“The artist can, within certain limits, make what he likes of his life. In other callings, in medicine, for instance, or the law, you are free to choose whether you will adopt them or not, but having chosen you are free no longer. You are bound by the rules of your profession; a standard of conduct is imposed upon you. The pattern is predetermined. It is only the artist who can make his own.”
When you turn your life over to the Secret Self the channel in you best adapted for expression of the Divine is cleared and developed, and a unique talent is exposed. A direction of growth is opened, within which you are perfectly free. It has little to do with your position in society or your membership in social groups. Your mind and talent develop independently of material associations because you have turned them over to the Secret Self to use as they are best fitted. Each of us most satisfies himself as a person and fulfills himself as a member of society when he lives the life of an artist, not necessarily that of a painter or writer but an artist in the sense that his attitude toward all things is creative rather than competitive.
The world of competition is the world of egoistic desire, for competition seeks ascendancy over others. People whose ruling passion is to prove themselves better usually look upon the world with hostile eyes and regard every man as an enemy. Such limited perception of the nature and purpose of life clearly destroys more often than it blesses, for victory always is temporary, and defeat awaits all whose lives revolve around superiority. The ego is born, blooms, withers, and dies, just as the material body, and the individual whose aspirations center around it must follow a cycle that leads to eventual defeat and disintegration. Oh, the noon day of the ego is fine. A man in possession of his full powers may stand upon his individual mountain and beat his chest and defy the world, but noon quickly passes and the day of his life wanes, and noontime becomes a very dim memory as the shadows lengthen.
In order to participate freely and fully in all things, the wider vision that perceives the majestic onward march of evolution must be adopted by the individual as basic in his attitude toward life. Such a man may appear to be competitive through participating in competitive things, but he does not compete through egoistic desire to be better or superior, only as a result of having opened himself as a vehicle for the manifestation of the Secret Self. He is used in all things and is never the user, and because he sees his basic unity with all men he is able to enter competition without hostility, neither for gain nor loss. He is able to regard with equal mindedness those he vanquishes and those who vanquish him, for each represents to him the same immutable person whose manifestation he knows he is himself.
The truly creative attitude is a passive one insofar as it listens and does not command. Yet what is wrought through the individual whose ear is attuned to the Divine is charged with the most vital energy imaginable, far surpassing anything possible to egoistic will power. It is ego-will that eventually breaks the individual through constantly throwing him against obstacles that are immovable because they are not understood. Will power seeks to batter down doors that are best approached with a key. The enlightened man is a talented man because he is a creative man, and this creativity is instilled in him by a sense of unity with all things. Obstacles and opposition and enemies have meaning for him only as they indicate a lack of understanding within himself, and he never seeks accomplishment by running headlong at things, but only by attempting to mentally and spiritually penetrate their true meaning.
My teacher is the conqueror knowing all And seeing all, the Master Infinite In pity, all the world’s physician, he And he it is by whom these truths are taught. —Theragatha
Has the ship of your life come to disaster through running aground on uncharted shoals? If so, the greatest lesson you can learn is now possible, for your ship never would have grounded if the proper navigator were charting the course. Your surface self and egoistic nature have been at the helm, and the limited perception of surface mind could not possibly know of the uncharted shoals. Now your ship is aground, and the only way that it can be freed is to give over command to the Master who knows these waters well. Surrender is the principle by which ultimate control is gained. The bossy surface self continually tries to run the show and its enamoring cry of “I, I, I” may easily delude the whole consciousness into limited life and knowledge, but when a person runs into sufficient pain and difficulty, a crack appears in the hard veneer of the ego and a light is let through which illuminates all for one startled instant of awareness. Then a man knows that his life and self are in the hands of something greater than he is, that his identity with the surface mind has always been an illusion, which in this moment of enlightenment he is freed from.
Creative men affect us as being rich in possibilities. They are ripened trees that drop their fruit, and we scarcely can be near them without attaining to some unexpected good. The creative man’s attitude has an aspect of abundance, as if he has some mystical tie with a horn of plenty, not of material things necessarily, but of ideas and of possibilities that give a universal note to everything he does. A good thing is effective and generative. It grows and propagates and makes room for itself. It springs into being through an irresistible creative urge of universal mind, and the vehicle of its manifestation always is the man with an artistic attitude toward life. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The true artist has the planet for his pedestal.” He sees the possibilities inherent in all things, is a discoverer in the universe, and interpreter for his less enlightened fellows.
