Why Man Creates Art: Kanye West as an Archetypal Artist

[Federica]

Thanks. I should be more careful with my descriptions so as to not refer to the conscious activity of the earth as belonging to the physical earth, but the “earth entity(ies)”. I suspect the physical features of a conscious entity are constructed by its own spiritual forces, rather than being a “reflection” of these spiritual forces. Spiritual forces cannot be “reflected” in the same way the physical properties can be, because spiritual forces have no physical properties to reflect. Rather, our spiritual forces attempt to replicate themselves through the physical body in relation to certain environmental and evolutionary demands. The context upon which it does this is largely a mystery for me, at the moment.

Thanks for another Steiner quote. He is fascinating.

Grant,

True, reflection is simply one of many concepts we can use to speak of the relation between spiritual and physical-perceptual. Sometimes we speak of the physical as a shadow of those forces (like in Plato's allegory), or as negative images, or as a Maya dream state. I like the way you characterize it as well, which is more scientifically accurate - the physical is indeed constructed through the spiritual forces and therefore an outward image of those forces. Clearly a human being's outer physiognomy - facial expressions, gestures, gait, speech, mannerisms, and such - are expressions of the inner life, the individuated ego. The animal physiognomy is much more representative of its entire species, which then points us towards a group-ego responsible for that species. Once we get to the plants and minerals, though, the outer physiognomy tells us much less about the inner life responsible for it. 

So that is where it can be more helpful to speak of shadows, reflections, etc. When we are speaking of the physical plane as we experience it with normal waking consciousness, reflection is a useful concept because what we perceive outwardly is an inversion of how our inner forces unfold. We are not speaking of spatial properties here so much as temporal dynamics. We referenced one before with the hypnagogic state and communing with the dead - on the physical plane we feel that we are producing thoughts, while in the spiritual we experience it as beings thinking into us, i.e. we are being thought. Many more similar inversions can be discerned. We normally experience our life flowing from the present into the future (towards ideals), but in higher worlds living ideals incarnate from the future into the past (towards perceptual states). 

Normally we feel our thoughts to be insubstantial, at the opposite pole of concrete perceptions and actions. From the spiritual pole, thoughts and words are deeds. In fact, physical processes and events can be understood as the inspired speech of higher beings impressing into the perceptual world. So there is a real insight laying beneath the Hermetic maxim, "as above, so below, and as below, so above." For modern man with the capacity to analogize from the physical to spiritual, reflective substances and surfaces, shadows, etc. exist on the physical plane as symbols pointing us back to the higher worlds and their higher-order laws. It's very useful to deepen our thinking if we can look at a reflective pool of water and contemplate the primordial past in which what we now know as "water" incarnated through a higher-order spiritual Wisdom. "And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, to separate the waters from the waters. So God made the expanse and separated the waters beneath it from the waters above."

You may also be interested in my essay on the 'liminal spaces of perception', which goes more into the nature of physical perceptions as negative images of inner spiritual forces (at a very basic level). 

Hi Ashvin and Frederica, I apologize for abandoning our previous conversation. I have been busy with work and pursuing other interests. I must admit that I do not believe it is currently my purpose to persistently seek the philosophical understandings that are taught and discussed here. I believe that I am in a position in my life where my purpose in life is more clear than it has been previously, so intensive thinking on clarifying my purpose in life is not as desirable or fruitful to me. Right now I feel the impulse to apply my spiritual knowledge in other practices, even though that spiritual knowledge is still incomplete. While I don't foresee myself being active here in the near future, there will surely be a time in my life where I need this forum again. When I experience a mental/spiritual/emotional crises, my self correcting thought impulses lead me to these types of discussions.

Keeping this at least somewhat relevant to our previous discussion, I have been pursuing the arts lately. I recently learned how to compose and record music. I am still learning, so the productions are a bit amateurish, my voice is a bit rough and the songs are incomplete. But if you want to listen, I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

These lyrics are incomplete. I just contracted Covid 19, so I couldn’t quite finish this one yet:
https://soundcloud.com/ghg12/between-waves-of-fear

This one is an instrumental. It is difficult to mix due to the abundance of horns and a crappy plugins. But it sounds good enough for now:
https://soundcloud.com/ghg12/remain

I have a propensity towards melancholy with my music (a bit like Radiohead), but interestingly, it is this type of music that also makes me happy. When we strongly express an emotion we also express its polar opposing emotion. For example, when we express loss, we also express hope, because the feeling of loss for something can only be experienced with respect to our hope to gain it, and vice versa. This is part of why I think art possesses a remarkable healing power. It bridges a perceived negative emotion with the outcome of its remediation.

