When we make a work of art, we hope that it speaks of an experience beyond the page it is read upon, or canvas painted upon, or ears it falls upon. Art strives to describe a universal experience, yet it is always of an individual thing— a landscape, a deity, a song, a character. The creative process is a dance of working with an individual manifestation of Shakti to describe an undivided experience of Shiva. It is no coincidence that our reality, and our meditation practice, is described as a dance— creativity takes us back and forth between shiva and Shakti endlessly. We see this dance of awareness in the Vijnana Bhairava as Shiva and Shakti discuss the path we must tread in our practice. 

“This is the journey we have to do, the journey we have to do in the field of Shakti, not in the field of Shiva [where] there is no journey (17)…For instance, [fire has many different manifesations]–lightening, giving light, burning, heating–but these energies [aka manifestations of fire] are undifferentiated with fire. [The important thing to remember is that these different manifestations are used] just to enter in that state of fire, to put a kettle on it. (19)… So the path is Shakti, the path is not Shiva. (20)… Shiva is understood by Shakti (21).”

When we work with intention we are working to describe our true nature, Shiva, through a specific manifestation of it, Shakti. We are trying to describe the infinite with the finite, and this is the journey the Vijnana Bhairava describes. In the quote we see the example of Fire. Fire has a fundamental energy, something that is in the background of all manifestations of fire. In terms of writing or creating with a prompt or intention, this might look like writing about ‘surrender’. To write about it you have to point to certain small maniestations of surrender in your life, small ways that you have uncovered the bigger concept— because no matter what you do, you can’t quite write about surrender in a way that doesn’t somehow diminish it. Does this mean the act of creating is always limited? Absolutely not, in fact, it is sometimes the only way we ever experience boundless freedom in the horizontal reality— art is a time when people really open up, and let something higher flow through. So we may not be able to capture surrender in our writing or art, yet we can feel surrender while we write about it and let it come through. In this way, our artwork may only be about one small example of surrender, but the actual piece itself will be imbued with surrender. We used the act of writing about surrender to do the real act of surrender, and in that way we grew and our creation gained life. As the Sutra says, we use the cooking flame to heat the kettle— we use the prompt or intention to explore the greater concept, and we use the act of exploring to grow spiritually. This is one way of understanding how we use the path of Shakti to find Shiva. 

“I went to see the Mona Lisa at the llouve. It was jammed with a lot of people, everybody trying to jam past everybody. And I just took a breath, everything in my mind got quiet and around me, and I could feel the incredible flow that created this wonderful piece of art. But we don’t tend to look at art that way, we analyze it too much, saying ‘well that’s imperfect, and that line or color is not right.’ We’re missing what its all about— the creative Spirit, always comes from beyond. Just like on Monday nights (laughs).”