Adam Yauch’s passing this week had me reflecting a lot about the impact he had on my life. He was the first person I met in the music industry who was, in a sense, “out of the closet” regarding his interest in spirituality. These days, its quite common to meet musicians who meditate or are in the program or have a spiritual practice of some kind. But in the early 90s, this was quite rare. As my own spiritual interests have become such a dominant theme in my life over the last 10 years, I now realize how much it helped to see someone else who was attempting to walk that path.

The connection between creativity and spirituality seem clear to me now. Every spiritual text seems to begin with a creative act. Whether its “the word” in the old testament, or the merging of Shiva and Shakti in the Vedas, all spiritual literature seems to be telling us off the bat that this very existence is in fact a creative one. This idea is reinforced throughout the ancient spiritual myths of all cultures, as “God” (or whatever they perceive that to be) performs miracle after miracle. And what are miracles other than acts of creative genius that lie outside the realm of possibility until they are witnessed? “Miracles” are events that redefine our sense of what is possible in the world. An act of creative genius does the same thing. Think of what we knew the guitar to be capable of once we saw Jimmy Hendrix play it. Or how our conception of what acting could be changed after Marlon Brando. Miracles are creativity in their purest, most undeniable form.

Quantum physics has taught us that we are all artists, actively creating the world around us simply by looking at it. Just as we find an electron where we look for it at a quantum level, we create our world through the perspective from which we view it. This simple but mind-blowing truth has led to many theories on “manifesting” and various systems of “creating the perfect life”.

So why don’t they work? 

The fact of the matter is that although, on paper, we should be able to create our world in any manner we like, we are incredibly bogged down in unconscious fears and belief systems that dictate the options we see available to us. Social conditioning, family pressures, religious mind sets, political dogma, sexual conditioning, all of this factors into the way we believe the world to be. And therefor the world we encounter. Life becomes more problem solving than creative. We have limited options, and are open to these being combined in a few various combinations of outcomes. But real, radical changes remains elusive. This is very depressing.

All spiritual paths, in their essence, ask us to admit, if only for a moment, that we might not know all the possible outcomes. We are asked to humble ourselves to something bigger. Anything bigger. Nature. Intuition. Art. Beauty. God. Whatever you want to call it. We are asked to admit there might be more options than we can conceive of from our limited perspective. Ideas that might be outside our realm of comprehension, that we might not be able to envision.

It might sound small. But the simple act of a moment of humility can have massive repercussions on our life. One moment of admitting we might not know best, that we are not in control, invites forces of intuitive intelligence into our being. Intuitive intelligence is the real source of creative genius. Of miracles. It makes unexpected choices, compete 180 degree turns. Choices that seem radical and possibly terrifying. When we look at the lives of artists we admire, people like Adam Yauch, they seem to make big changes at points of their lives. They might make a series of choices that seem irrational and crazy to outsiders, as their life moves in a new direction at an unexpected time. They are listening to the intuitive “knocking on the door” that asks them to perceive an an entirely new set of options or outcomes for their life.

This is the job of the artist. To make friends with a widening set of possibilities. To stop resisting change. To embrace radical inner progress. And we are all artists. That is the message of spirituality. We are all here to create. But to do that, we have to start getting good at humility and flexibility.

In this moment, lets collectively open up to something bigger. Anything. We don’t have to understand it. We dont even have to believe in it. The tiniest flicker of possibility is enough. And lets be grateful for people like Adam Yauch who have walked this path already. Knowing that others, like us, have been through it, can give us a courage we wouldnt otherwise be able to access.

Love

Ben