Creativity As A Spiritual Practice

Unity of Birmingham Spiritual Writer's Club Series:

By Jacob Gross

Rick Rubin, one of the most influential music producers of our time, says that all art is an offering to God. In his book, The Creative Act: A Way of Being, he talks about creativity as a spiritual practice. Creativity as a way of being in the world. He talks about ideas emanating from the universe, and as artists we use “antennas” to catch these ideas. When I read through the book, his ideas deeply resonated with me. This spiritual way of looking at creativity is something I’ve always known deep down, but he gave me words to describe my experience. 

When we think of traditional spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, yoga, and chanting, we often think of it in a structured way. We often know what we are going to pray about and the style of prayer before we ever utter a word. We often meditate in a familiar style. If we do yoga and chants, there is often familiarity to that as well. While these disciplines are great, they can be rigid. Oftentimes when my practice gets broken and something new emerges, I grow. When I am creative with my spiritual life, I am able to become my divine nature more effortlessly. 

Art can offer a way to break up my practices. Before I ever tried meditation for the first time, I was making art and writing music. They offered me a devotional practice, where I could seek to better understand myself and others. Today, they are sometimes more effective at getting me into a flow than meditation is. They are almost guaranteed to regulate my nervous system and calm me down. While the process of creating art is unique, it also mirrors other traditional spiritual practices. 

Practices of prayer, meditation and yoga help me realise myself and help me cocreate my life with God. They facilitate my ability to live in the present moment and navigate mental illness. Creativity acts in a similar way to these spiritual disciplines. 

When I’m creating any piece of art, whether it be a painting, song, piece of pottery, or piece of writing, I am, in fact, stepping into God consciousness. God’s very nature is infinite and creative, and by creating I’m in accordance with God. I often forget about time and step into a flow state very similar to deep meditation. 

Writing stories and poems mirrors prayer for me. With prayer I get to be vulnerable  about what’s going well and what feels like a dumpster fire from hell. Poems can act as affirmative prayer for me. By writing truths I already know in a lyrical way, I’m able to plant messages deeper within my psyche. Short stories often feel like prayers for clarity. I pose a question, and then I have to live and observe what happens for an answer. 

Music and painting mirror meditation and yoga for me. There is certainly a skill component to these, like there is in yoga. Rick Rubin calls this area craft. The craft facilitates the expression. Both in yoga and playing music, I flow through the skill I’ve built up and absorbed in the movement of it. It is being here, now, experiencing what it is to be me. 

In short, creativity is unique, but also mirrors spiritual practice. It mirrors other “traditional” practices in its function, and offers a spiritual path to those who may not experience spirituality at all.

For me, it has been a gateway into understanding things like meditation and yoga, and helps me to co-create my life with God. 

Jacob Gross is a 22-year-old writer from Chelsea, Alabama, who enjoys painting, playing music, and reading. He studies English at Jefferson State, planning to transfer to UAB. He currently works as a Peer Mental Health Specialist at JBS. Jacob is deeply passionate about yoga and meditation, and his current work focuses on personal growth and transformation.