EPPH - Every Painter Paints Himself

Your Self is My Self

You can find wisdom within all major religions (and an awful lot of nonsense too). Some of the Eastern traditions which openly concentrate on training the mind and looking inwards are particularly useful for understanding art in all media. That’s partly why the Beatles went to India in the 1960’s. Nowadays a growing number of people in the West are more aware that Christianity also has a long history of inner-focused spirituality which, though sometimes deemed heretical by the Church, was the basis of Christ’s teaching. Nevertheless you can find wisdom anywhere.

Swami Vivekananda (1863-1902), a Hindu monk, wrote “You cannot believe in God until you believe in your Self.” Christ said the same in other words. Why? All these traditions believe that God (which is just a way of personifying cosmic essence or energy) is inside you. You are made of God’s DNA. God is everywhere. He’s not an old man. So, if you don’t like who you are, you don’t like God. However, the swami didn’t write yourself but your Self. That change in case is life-changing as all true artists know. It's what they paint.

Yourself is who you think you are as an individual with all your personal characteristics. It includes your identity as a member of your family, your workplace, your industry, your nation, your town. Put simply, it is your ego and everything that differentiates you from others whether animals, plants, rocks or people. Your Self, in total contrast, is what unites you with others. Once you train the mind to bypass your ego you will find (or so it is claimed) the part of you that makes you truly human, that makes you the same as everyone else. Once you no longer see yourself as different, you will “love your neighbor as yourself” which means you will love your Self.¹ What Christ taught his disciples (but not the masses) is how to eradicate the ego. In trusting what remains, in discovering the importance of your inner Self, the one we all share, you will be good to your neighbor and believe in your Self. The swami put it well.

 

1. Among the characteristics that we all share is goodness. The word God comes from good. No-one is bad. Some do evil things because they have a skewed perception of the world and of their place in it but humans are, by definition, good. Once you accept this, you can continue to protect yourself from danger and negative events but you will think of evil-doers differently. You will see that they are just like yourself, looking at the world through their ego but with more wires twisted.