Anyways, I hope you guys are doing well,

Grant

Hi Grant,

Thanks for posting this update and the songs, I'm glad you are finding new ways to express yourself. The songs were a great surprise (I admit I was expecting something à la Kanye West )

Beyond a few technical details, I think both are excellent, they show various artistic qualities in my opinion, and I particularly liked how you wrapped up both. In the first one, I do recognize some affinity with Radiohead, but I feel it’s more of a superficial similarity. Yes there is this effect as if the music was ‘coming from a distance’ that you have in common with them in the first song, and a few more things. I know it may seem far-fetched, tempos and harmonies and styles are not the same, still for some reason the two songs that came to mind listening to your first one are: from the first chords, Wicked game, and for the melancholic vibe, Smalltwon boy.

Best of luck and inspiration with your creative productions and to the next time when you will feel like joining the forum again!

[GrantHenderson]

[/quote]
I genuinely enjoyed the songs, but maybe your impulse to create and share the music is also serving a higher purpose in the deepening of your spiritual life? It's another thing to think about.
[/quote]

That is absolutely the case, and kind of the point I was trying to get across. It is an alternative means of connecting with my inner-spirit, and one that is more purposeful to me at the moment. But admittedly, my biggest reason for sharing this now is because I am off work with COVID 19, and looking for something to do, haha.

I think, ideally, I would be interpreting my sensory perceptions through the lens of my divine knowledge for artistic creation, providing inspiration to actively further my divine knowledge, so I can more deeply integrate my spiritual sense with my other sense perceptions for artistic creation -- and repeat. The truth is that I probably just lack the competence do this and the will power to cultivate it at this phase in my life -- so I kind of go through extended phases where I alternate between creative/artistic pursuits, and then deep spiritual reflections. That's a good point about how we trick ourselves into thinking that it is a law of nature to improve ourselves, become complacent, and then descend -- repeat. The truth is there are laws of nature working here that do cause this to happen, but not directly. We don't lawfully alternate between self-improvement and self-degradation, but engage in an interplay between what we give to the world and what we get from the world. We may fall into a habit of alternating between self-improvement and self-degradation if we fail to ensure that we are nurturing our inner spirit with what is offered to us from the outer world, and nurturing the outer world with what we have cultivated from within. When our sense perceptual, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual faculties work competently in unison, we adopt an ideal pattern of experiencing that is more akin to what I refer to in the first sentence of this paragraph.

[GrantHenderson]

Grant,

True, reflection is simply one of many concepts we can use to speak of the relation between spiritual and physical-perceptual. Sometimes we speak of the physical as a shadow of those forces (like in Plato's allegory), or as negative images, or as a Maya dream state. I like the way you characterize it as well, which is more scientifically accurate - the physical is indeed constructed through the spiritual forces and therefore an outward image of those forces. Clearly a human being's outer physiognomy - facial expressions, gestures, gait, speech, mannerisms, and such - are expressions of the inner life, the individuated ego. The animal physiognomy is much more representative of its entire species, which then points us towards a group-ego responsible for that species. Once we get to the plants and minerals, though, the outer physiognomy tells us much less about the inner life responsible for it. 

So that is where it can be more helpful to speak of shadows, reflections, etc. When we are speaking of the physical plane as we experience it with normal waking consciousness, reflection is a useful concept because what we perceive outwardly is an inversion of how our inner forces unfold. We are not speaking of spatial properties here so much as temporal dynamics. We referenced one before with the hypnagogic state and communing with the dead - on the physical plane we feel that we are producing thoughts, while in the spiritual we experience it as beings thinking into us, i.e. we are being thought. Many more similar inversions can be discerned. We normally experience our life flowing from the present into the future (towards ideals), but in higher worlds living ideals incarnate from the future into the past (towards perceptual states). 