When you turn your life over to the Secret Self the channel in you best adapted for expression of the Divine is cleared and developed, and a unique talent is exposed. A direction of growth is opened, within which you are perfectly free. It has little to do with your position in society or your membership in social groups. Your mind and talent develop independently of material associations because you have turned them over to the Secret Self to use as they are best fitted. Each of us most satisfies himself as a person and fulfills himself as a member of society when he lives the life of an artist, not necessarily that of a painter or writer but an artist in the sense that his attitude toward all things is creative rather than competitive.
The world of competition is the world of egoistic desire, for competition seeks ascendancy over others. People whose ruling passion is to prove themselves better usually look upon the world with hostile eyes and regard every man as an enemy. Such limited perception of the nature and purpose of life clearly destroys more often than it blesses, for victory always is temporary, and defeat awaits all whose lives revolve around superiority. The ego is born, blooms, withers, and dies, just as the material body, and the individual whose aspirations center around it must follow a cycle that leads to eventual defeat and disintegration. Oh, the noon day of the ego is fine. A man in possession of his full powers may stand upon his individual mountain and beat his chest and defy the world, but noon quickly passes and the day of his life wanes, and noontime becomes a very dim memory as the shadows lengthen.
In order to participate freely and fully in all things, the wider vision that perceives the majestic onward march of evolution must be adopted by the individual as basic in his attitude toward life. Such a man may appear to be competitive through participating in competitive things, but he does not compete through egoistic desire to be better or superior, only as a result of having opened himself as a vehicle for the manifestation of the Secret Self. He is used in all things and is never the user, and because he sees his basic unity with all men he is able to enter competition without hostility, neither for gain nor loss. He is able to regard with equal mindedness those he vanquishes and those who vanquish him, for each represents to him the same immutable person whose manifestation he knows he is himself.
The truly creative attitude is a passive one insofar as it listens and does not command. Yet what is wrought through the individual whose ear is attuned to the Divine is charged with the most vital energy imaginable, far surpassing anything possible to egoistic will power. It is ego-will that eventually breaks the individual through constantly throwing him against obstacles that are immovable because they are not understood. Will power seeks to batter down doors that are best approached with a key. The enlightened man is a talented man because he is a creative man, and this creativity is instilled in him by a sense of unity with all things. Obstacles and opposition and enemies have meaning for him only as they indicate a lack of understanding within himself, and he never seeks accomplishment by running headlong at things, but only by attempting to mentally and spiritually penetrate their true meaning.
My teacher is the conqueror knowing all And seeing all, the Master Infinite In pity, all the world’s physician, he And he it is by whom these truths are taught. —Theragatha
Has the ship of your life come to disaster through running aground on uncharted shoals? If so, the greatest lesson you can learn is now possible, for your ship never would have grounded if the proper navigator were charting the course. Your surface self and egoistic nature have been at the helm, and the limited perception of surface mind could not possibly know of the uncharted shoals. Now your ship is aground, and the only way that it can be freed is to give over command to the Master who knows these waters well. Surrender is the principle by which ultimate control is gained. The bossy surface self continually tries to run the show and its enamoring cry of “I, I, I” may easily delude the whole consciousness into limited life and knowledge, but when a person runs into sufficient pain and difficulty, a crack appears in the hard veneer of the ego and a light is let through which illuminates all for one startled instant of awareness. Then a man knows that his life and self are in the hands of something greater than he is, that his identity with the surface mind has always been an illusion, which in this moment of enlightenment he is freed from.
Creative men affect us as being rich in possibilities. They are ripened trees that drop their fruit, and we scarcely can be near them without attaining to some unexpected good. The creative man’s attitude has an aspect of abundance, as if he has some mystical tie with a horn of plenty, not of material things necessarily, but of ideas and of possibilities that give a universal note to everything he does. A good thing is effective and generative. It grows and propagates and makes room for itself. It springs into being through an irresistible creative urge of universal mind, and the vehicle of its manifestation always is the man with an artistic attitude toward life. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “The true artist has the planet for his pedestal.” He sees the possibilities inherent in all things, is a discoverer in the universe, and interpreter for his less enlightened fellows.
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