Phoenix
by Dale J. Sprague
White Papers
Ego Sleeps
The art is beyond normal reach. Stand and stretch as hard as one may, it can never be grasped by what mere ego can apprehend. There has never been any question about it. The ego must go to wherever it goes when one sleeps. From the ego's point of view, execution of subjective art is effected only in sleep.
The passion for beauty or insight is great. Passion for the ego is considerably less so. As the production of art begins, the ego vanishes..it sleeps, which enables a deeper, more penetrating light to gather and apprehend. What is produced is utterly without sun'lit ego.
Yet, after the work is completed, after all objects for the body of the art have been apprehended, and its streaming captured to satisfaction in words, and laid bare..after all this, it's limpid and fresh in the light for the first time.
The ego returns, and gapes upon it..awed..initially like it is some wondrous alien, heavy, mysterious, more precious than gold. The ego reads and re'reads, and re'experiences it until the light becomes vivid and familiar. At that point of epiphany, the ego knows what to do, and proceeds carefully to clean, refine..make implicit or explicit as necessary. What emerged from the depths, what ego sacrifices itself for, and allows to be, brought into the ego's world all it could ever want...purpose, value so profound or so beautiful that its sacrifice only becomes easier and easier with each for the next, regardless of how difficult the work may be. Its value is known, its difficulty is not.
The ego refines the art, enhances it..but knows not from where it came.