Normally we feel our thoughts to be insubstantial, at the opposite pole of concrete perceptions and actions. From the spiritual pole, thoughts and words are deeds. In fact, physical processes and events can be understood as the inspired speech of higher beings impressing into the perceptual world. So there is a real insight laying beneath the Hermetic maxim, "as above, so below, and as below, so above." For modern man with the capacity to analogize from the physical to spiritual, reflective substances and surfaces, shadows, etc. exist on the physical plane as symbols pointing us back to the higher worlds and their higher-order laws. It's very useful to deepen our thinking if we can look at a reflective pool of water and contemplate the primordial past in which what we now know as "water" incarnated through a higher-order spiritual Wisdom. "And God said, “Let there be an expanse between the waters, to separate the waters from the waters. So God made the expanse and separated the waters beneath it from the waters above."

You may also be interested in my essay on the 'liminal spaces of perception', which goes more into the nature of physical perceptions as negative images of inner spiritual forces (at a very basic level). 

Hi Ashvin and Frederica, I apologize for abandoning our previous conversation. I have been busy with work and pursuing other interests. I must admit that I do not believe it is currently my purpose to persistently seek the philosophical understandings that are taught and discussed here. I believe that I am in a position in my life where my purpose in life is more clear than it has been previously, so intensive thinking on clarifying my purpose in life is not as desirable or fruitful to me. Right now I feel the impulse to apply my spiritual knowledge in other practices, even though that spiritual knowledge is still incomplete. While I don't foresee myself being active here in the near future, there will surely be a time in my life where I need this forum again. When I experience a mental/spiritual/emotional crises, my self correcting thought impulses lead me to these types of discussions.

Keeping this at least somewhat relevant to our previous discussion, I have been pursuing the arts lately. I recently learned how to compose and record music. I am still learning, so the productions are a bit amateurish, my voice is a bit rough and the songs are incomplete. But if you want to listen, I am interested in hearing your thoughts.

These lyrics are incomplete. I just contracted Covid 19, so I couldn’t quite finish this one yet:
https://soundcloud.com/ghg12/between-waves-of-fear

This one is an instrumental. It is difficult to mix due to the abundance of horns and a crappy plugins. But it sounds good enough for now:
https://soundcloud.com/ghg12/remain

I have a propensity towards melancholy with my music (a bit like Radiohead), but interestingly, it is this type of music that also makes me happy. When we strongly express an emotion we also express its polar opposing emotion. For example, when we express loss, we also express hope, because the feeling of loss for something can only be experienced with respect to our hope to gain it, and vice versa. This is part of why I think art possesses a remarkable healing power. It bridges a perceived negative emotion with the outcome of its remediation.

Anyways, I hope you guys are doing well,

Grant

Hi Grant,

Thanks for posting this update and the songs, I'm glad you are finding new ways to express yourself. The songs were a great surprise (I admit I was expecting something à la Kanye West )

Beyond a few technical details, I think both are excellent, they show various artistic qualities in my opinion, and I particularly liked how you wrapped up both. In the first one, I do recognize some affinity with Radiohead, but I feel it’s more of a superficial similarity. Yes there is this effect as if the music was ‘coming from a distance’ that you have in common with them in the first song, and a few more things. I know it may seem far-fetched, tempos and harmonies and styles are not the same, still for some reason the two songs that came to mind listening to your first one are: from the first chords, Wicked game, and for the melancholic vibe, Smalltwon boy.

Best of luck and inspiration with your creative productions and to the next time when you will feel like joining the forum again!

Hey Frederica, I appreciate your feedback. I can see how you drew comparisons to both those songs, especially with the vocal melodies and the rhythm section of Wicked Game. I'm a bit worried that the song kind of "floods itself" (for lack of a better phrase) with all the slow tempo soaring vocal melodies. But I also see that as important for establishing the "distant qualities" that you point out. As if the song is surrounding you from every direction -- some textures pulling you and some textures pushing you.

[AshvinP]

I genuinely enjoyed the songs, but maybe your impulse to create and share the music is also serving a higher purpose in the deepening of your spiritual life? It's another thing to think about.

That is absolutely the case, and kind of the point I was trying to get across. It is an alternative means of connecting with my inner-spirit, and one that is more purposeful to me at the moment. But admittedly, my biggest reason for sharing this now is because I am off work with COVID 19, and looking for something to do, haha.

