Becoming Great

It's easier today to become successful and more difficult to become great.
- Tanya Shatseva 

Photo by Jeremy Thomas on Unsplash

The artist's level of consciousness dictates what kind of art he or she is able to create.

Thanks to the internet and the social media it is relatively easy nowadays to reach many people, sell your stuff and become successful and sustain yourself that way. It wasn't this way for Vincent van Gogh. If people in his village weren't interested in his paintings (and sadly, they weren't), he couldn't make a sale and earn money. There might have been plenty of potential fans and collectors in other cities and countries that he never knew about. 

Nowadays reaching people across the globe is so much easier. But becoming great? Exceptional? That was in a sense easier when we didn't have mobile phones and internet. Or even watches. The incessantly busy and hectic life of the modern world makes it difficult to really develop yourself. 

Yes, there are classes and courses and tutorials enough to make you dizzy, but that is not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about learning a new technical skill. I'm talking about spiritual development and consciousness.

In fact, most artists are drowning in technical skills. I know I am. We tend to go wide instead of going deep and who could blame us? The demands of the society and the industry are insane. But sadly, while we bend over backwards adhering to these standards we remain spiritually underdeveloped. While technology and technique and knowledge of social media platforms keep us successful, we never become truly great artists. We simply don't have time to explore depth of our creativity and then we forget or stop caring, because we don't see anyone else doing it. 

A shallow career can never feel fulfilling. Artists (as well as all people) need development and getting stuck in one place will make us feel… well, stuck. For the rest of our earthly lives. 

The way to become great is to navigate a narrow path. It is to put quality over quantity, but at the same time respecting the natural rhythm of creation. It is to connect to the deepest purpose of being an artist and grounding yourself in that purpose every day. It is to think about death which helps you shed all the unimportant distraction that tries to lead you astray and fill your head with all kinds of stuff that keeps you stuck and chasing things that don't add to your wellbeing. 

Becoming spiritual but not letting it become an ego thing and a distraction.

---

As per usual, this post was inspired by something I saw on the internet. This time it was a YouTube video "What is Art?" by actualized.org.

And here's the video where Tanya Shatseva says the quote that I used to begin this post: