{"id":185,"date":"2013-06-03T00:29:22","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T00:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laurelantur.com\/index.php\/2013\/06\/03\/2013-6-1-atheism-mysticism-and-art\/"},"modified":"2013-06-03T00:29:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-03T00:29:22","slug":"2013-6-1-atheism-mysticism-and-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/2013\/06\/03\/2013-6-1-atheism-mysticism-and-art\/","title":{"rendered":"Atheism, Mysticism, and Art"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\u00a9
\u00a9 Real Illusion – Fotolia.com<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Woo Woo<\/h1>\n

I call myself a reluctant atheist.  <\/h3>\n

Pinned down, I do not truly believe in anything supernatural.  And my shoulders sag a bit with this admission.   <\/p>\n

And yet. <\/h3>\n

My life is better, so much better when I pretend that I do believe otherwise. Those of you reading this who are not atheists…I can only imagine your reaction to that statement!  <\/p>\n

When I believe in synchronicity, I notice a lot more coincidences   They are not that significant, but I pretend that they are little nods from….uh…something…that I am on the right path.  Little crumbs on the path. They give me confidence that I am not wasting my time when I am stretching myself by doing something I think I will fail at.<\/p>\n

During a moment of utter despair, my bottom, my absolute bottom, I allowed myself for a moment to try to feel the presence of…uh…something…and I DID! I felt this loving presence!  It was one of those moments where my entire life shifted a bit.  What was that presence?  I tell myself that it was Future Me, looking back on that sad lost me of the past, and saying “girl, you are going to be OKAY.” And so now that I am okay, I go back to that moment and give myself a little love. Because things got so much better.  <\/p>\n

I have many woo woo moments like this<\/h3>\n

They are moments of intuition or other things that I’m sure can be explained away. When I allow myself that space to not<\/em> doubt, however, I am happier. So I don’t care if it is God, or even anything. Just that openness to magic, and meaning, and purpose is what I need. When I try to pin it down, to convince, to have evidence, then it evaporates, and I am back to doubt, and I get cynical, and I am unhappy. <\/p>\n

I am a wannabe mystic<\/h3>\n

I am always balancing these two sides: the atheist who descended from scientists, and the wannabe mystic, who craves that sense of infinite somethingness<\/em>. It is a motivator for me when I make art. I get glimpses of that altered reality specifically during intermodal expressive arts.  When I open myself up to a more spiritual way of making art, loaded with all that embarrassing spirituality\/shamanism\/source\/goddess stuff, I make a totally different kind of art and it feels connected<\/em>, and meaningful<\/em> and cathartic<\/em> and oh so worth it. I am grateful.  The cynical side of me doesn’t know what to make of the experience, or the art that resulted. I am critical of it. <\/p>\n

But the side of me that is alive just doesn’t care.  <\/p>\n<\/p>\n

It is hard to share about this, I get that. This post was hard to share. But tell me…is your art connected to your spirituality?   <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I call myself a reluctant atheist.  <\/h3>\n

Pinned down, I do not truly believe in anything supernatural.  And my shoulders sag a bit with this admission.  \u00a0<\/p>\n

And yet.\u00a0<\/h3>\n

My life is better, so much better when I pretend that I do believe otherwise.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[82,47,9,70],"class_list":["post-185","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-atheism","tag-inhibition","tag-spirituality","tag-visual-art"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mysticalexpressivearts.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}