I think, ideally, I would be interpreting my sensory perceptions through the lens of my divine knowledge for artistic creation, providing inspiration to actively further my divine knowledge, so I can more deeply integrate my spiritual sense with my other sense perceptions for artistic creation -- and repeat. The truth is that I probably just lack the competence do this and the will power to cultivate it at this phase in my life -- so I kind of go through extended phases where I alternate between creative/artistic pursuits, and then deep spiritual reflections. That's a good point about how we trick ourselves into thinking that it is a law of nature to improve ourselves, become complacent, and then descend -- repeat. The truth is there are laws of nature working here that do cause this to happen, but not directly. We don't lawfully alternate between self-improvement and self-degradation, but engage in an interplay between what we give to the world and what we get from the world. We may fall into a habit of alternating between self-improvement and self-degradation if we fail to ensure that we are nurturing our inner spirit with what is offered to us from the outer world, and nurturing the outer world with what we have cultivated from within. When our sense perceptual, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual faculties work competently in unison, we adopt an ideal pattern of experiencing that is more akin to what I refer to in the first sentence of this paragraph.

Yes that's definitely true - we could even say our willing-thinking habits become the 'laws of nature' through this incarnational rhythm. The plants also go through an involution-evolution rhythm, where they take from the world for their physical development and give back to the world the fruits of that development at the end of physical life. Yet they generally come back in the same form in the next cycle, so it is a completely repetitive rhythm. There is only creative evolution of form to the extent they are interwoven with the human kingdom and our ideas. We have that third factor which allows for a spiraling upwards in development - we take from the world, give to the world, and also transfigure ourselves and the world through our ideational capacity. We pursue a course of development, ideally, so that we can take less and less from the world, and simultaneously give more and more to it. We see this dimly reflected in the unconscious or semi-conscious development of human culture-civilization for several millennia. The impulse towards sacrifical Love has been seeded through that development.

Yet now we can no longer sit back and hope it grows through a sheer act of grace. Instead we need to consciously nourish and develop it, as you rightly say. Out of devotion and gratitiude, we can resolve that we will take less from the world and give more to it with every waking day. But of course the question becomes, how do we do that? Although it helps to continue the cultural tradition of creative artistic and scientific production, I think it's also clear that an even more energetic inner effort is needed for many individuals and collectives at this stage of our development. It all depends on our ideals, and it sounds like yours are very much aligned with creatively contributing to the Earth evolution in ever-more transfigurative ways. Actually, in a more esoteric sense, we could say we already do this more creative contribution during sleep and between death-rebirth, only we don't explicitly remember it with our physical consciousness. The path of higher development, of spiraling the poles together, is becoming more conscious of what we are already doing in the sub- and supra-conscious.

That activity is what precipitates into our creative impulses during waking life as well. We rarely stop to ask, for ex., why exactly we should be driven to paint, play music, write poetry in life. Could it be that it comes from our experiences of living colors, tones, and speech while asleep? These are very deep riddles which we can start to explore and unravel. Then we begin to discern the meaning we experience while awake with such activities is only a dim shadow of more profound meaning which can be made more conscious. Our more wise Self during dreams/sleep can 'incept' certain impulses which unfold during waking life and lead us closer to itself. Is it a complete accident that you got Covid-19 and decided to share the music here, where we are now discussing what it could all mean at a deeper spiritual level? Maybe, but I highly doubt it. Actually since you mentioned the illness, I feel obliged to also share this quote with you (of course it may not apply at all in this case, but it's a deep principle worth considering):

