The nexus of creativity and spirituality. I live there, along with dozens of characters from my fiction series, and like it a lot. Because living my life has taught me there is an intimate connection between creativity and spirituality.
And why not? The Bible (and many other texts considered sacred) states that we human beings are created in the image of a Creator. Who some call God. Or Allah. Or Universal Mind. Or Great Spirit. Or All That Is. Or Source. Pick your preferred label.
Atheists would turn right around and say that we human beings created God in our image. They have a point. We human beings certainly project ourselves onto God and then claim that God demands all manner of things. Perfection. Sex only between a man and woman who are married to each other. No abortion. Second-class status for women. A president of a certain political party.
We human beings seem to need to project our limitations onto God so we feel more comfortable with the idea of a being or a presence that is beyond us, that we cannot control. Having lived for decades with characters I cannot order around at all, I am now comfortable with stuff that is beyond my jurisdiction. That does not mean I like it or do not like it. It just means I acknowledge I cannot control it and am now savvy enough not to try.
Maybe writing a novel would be therapeutic for control freaks. Because when your characters come alive to you, in your head and in your writing, they do all manner of stuff that shocks you or makes you shake your head in disbelief. But that is who they are. As I have said, character drives the story, not the other way around. If you try to stifle them or make them go in a direction they resist, your story withers away.
Characters have free will. So do we
It’s called free will. God set us free by giving it to us eons ago. When you craft fiction, you either abide by your characters’ free will, or you end up with stilted, unbelievable characters and/or a ridiculous plot.
God was smart (and loving) enough to stop trying to force us into a certain path and to cease punishing us when we don’t follow it. This world would be a lot kinder and more humane if we stop trying to force ourselves onto certain paths that we deem right or righteous, and then stop trying to force others onto those same paths of belief or behavior.
My characters have the right of self-determination, even if I think what they are doing or believing is simply nuts. Take a character named Lucan Silenas, who is totally amoral and ruthless in his quest for total power in Azgard. Lucan is Supreme Lord of the Temple of Kronos, the religious organization that shapes the laws of the country, an island nation that is a theocracy. Lucan already has a lot of influence and money in his society, but he wants it all. Complete control. Total dominance.
For the life of me, I cannot figure out why Lucan wants such control. After all, he claims to be a man of the God his faith proclaims, known as the Father of Kronos. Yet God by whatever name gave up total control by granting free will to all of creation. So why would anyone want what God does not? I suspect God knows something about control that the rest of us desperately need to learn.
Anyway, in the seventh book in the Stoneslayer series, Lucan has paid a lot of money to get his hands on a mixed-race young man who he wants to train and then exploit. He holds this young man hostage despite the young man’s repeated pleas to be set free to return to his devastated family. And Lucan will not bat an eyelash if he has to torture his prisoner to obtain his compliance.
It all disgusts and horrifies me, Lucan’s author. Yet Lucan’s character, or complete lack thereof, drives the plot in a big way.
Our missing half of self
J.R.R. Tolkien once explained that he did not invent Middle-earth. He merely told its story. I feel the same way about my fictional world. I could not have invented or devised it. It existed long ago in earth’s hidden past and I am simply chronicling it because I spent several lives in that society, which lasted several thousand years. I know about it from soul memories that awakened several decades ago.
My characters do, say, and believe things I don’t agree with at all. Or maybe agree with only to a certain extent. But that is their right. It was when they lived in the flesh. It still is now.
By the way, people on earth today also have the same right of self-determination. God gave it to all of us, not just a chosen few. We are all God’s chosen, or we would not exist.
I digress. Back to the intersection of creativity and spirituality. If anyone seeks a spiritual path, then try a creative endeavor. It could be writing fiction or sculpting clay or painting pictures. The medium really is not as important as the act of creating. In that act, you emulate your Creator and share the experience of being creative.
Of course, in today’s tech-centric world, we label it “innovation” and all scratch our heads over it. Innovation seems like a big mystery. That’s a sad commentary on how far divorced we are from our innate spirituality and our hearts. We live out of only half of our whole selves, our physical and mental bodies. Our emotional and spiritual bodies are missing from our daily lives.
Then we wonder why we feel so limited and alienated, and why innovation is so damn tough. But that’s grist for many more posts.