The arts are the open passageway to our hearts and souls, the direct route we can take to decipher the mysterious and ambiguous, and the direct means to express all that needs a voice and a vision.
Not only do too many of us deny our own creativity, many can’t appreciate the creativity of others.
- We haven’t been taught how to comprehend the subtleties and complexities of a story, poem, or painting.
- Worst of all, we don’t mourn this loss.
“By refusing to invest in the arts, we are short-changing our communities and are short-changing our communities and are in danger of developing culturally bankrupt societies.
Michael Greene (president and CEO of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences)
Art can teach us the fundamental truths of living.
- Music and art celebrate diversity; they heal cultural and political differences.
- “Everybody – every body – needs to move. It is unnatural not to move. See all existence as a fluid state – as rhythm. It’s physics. If everything is in motion in the universe; why make an exception of ourselves? When the body, heart, and mind are unified through dance, then that is an expression of the soul.”
- Gabrielle Roth (dancer)
- “Creativity is the key source of power, for creativity delivers alternative solutions, and that is what conflict resolution and problem solving is all about.”
- Diana Grams (Peace Museum executive director)
Cultivating the imagination is needed to benefit all individuals.
- Imagine a life without imagination. This is not a theoretical dilemma.
- Many children and adults become stuck in linear thinking, rarely taking the detours offered by the inward eye.
“People define imagination as the fantasy part of themselves, or the part they make things up with. They don’t think of it in terms of giving meaning to life, as something integral and central to who they are. The eye doesn’t simply look out. It is attached to the deeper part of ourselves, and what we are feeling and seeing inwardly affects what we see outwardly. So in a large part, the imagination has a great deal to do with the nature of perception – how we perceive anything in life. Insight is the sight we have perceived from the inner part of ourselves. The power of the imagination allows the individual to ultimately make some sense of the world.”
– Richard Lewis
Re-source: Recourse
The Arts as Therapy – Today, the arts are also being used more and more as a therapeutic tool, delivering catharsis and illumination.
- Both art and music therapy are relatively new professions, but they are already having a profound impact in the world of healing.
- Guided Imagery and Music delves into the human psyche, using music, visualization, and relaxation techniques.
- In addition to emotional problems, it can help people who desire a dynamic medium for personal self-exploration.
- Freedom from judgment and the chance to express one’s own individuality serve as a catalyst for self-healing.
- The act of creation is an incredible vehicle for the mind to inform the body of its completeness, of its wholeness.
- Essentially that is what art does.
“The arts are a natural conduit for shifting a person into a higher state of awareness about themselves and about the universe. As medicine moves toward holism, integrating mind, body, and spirit, it moves closer to music, which has always captured man’s total beingness.”
Dr. Helen Bonny (founder of Institute for consciousness and Music)
The arts record and remind us of beauty, as well as evil; they help us see life with such clarity that we come away shocked, inspired, or both.
- The arts dig into the inner life, and their spiritual function is irreplaceable.
- They not only activate our senses, but let us live fully in this world by awakening – through the creative spirit – the human spirit.
- Above all, art is a vehicle for transformation, the most potent medium on earth for transforming our souls.
craving and resource from “A Call for Connection” by Gail Bernice Holland