Man has to take forward leaps in life, and he has to learn from experience that he has done something in a one-sided way. Now he is born again with the fruits of what he has learnt, but he lacks the possibility of developing himself in such a way that everything can come to expression, and what he has learnt from life can really be carried into effect. A man might for instance have received a certain degree of initiation into the great mysteries of existence in one of his incarnations, and when he is born again these forces that were planted in him want to come to expression. But let us assume it has been impossible for him to develop certain forces which could produce the necessary harmony in the organism. At a certain point in his life it will inevitably happen that what he previously learnt wants to come to expression. But an essential organ is missing. So what happens? An illness has to occur that could have a very, very deep-seated karmic cause. And again part of the organism has to be destroyed and rebuilt afresh. And by means of this rebuilding of the organ the soul senses which are the right forces in the other direction, and it takes this feeling along with it. When this is acquired this way, or even through initiation, it usually happens that the fruits show themselves in that same incarnation. That is, an illness occurs in the course of which the soul experiences what it lacks. And then, for instance, something can take place immediately after the illness that otherwise would not have been achieved. It could be that a person would have been able to reach a certain stage of enlightenment in his previous life, but he could not get through to part of his brain, and he did not develop the strength to break through the resistance. Then this offending organ must inevitably be destroyed, and a severe illness can result. Then comes the rebuilding, whereby the soul becomes aware of the forces necessary to overcome the blockage, and the awaited enlightenment ensues. The process of suffering an illness can definitely be regarded as a sign that something important is to follow.

[Federica]

Is it a complete accident that you got Covid-19 and decided to share the music here, where we are now discussing what it could all mean at a deeper spiritual level? Maybe, but I highly doubt it.

Grant has now come back to the forum because I have invited him back whatever "because" might mean

GrantHenderson,
I know that the overview of the General Discussions page gives the impression that I'm monopolizing every topic, but this is actually not true, one can open any thread and see it directly. I was just thinking it would be good to have you participating specifically in this new thread.

[AshvinP]

Is it a complete accident that you got Covid-19 and decided to share the music here, where we are now discussing what it could all mean at a deeper spiritual level? Maybe, but I highly doubt it.

Grant has now come back to the forum because I have invited him back whatever "because" might mean

GrantHenderson,
I know that the overview of the General Discussions page gives the impression that I'm monopolizing every topic, but this is actually not true, one can open any thread and see it directly. I was just thinking it would be good to have you participating specifically in this new thread.

Oh yeah, I remember seeing that comment and being confused as to why it was written. I thought maybe it had to do with a private exchange?

Of course, Grant also has to be impelled to check the forum page for alerts and take up your invitation

Anyway, to be clear, I'm not trying to imply any specific Karmic knowledge here. Only highlight the general principle that we are often guided by a wiser Self throughout our incarnation, who has more complete information and can bring us back to the deeper spiritual life when we most need it, when we are unaware of that need in our surface consciousness. It will never force us to pursue the opportunity thus presented, though - that must be done in complete freedom.

[Federica]

Hey Frederica, I appreciate your feedback. I can see how you drew comparisons to both those songs, especially with the vocal melodies and the rhythm section of Wicked Game. I'm a bit worried that the song kind of "floods itself" (for lack of a better phrase) with all the slow tempo soaring vocal melodies. But I also see that as important for establishing the "distant qualities" that you point out. As if the song is surrounding you from every direction -- some textures pulling you and some textures pushing you.

I'm not a musician, however my impression is, it's balanced, there's no flood risk, and the conclusion is your embankment. If anything, it seems almost like there are two different songs in the song. The most original one is your starting point, then, when you move on to elaborating, that's when you take a 'radioheady' direction, first at about 1:48, with their typical slightly dragging progression with slightly rocky traits.

[Federica]

Is it a complete accident that you got Covid-19 and decided to share the music here, where we are now discussing what it could all mean at a deeper spiritual level? Maybe, but I highly doubt it.

Grant has now come back to the forum because I have invited him back whatever "because" might mean

GrantHenderson,
I know that the overview of the General Discussions page gives the impression that I'm monopolizing every topic, but this is actually not true, one can open any thread and see it directly. I was just thinking it would be good to have you participating specifically in this new thread.

Oh yeah, I remember seeing that comment and being confused as to why it was written. I thought maybe it had to do with a private exchange?

Of course, Grant also has to be impelled to check the forum page for alerts and take up your invitation

Anyway, to be clear, I'm not trying to imply any specific Karmic knowledge here. Only highlight the general principle that we are often guided by a wiser Self throughout our incarnation, who has more complete information and can bring us back to the deeper spiritual life when we most need it, when we are unaware of that need in our surface consciousness. It will never force us to pursue the opportunity thus presented, though - that must be done in complete freedom.

No, there's never been any private exchange.
The reason I wrote that is simply that that thought came to mind.
Sure, I'm certain we all agree with the general principle, and you have highlighted it in great terms, as always.

