Sunday Blogs: ODDS AND ENDS OF (CREATIVE) SPIRITUAL PRACTICE

Any of you who grew up in an agnostic household such as myself (and usually with one vehemently atheist parent) have probably grappled with alternative spiritual approaches. There's something appealing about what any sort of spiritual belief system, whether it be theism, self awareness, or enlightenment, can do for making life more fulfilling and feel like it has more purpose. Hint: the source of a lot of modern day stress is the ever-omnipresent question that humans have never really been able to answer: why the fuck am I here? What's the point? It is also a reality proven several times over that human beings find solace in the idea of surrendering their unmanageable troubles in the hands of a higher power, whether or not one decides to call it a “god”. Cultures for centuries have prayed to God for wars and genocide to end because there was nothing else that could be done, and that was their only form of mental hope – spiritual interventionism. Yes - religion, which can be considered a strain of spirituality, has been used to justify some horrific federal enforcements that the government has no place in ruling over (i.e. abortion) and headed certain problematic aspects of imperialism and colonialism, among other things. But religion has also granted some particularly admirable qualities in its followers: strong, unwavering mentalities to successfully follow through with long term goals, lesser anxiety, mental peace, a mark of consistency and ritualism that could fit in to the every day. And now, agnostics want a piece. Introducing, spirituality.

Delving in to spirituality - numerology, Buddhist principles, meditation, fatalism, or whatever idiom you choose - can be a successful way to motivate ourselves and heal our mental health without the commitment to the idea of a God that scientifically hasn't been proven one way or another to exist as much as an anonymous higher power, much like what dictates the laws of physics – why do electrons form around protons, why does gravity bring mass together. Who – or what - gets to make the paramount decision? It fills a lot of blanks that we tend to get at the cruel intersection of our higher human intelligence and the existential crises it enables. (Elephants, for example, are not self aware or capable of advanced forms of communication, so they cannot bear the stress of wondering why on earth they exist in the first place.)

It was huge for me in college in particular to finally dip my toes in the spirituality pool. I was looking for something to accompany my therapy and prevent a reliance on medication, and in particular, ways to heal my relationship with healthy musical practice that I could re-learn to separate from my ego. I lived in an apartment in Bushwick with three other girls who had studied acting in a conservatory capacity that encouraged the use of spirituality creative books. This is how I learned about Julia Cameron and her work such as “The Artist's Way”, which uses spiritual derivatives and principles applied to the creative life. In particular, she employed the idea of getting in touch with a higher spiritual “well” or “power” to coax out creative blocks, whether the reader wanted to call it a “God” or something else – however it appeared viscerally or manifested was irrelevant.

Anyway, these roommates I had were the first women to teach me about body work and Alexander technique, which is to use the body to release emotional or physical tension by returning it to its natural, unstressed state with proper posture and movement. (Funny side note – I once practiced Alexander technique for the first time while on the L train on my way back to my apartment, and I full on fainted. That's how strong the effect was on me at the time.) It also made me want to advocate for mental wellness through spirituality to be taught in artistic university curricula, since the dire lack of it was directly proportional to my dissatisfaction with the artistic process and my personal understanding of my own “success” at that point. I think a lot of folks who went through music conservatory programs in particular can identify with the feeling that it made them actually grow apart from their art, only for them to come springing back stronger than ever once they finished the program. (Anyway, it seems like a falsification to teach something like a historically informed music curriculum without accompanying understanding of politics/historical events and the influence of religion and spirituality. How do you expect to understand paramount recordings such as John Coltrane's “A Love Supreme”, an album entirely dedicated to Coltrane's relationship with God, without doing some spiritual practice of your own?)

In the absence of spiritual thinking, I felt my artistic voice was stifled. Learning from my friends in the theater programs helped me start to figure out who I really wanted to be on the instrument and what values I really stood for in people. There are some things, however, that spirituality simply cannot be responsible for solving. It started to swing to the other extreme. The idea that everything had to have a spiritual reasoning or significance behind it caused me intense panic and stress. Not because I couldn't control what was happening, but because sometimes there was no lesson to be learned. There was no optimistic spin to a situation. I remember calling my mom when I had gotten declined from my third award application in a year and had just cut ties with someone I was dating, having all high hopes crash. Covid had cancelled all my work for the month, both for school teaching and performing. I felt like I was having a breakdown. I remember asking her, “why would this happen to me? I know I'm smart, I'm worthy, I'm beautiful, and I'm strong, even though I'm far from perfect. (This person) hardly did anything to deserve me. I know I have everything and more that this award is asking for – they claim I had enough opportunity already, but I'm struggling so much these days. I have been so committed – I practice every day through my pain for hours, assess my growing points, put in the work. That's not the problem here. So what is? Why would this happen? What's the fucking lesson here??”

My mom sighs. “Well, Sasha, there might not be any lesson. It just sucks.”

Taking it to a much more serious level than my little ol' first world problems, nobody would say that little kids murdered in Syrian air strikes “happened for a reason”, or that you should be “grateful to live another day” if you lost a family member to cancer. To approach every undying aspect of life with that mindset is to not only turn a blind eye to the real life systematic issues that are often producing horrors such as those, but is a stance or privilege. Spirituality might be an easier journey for some folks due to certain circumstances they were born with or that happened to them on account of nothing optimistic at all, yet this is not discussed enough in conjunction with spirituality. Discrimination does negatively affect one's ability to get in touch with spirituality. One thing the laws of physics accounts for (as the fabric of our universe enforced by some unknown higher power) is a small portion of randomness, and it pokes a hole in spirituality's determinism. Some things work against us, and not because we did it to ourselves or because its anyone's fault.

There is one thing to be said about folks like the RZA in his autobiography “The Tao of Wu” - someone who preached spirituality from a young age despite growing up in extreme violence and poverty and got himself out of it and in to a successful, wealthy lifestyle doing the thing he loved most – creating music and teaching spirituality to kids as he was taught by Shaolin masters. And yes, the very point of spirituality is that it may be more painful than a non spiritual life because of the constant, direct reconciliation with ones weaknesses, sins, and imbalances, rather than the sublimation or avoidance of them. The argument is that the direct reconciliation lends to less pain and greater overall strength in the long term. It makes things easier, but not immediately. You have to be prepared for a long term payoff that is less rewarding in the moment, a direct contrast to our modern culture built on immediate gratification and efficiency – computers, food delivery, content apps, etc. (see notes for adding more) This is one of the aspects of spirituality that has been the hardest for me to work on, but that I believe in the most, because it does work. Every time. If you want something enough, you can get it.

Sort of like horoscopes, I think spirituality functions better as a way to get in touch with our subconscious, be kinder to each other, come to terms with our weaknesses, and as advice. But it cannot be the reason for everything. Following spirituality in the way a devout Christian worships God gives me anxiety and distracts us from what can be explained by what is already there. Historical context. Systemic structures. When shit hits the fan, we need to account for those first before seeking out spirituality as a second step.

Some may argue that being truly religious or spiritual means devoting yourself wholly to it or not at all. But to that, I personally call bullshit. Life is too short. Spirituality is life changing, and I encourage everyone to get in touch with it in their own ways, whichever way they can. But lets try again with no threats or caveats. Lets see, if, in fact, things can exist for no reason – perhaps even our own purpose – and we might have to make peace with the answers that never come.