spirituality

Art And Spirituality

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Last column I wrote about how my experiments with art parodying spiritual bullshit and grifty scams had been intriguing.  I understood how art was part of human spirituality,  how it our love of beauty and form and such was a way to powerfully communicate deep experiences.  This made me realize it was time to explore something I’ve been trying to put into words about art and spirituality – my parodic work helped me talk serious stuff, go figure.

Simply put, I think art is inseparable from spirituality as art is the bridge that connects us to the Universe, the Tao, The Big Picture, because it connects to our thoughts and emotions.

The universe is vast and complex, our world is complex, our lives complex – even one person is complex. We’re here trying to understand reality, move within it, live within it – but it’s so big. This is why I like the term “The Tao,” which is essentially “the source of all this and no we can’t really speak of it.”

I’m honest on my biases. But let me go on.

Now we humans, we may be small, but we are aware of how huge everything is. We model the universe, we understand it, we analyze it. To work with it, with each other, to survive, grow, explore, or even just goof off, we have to find ways to handle this great Giant Allness. Philosophy and religion and spirituality are ways to organize and naviate this world and live inside it. Obviously some philosophies and religions don’t work out that well, but you get the idea – a bad plan is still a plan.

How do you connect us to our philosophies and meditations and spells and the greater universe? Well, humans have art. Art is where thought and emotion and sensation all come together, where a single picture or image can lead us to the bigness out there. Art is connection

Art is the bridge between us and The Big Picture, the way we line everything up to really think and feel and experience the greater world. From lovely philosophical writings to complex spiritual charts, awe-inspiring gods and gorgeous meditation hangings, those symmetries and poetries help us connect.  Those synergies of emotion and word and sensation come together and we get something larger than us in a way we can handle.

Art both focuses us and helps us get bigger.

In fact, isn’t most of religion and spirituality really art in the end? Temples and diagrams, pithy advice books and statues of the gods? It’s trying to synthesize infinity and vastness in some way you can work with it, get it, think it, and feel it.

The vast powers of the world are easily understood and appreciated and interacted with in the form of a god. You want to understand the states of existence, but the diagram of the Six Realms makes it easier (and hey, six is a manageable number). We drape art over the universe to make it both comprehensible – and to take us soaring into realms greater than ourselves.

Art, that love of form and color and combination, is the perfect tool to connect us to the universe in all its vast living potential.

I think I managed to sum up my feelings. I’m sure I’ll have more to say, but at least I said it – dare I say, made some art of it.

-Xenofact

The Map Isn’t The Territory But It Is Art

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For those of you familiar with my art work, you know I love surrealism and I love mashup work. Re-purposing art, finding combinations, and following my inspiration to create strange yet somehow insightful work. There’s a spiritual element to it as I’ve written about before, this kind of art seems to open a connection to something deeper, to part of the real me.

One of the things I’ve gotten into lately (early 2025) is creating “spiritual maps” using my surrealist mashup approach. You know those kind of things, attempts to portray cosmology or ethics or meditation as some kind of chart, or map, or other visual aid? We’ve all seen them, ranging from breathtaking creation to confusing charts that leave us feeling less enlightened (or possibly ripped off).

Well, I make parodies of them, with ideas of “Reincarnation Shards” or the “Primordial Historical Omniworld.” Complex diagrams (using repurposed art) and strange terminology that look like what you’d expect, but are mostly nonsense.

There’s something compelling about these “Spiritual Maps.” Creating my own surreal, parodic ones is both creatively stimulating, but compelling. I have multiple books on religion and alchemy, some of which (like Taschen’s Alchemy and Mysticism) are JUST metaphysical diagrams – and those are incredible to look through. Humans like taking the ineffable and putting it into lines and colors and shapes – even if our goal is to just sell some crappy book on the mystical.

(Honestly, some spiritual grifters are probably at least having FUN when they create their bullshit).

And while doing my work, I have come to understand something about the human mind. We humans do love visual portrayals of things. We love the symmetry and the detail, we love the use of colors and shapes. When that thing is spiritual, there’s something even more to it, that sense of a piece of art that takes us to something bigger.

In the classic “The Tao That Can Be Spoken Isn’t The True Tao” I know we can’t portray the truth on maps. Maps are just that, they’re not the territory, they’re not reality. A map is at best a guide or an inspiration – but those art important. More importantly, they’re inspiring when they’re ART.

A spiritual map that’s a few lines might not be inspiring (I Ching aside). But when a spiritual map is artistic, if it has those colors and lines and extras and details that inspire, then it’s exceptionally powerful. Art, in it’s forms, is critical to spirituality as it helps us connect thought, emotions, and the universe together. A good spiritual map that is also art can be amazingly effective – as long as we don’t take it too seriously.

When I make these parody maps I find it compelling even when I know it’s nonsense. I get why they can be addictive and compelling.

It’s funny, having started doing some surreal parody of ridiculous and graffiti spirituality, I find myself having these deep insights. The maps matter to us as long as we “grasp them little,” and I can see how powerful they are – all while basically messing around.

Art and spirituality aren’t far apart, no matter the kind. Which I may address next column.

-Xenofact

The Messiah Is The Method

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I suppose I should put this subtly, but I won’t. How many people can claim to follow some religious figure and get it so terribly wrong. OK, I’m talking Christianity in America, but you get the idea. How do you point at someone as your role model, your savior, and then be so completely different from them.

And yes, there’s the usual stuff about scams, grifters, bullshit, opportunists, and assorted motivations people have. There’s the desire to use religion to justify your biases, etc. There’s plenty of utterly evil motivations to say one thing and do so completely the opposite.

But a-holes gonna a-hole.

However I think for sincere seekers these attempts to emulate a teacher miss something – they miss that sometimes you can think too much about the person you’re emulating. The mind you use to contemplate your teacher isn’t the teacher’s mind. In many cases, it’s better to just give it a shot at being like them and seeing how it works out.

If you’ve ever done breath meditation, there’s a strange thing about it – thinking about it really doesn’t help you get better. Instead you have to do it, moment by moment, bit by bit. Somehow the doing of the action – as imperfect as it may seem – helps you get into meditative breath than thinking about it. The you that meditates and the you thinking about it are not the same- and the you thinking about it is probably kinda distractible.

In emulating teachers, it’s all well and good to contemplate and analyze, but you have to get off your butt and actually be like them as best you can. You may not “get it.” You may not get it right. You should think and analyze, yes, but the key thing is to start being a better person and see how it goes. It’s no different than a meditation in this regard.

In America I think there’s this endless amount of books, analysis, discussion, and so on that misses that if you’ve got some great teacher (OK, look I AM talking Jesus mostly) then go be like him as best you can. If you’re not sure read about him, read your Bible (or whatever), read some unincluded scripture, but give it a shot.

You’ll learn as you go.

If you’re all stuck in your head then you’ll argue endlessly – or worse, find ways to convince yourself you’re already fine. If you spend all your time thinking about what to do right, then there’s a chance you’ll delude yourself into thinking you’re right. Sometimes you take your best shot, and sometimes it’s pretty uncomfortable to realize how unlike your role model you were.

The person that’s our great example (yeah, look, again I am talking Jesus) is the one you’re following. That is personal, that following and emulating is a meditation. Just go do it.

–Xenofact