[GrantHenderson]

Hey Frederica, I appreciate your feedback. I can see how you drew comparisons to both those songs, especially with the vocal melodies and the rhythm section of Wicked Game. I'm a bit worried that the song kind of "floods itself" (for lack of a better phrase) with all the slow tempo soaring vocal melodies. But I also see that as important for establishing the "distant qualities" that you point out. As if the song is surrounding you from every direction -- some textures pulling you and some textures pushing you.

I'm not a musician, however my impression is, it's balanced, there's no flood risk, and the conclusion is your embankment. If anything, it seems almost like there are two different songs in the song. The most original one is your starting point, then, when you move on to elaborating, that's when you take a 'radioheady' direction, first at about 1:48, with their typical slightly dragging progression with slightly rocky traits.

In the first section, I wanted to evoke the sensation of straddling the edge between life and death by use of the “heartbeat” pattern percussion, and the subtle vocal melodies. Then more percussive elements kind of replicating a heartbeat are gradually layered to each bar with increasing frequencies to evoke the sensation of slowly getting ready to awaken. Then the second section you refer to is where the song fully awakens. I just realized that I need to turn up the volume on the drums to emphasize this intended effect.

[GrantHenderson]

I genuinely enjoyed the songs, but maybe your impulse to create and share the music is also serving a higher purpose in the deepening of your spiritual life? It's another thing to think about.

That is absolutely the case, and kind of the point I was trying to get across. It is an alternative means of connecting with my inner-spirit, and one that is more purposeful to me at the moment. But admittedly, my biggest reason for sharing this now is because I am off work with COVID 19, and looking for something to do, haha.

I think, ideally, I would be interpreting my sensory perceptions through the lens of my divine knowledge for artistic creation, providing inspiration to actively further my divine knowledge, so I can more deeply integrate my spiritual sense with my other sense perceptions for artistic creation -- and repeat. The truth is that I probably just lack the competence do this and the will power to cultivate it at this phase in my life -- so I kind of go through extended phases where I alternate between creative/artistic pursuits, and then deep spiritual reflections. That's a good point about how we trick ourselves into thinking that it is a law of nature to improve ourselves, become complacent, and then descend -- repeat. The truth is there are laws of nature working here that do cause this to happen, but not directly. We don't lawfully alternate between self-improvement and self-degradation, but engage in an interplay between what we give to the world and what we get from the world. We may fall into a habit of alternating between self-improvement and self-degradation if we fail to ensure that we are nurturing our inner spirit with what is offered to us from the outer world, and nurturing the outer world with what we have cultivated from within. When our sense perceptual, spiritual, emotional, and intellectual faculties work competently in unison, we adopt an ideal pattern of experiencing that is more akin to what I refer to in the first sentence of this paragraph.

Yes that's definitely true - we could even say our willing-thinking habits become the 'laws of nature' through this incarnational rhythm. The plants also go through an involution-evolution rhythm, where they take from the world for their physical development and give back to the world the fruits of that development at the end of physical life. Yet they generally come back in the same form in the next cycle, so it is a completely repetitive rhythm. There is only creative evolution of form to the extent they are interwoven with the human kingdom and our ideas. We have that third factor which allows for a spiraling upwards in development - we take from the world, give to the world, and also transfigure ourselves and the world through our ideational capacity. We pursue a course of development, ideally, so that we can take less and less from the world, and simultaneously give more and more to it. We see this dimly reflected in the unconscious or semi-conscious development of human culture-civilization for several millennia. The impulse towards sacrifical Love has been seeded through that development.

Yet now we can no longer sit back and hope it grows through a sheer act of grace. Instead we need to consciously nourish and develop it, as you rightly say. Out of devotion and gratitiude, we can resolve that we will take less from the world and give more to it with every waking day. But of course the question becomes, how do we do that? Although it helps to continue the cultural tradition of creative artistic and scientific production, I think it's also clear that an even more energetic inner effort is needed for many individuals and collectives at this stage of our development. It all depends on our ideals, and it sounds like yours are very much aligned with creatively contributing to the Earth evolution in ever-more transfigurative ways. Actually, in a more esoteric sense, we could say we already do this more creative contribution during sleep and between death-rebirth, only we don't explicitly remember it with our physical consciousness. The path of higher development, of spiraling the poles together, is becoming more conscious of what we are already doing in the sub- and supra-conscious.

