The artist within

Have you had a good idea today? Is it something that you haven’t thought of before? Have you savored it, defined it, refined it, and then expressed it in some special way? Can you speak it, sing it, paint it, dance it, photograph it, write it into a poem or a book, or experience it in some way? Does it indicate more ideas to come—a sequence and flow which could continue indefinitely?

We all can find in ourselves some measure of artistic sensibility.

A sense of adventure and the joy of discovery generally characterize people who are specifically involved in the arts. They are constantly developing a heightened awareness of beauty, color, form, space, light, sound, movement, rhythm—as well as the skills to translate ideas into tangible form through their chosen medium. They know what it means to observe, listen, experiment, and communicate.

But every artist also knows those moments when the canvas is blank, the page unwritten, the stage silent, the manuscript empty. Can inspiration be summoned at will, or is there some temperamental muse we have to wait for? The ultimate question has to be, Where do ideas come from?

This requires a vital pause. Blockages, frustration, lack of inspiration, are signs of the human mind seeing itself as the source of intelligence and ideas. It makes us feel we have it all to do, and that the burden of success or failure lies heavily on our own shoulders. But that may be the very moment to take a quantum leap—to allow the center of thought to move from self to Soul.

The term Soul is used by Mary Baker Eddy in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures as a synonym for God. It’s the particular aspect of God’s nature that embraces beauty in all its aspects. To see God, Soul, as the center of all, rather than oneself, is as radical a shift as learning that the earth goes round the sun, and not the sun round the earth. It lifts thought from ignorance and limitation to the awareness of infinite possibilities. It opens to us the awe-inspiring fact that ideas exist in the consciousness of God, divine Mind, and therefore that ideas are infinite. We don’t generate them ourselves, but we already include them as part of our very being because we ourselves are ideas of Soul. Ideas don’t exist in time; they exist in eternity—and eternity isn’t a long, long time. It’s the eternal now in which creation never stops appearing.

This sheds a new light on what’s referred to as the creative process. A BBC program on Beethoven highlighted once more the extraordinary nature of his ninth symphony. This sunburst of joy, exultation, and youthful hope had sounded itself to his inner ear in his later years, when he was cut off from the world through profound deafness. Where did it come from? It was an idea that overtook him with the same urgency with which Handel’s Messiah had burst into life in just three weeks with all the intensity of revelation.

Mary Baker Eddy’s early love of music led her to conclude: “Mozart experienced more than he expressed. The rapture of his grandest symphonies was never heard. He was a musician beyond what the world knew. This was even more strikingly true of Beethoven, who was so long hopelessly deaf. Mental melodies and strains of sweetest music supersede conscious sound.”

By the time she wrote this, she herself was experienced in the art of hearing what the world had not heard before and finding the means to express it. Her medium was words, though her spiritual message was beyond words. She struggled with the limitations of language, but through tireless work and constant revision, words became a transparency for the language of Soul. She persevered with the same tenacity as any great artist, and the masterpiece she left to the world was the book Science and Health.

Mary Baker Eddy knew that the ideas in it were not hers personally, but that she was the scribe for them. These spiritual ideas existed forever, and now was their moment to appear to human consciousness. To her the creative process was no mystery. The Principle underlying it was constant. It was God Himself, the great heart of Love, the Soul of the universe, the Creator of all; and His idea, His creation, was man and the universe—nothing less.

The creation isn’t the Creator. Therefore all creative ideas have their origin in God, not in us, and must be infinite. Using the words Spirit and Mind also as synonyms for God, she wrote: “Spirit blesses the multiplication of its own pure and perfect ideas. From the infinite elements of the one Mind emanate all form, color, quality, and quantity, and these are mental, both primarily and secondarily. Their spiritual nature is discerned only through the spiritual senses.”

Even a glimpse of this can open the flow of ideas instantly.

I was once asked at short notice to write the music for a solo for a church service. Reason rushed in to assure me that I couldn’t possibly take the time to do this with all the work I had on hand. I was firmly shutting my mental door when a quiet inner voice said to me: “And who are you to say this idea shouldn’t be born? It already exists in divine Mind, and it can appear quickly and naturally and bring joy to everyone. You can love this idea, and welcome it into being.”

That was humbling. I felt the shift away from self and into the awareness of Soul as the source of all ideas, including the perfect expression of the exact idea needed for this song. God was loving His idea into being that very moment. Since the idea already existed, my job wasn’t to create it, but to listen for it.

Almost immediately a melody came to thought for the opening words. I wrote it down and then listened again. Line by line the music came. In two hours it was finished, and it was performed the next Sunday.

But that wasn’t all. Some years later a professional singer was visiting us and discovered this song. She loved it, and took it with her and performed it in a much larger setting with a wider audience, and in due course it was also sung by others. It was only a small offering in musical terms, but it had its own purpose and right to be expressed, and brought a blessing with it.

How can we ever find adequate words to express the fact that God’s ideas are infinite? Superabundance is one word Mary Baker Eddy used. But eventually we have to go beyond human language to glimpse the wonders of creation. Everything that opens thought to wonder and beauty points to the spiritual reality underlying all things. As thought expands, our experience expands, and we find the concept of infinity becoming clearer.

As we get to know the Creator, it’s not surprising when creation appears in our lives in new and original ways. We discover that “being an artist” isn’t the privilege of a few talented individuals. It actually describes each one of us as we really are—the ideas of Soul, reflecting the infinite artistry of our divine Creator.

Fenella Bennetts is a Christian Science practitioner and teacher living in Surrey, England.

(This article was first published in the French edition of The Herald of Christian Science, January 2006)

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