
Read 'The Age Of reason,' if only the first half, it is a convincing argument that even those prophets of the bible were nothing more than vagabond musicians. Shamen in other traditions were just creatives. In our era they might have been punk rock singers. They had curage to be the 'deep that called unto deep.'
It's a question that needs asking more than ever. I can say, with quite a bit of certainty, this is one that can not be answered here, but the sheer asking of it does something amazing. It makes us all realize we don't know. And that binds us together as one. 'One,' drifting into the unknown together. In that we can taste occasional unity. The question can be subtle or large, it can be in your face, or under your skirt, however you intuit to ask, but you must ask it. That's 'Why you are' 'a creative.'
When you relly start to be a MEEE!! Being who you really are might start to clear up the clouds in the cosmos. You might just look out one night and understand that there is something, some power, some devine meaning behind it all. That's what you give all the "shit that happens" to (the shit you don't control). You suddenly realize, your shit: the things that you have control of, are very small indeed. Carry that and only that. That's the light shit.
-Peace
If you made it this far, thanks so much for reading. Follow me @ezravan for more Episodes. And leave me a comment!
I am an Musician and Artist based in Texas. If you'd like to learn more about me go to ezravancil.com