Distorted Reality & You

It's my understanding that a number of religions use meditation/focused awareness to usher celebrants into a higher state of being.

Saying a rosary is meditation - repetitive words, stillness, focusing inward and upwards to a perceived greater/larger. Meditation is prayer through releasing - reaching in and through to a freedom, to a wider space.

All of this effort, relaxation, focus, stillness, repetition- all aiming towards enlightenment, a state of being above and beyond our normal selves.

I get that writing. Not so much singing, since I really have to be present and accounted for when singing. I know most folks think of voice as effortless, but for me it's a lot of split second decisions and keeping the pot stirred so the bottom doesn't burn.

When I'm writing, things expand. Sitting in a coffee house with the world milling around, I apply pen to paper and time slows. Hours can slip by, light distorts, sounds fade away and I'm in a floating bubble of deliberate movement. Pitch pipe softly sounds, the click of the triangle edge on the table, pen scratches.

So is art religion then? Music nourishes me, renews my sense of amazement, brings me peace. When I write music, I move into a state of expanded awareness. After all this time writing I suppose I've become quite adept. Is the distorted experience of time that occurs when moments get tuned and turned into math the same as the reported bliss of the mystic?

Perhaps the biggest difference between art and religion is that artists usually suck at large group organization.

Inherent in art is point of view. All art is shaded by the physical body of the artist - their eyesight, their sense of sound, their body space. This gives every worshipper at the temple of art a different line of sight towards their own viewed goal. Organized religions have a common goal - art insists on individual targets.

I wonder though if everyone was able to sit down at a table in a coffee house with pen and paper and feel themselves unravel at the edges and expand out out out...