Dear Friends,
Earlier this month, I gave a 30-minute presentation titled "Awakening The Artist" at The Red Door addressing the importance of restoring a sense of sacred service to the arts. The talk is an introduction to a more in-depth exploration of principles and practices outlined in the book I’m writing: Awakening the Artist (to be published in 2011 through Michael Wiese Productions)
Download Audio
2010.01.10_AwakeningTheArtist.com.mp3
(40MB MP3)
Or play now…
Download Slideshow
2010.01.10_AwakeningTheArtist.com.odp
(31MB OpenDocument Presentation)
NOTE: The first few minutes of slides have been removed to comply with copyrights related to the web. The audio lines up with Slide 2 at 4:30.
Here is a transcript of the first few minutes of the presentation, where I read an excerpt from the Introduction of Awakening The Artist:
Visionary, creative, and innovative people of ALL kinds bind human society and spirit together in a web of cultural influence that impacts every aspect of our lives.
We can no more dictate art’s form than we can predict what we will dream tonight. However, we can consciously bring ourselves into alignment with the “Inspired Mind” from which the right message always flows at just the right time …even if that message is simply “breathe, wait.”
If we are to survive and thrive throughout the monumental cultural and environmental transition in which our planet is currently engaged, humanity must become aware of — and act out of — our inherent spiritual nature. My work is to perpetuate the awareness that the creative community can activate this in our species en masse.
The key is in understanding the potency of our dreams, fantasies, and visions to provide us with the answers we are seeking as a species trying to “grow up.”
These dreams, fantasies, and visions bridge the sleeping/deeper brain wave states with the limited consciousness of our normal waking states …they are the primary source of the most elementary and universal themes of our myths, our religious stories, basically of our deep collective wisdom.
This realm of consciousness may be proactively accessed using time-proven methods of inner exploration; i.e. meditation and the like. And we can turn to these methods for solutions to some very difficult challenges in this time of global crisis.It is the awakened artist, the conscious creative, who acts as a “mystic with a craft” …an analogy coined by the dancer/choreographer Jean Erdman Campbell. A mystic is trained to access the wisdom of the universe, but it is a very private experience. The artist, however, is trained to articulate these insights in a manner that is accessible by the entire culture.
[GRAPHIC: Earth animated transitions fill screen ... presentation picks up at Slide 5 ]
I welcome comments…
Be well,
m
P.S. A big THANK YOU to whole The Red Door crew for being such great hosts and special thanks in particular to these guys for their contributions to the audio recording: Ken Ludwig (intro), DJ Brett Starr (background music), Sid Riggs (recording), Marc Billard (a/v tech)
spiritual urban tribe …
church without religion
Message . Movement . Meditation
…with the best DJs in town.
–
Manny Otto
There is an almost sensual longing for communion with others who have a larger vision. The immense fulfillment of the friendships between those engaged in furthering the evolution of consciousness has a quality almost impossible to describe.
—Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
check out…
mythosforcreatives.com
awakeningtheartist.com
Tags: Awakening the Artist
Your second paragraph is perfect. Thank you for sharing your ideas and vision.
Thank you, Leinaala. I appreciate the feedback.
I looked at your site …your creations are amazing!
m
Manny, you rock. After you got in touch I cruised on over here to check out your work, and you, my friend, are someone i look forward to getting to know better. I haven’t scoured the site just yet, but after listening to your “Awakening The Artist” presentation I’m quite interested in participating in the 12 week program you described.
Pursuing art and one’s unique, creative expression professionally is a challenge that essentially everyone acknowledges…but the challenge of freeing oneself from the constant barrage of conditioning the world has thrown at us since birth–and attuning to the larger web of life that unites and supports us–is one that is inherently difficult to grasp unless one is ready to witness it.
As one who has long sought to marry these two ideals I’ve come to see world’s of attachment and baggage I’ve unwittingly allowed to obscure my visions, and am currently undergoing a re-creational rebirth on all levels; the advent of ‘meeting’ you and discovering what you’re up to seems very timely indeed–a refreshing breath. I hope to, “make the cut,” as it were, and participate in what sounds like a cutting-edge program targeted at helping those of us seeking along this oft harrowing path.
All the best, and look forward to hearing from you!
E!
Hey Eric,
I’ll have more to say in my response to your email, but I want to acknowledge your posting with gratitude. I very much appreciate your reaction …not only from a personal level, but from the part of me that recognizes how much the earth and our species needs creative people to step up in this way. Artists who wake up and integrate their insights into their creations are capable of waking MANY others up in exponential numbers.
Be well,
m
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