That activity is what precipitates into our creative impulses during waking life as well. We rarely stop to ask, for ex., why exactly we should be driven to paint, play music, write poetry in life. Could it be that it comes from our experiences of living colors, tones, and speech while asleep? These are very deep riddles which we can start to explore and unravel. Then we begin to discern the meaning we experience while awake with such activities is only a dim shadow of more profound meaning which can be made more conscious. Our more wise Self during dreams/sleep can 'incept' certain impulses which unfold during waking life and lead us closer to itself. Is it a complete accident that you got Covid-19 and decided to share the music here, where we are now discussing what it could all mean at a deeper spiritual level? Maybe, but I highly doubt it. Actually since you mentioned the illness, I feel obliged to also share this quote with you (of course it may not apply at all in this case, but it's a deep principle worth considering):

Man has to take forward leaps in life, and he has to learn from experience that he has done something in a one-sided way. Now he is born again with the fruits of what he has learnt, but he lacks the possibility of developing himself in such a way that everything can come to expression, and what he has learnt from life can really be carried into effect. A man might for instance have received a certain degree of initiation into the great mysteries of existence in one of his incarnations, and when he is born again these forces that were planted in him want to come to expression. But let us assume it has been impossible for him to develop certain forces which could produce the necessary harmony in the organism. At a certain point in his life it will inevitably happen that what he previously learnt wants to come to expression. But an essential organ is missing. So what happens? An illness has to occur that could have a very, very deep-seated karmic cause. And again part of the organism has to be destroyed and rebuilt afresh. And by means of this rebuilding of the organ the soul senses which are the right forces in the other direction, and it takes this feeling along with it. When this is acquired this way, or even through initiation, it usually happens that the fruits show themselves in that same incarnation. That is, an illness occurs in the course of which the soul experiences what it lacks. And then, for instance, something can take place immediately after the illness that otherwise would not have been achieved. It could be that a person would have been able to reach a certain stage of enlightenment in his previous life, but he could not get through to part of his brain, and he did not develop the strength to break through the resistance. Then this offending organ must inevitably be destroyed, and a severe illness can result. Then comes the rebuilding, whereby the soul becomes aware of the forces necessary to overcome the blockage, and the awaited enlightenment ensues. The process of suffering an illness can definitely be regarded as a sign that something important is to follow.

That’s an interesting point about how we develop illnesses within dysfunctional organs that are obstructing spiritual clarity in our phenomenal experiences in order to rejuvenate our spiritual outlook therefrom. If we understand our body as an apparatus woven out of our own will before we are born, then each organ is the physical manifestation of a specific function of our consciousness. If our spirit is tainted with sin, trauma, or anything that obstructs its own enlightenment, then it imposes that obscurity on the effectiveness of its physical formation. In fact, the physical form of and from our spirit solely represents the recognition of its own imperfections against the deepest levels of our soul. Our physical manifestation is simply our will to self destruct so these hidden layers of our soul can break free, and physical illnesses are just indications of deeper efforts to free the soul. I think this will is represented by our bodies' metabolic processes, which create disorder by energy conversion processes in order to maintain order and sustain the body. Ultimately, our will and metabolism alike are just the imposition of disorder to the body. A symptom of any physical illness is either a lack of, or too much metabolism in the damaged organ (And I would also consider it to be the cause of such).

As our spiritual self reaches the highest of ideals, it actually has more trouble weaving together a physical body that can sustain itself, because a physical body can no longer capture the essence of that spirit. But on the other hand, the spiritual self also becomes more capable of recognizing its own higher ideals, and so is more capable of weaving together a more energy efficient bodily system (one that does not need to metabolize as much in order to sustain itself). However, the ultimate goal of our repeated incarnations is to cultivate our spirit to a point where it cannot, and/or does not wish to further reincarnate. It wants to evolve towards pure love and pure energy that is one with the love and energy of the universe. That's my understanding anyways.

At any rate, yes it is no coincidence that I may periodically return to this forum. I have an impulse to cultivate my spirit and this forum provides spiritual teachings.