Jeff Carreira: Thank you so much for meeting with me Chris, because your work on what you call the spiritual artist felt like a perfect fit for the exploration we were conducting in this issue. I would like to start our conversation today by asking what you understand a spiritual artist to be.

Christopher J. Miller: My definition of a spiritual artist has definitely evolved as I journeyed forward and started writing my book on the topic and becoming more aware of my process. Over time, I've realized that a spiritual artist is a person that focuses on the spiritual plane. For me, what defines a spiritual artist is how they focus on the spiritual plane, and how that affects what they create. My target audience is often artists and creative people, but what I actually teach could be applied to any living spiritual being, which we all are.

Jeff Carreira: What I hear you saying is that a spiritual artist is someone whose focus of attention is on the spiritual dimensions of being, and that is consciously or unconsciously informing and shaping the expression of their art. Is that right?

vWe are all creators. It doesn’t matter what we create; we're all creators. The question is, are you a conscious creator? Are you aware of what you're creating? Are you tuned in? Are you intuitive, or are you simply creating by default? A spiritual artist, to me, is someone that realizes that there is an intention that has to be brought to the creative process, and that intentionality must be part of your approach to the creative process if you are going to get the most from it.

Jeff Carreira: How would you describe your own creative process? How are you bringing intention into the process?

Christopher J. Miller: I never really watched my process until about five years ago. I was on a week-long retreat with an art mentor of mine in Santa Fe, and one day she asked us to watch our process. Up until that point, I was probably what you would call an unconscious artist. I just created. I would put materials on the canvas. In following her instruction, I stepped back, and not only did I watch how I applied the paint, which brushes I used, and how I layered a piece of art on canvas, but I also looked at the spiritual side of my process. How was I managing my thoughts and my consciousness while I created? How was I managing my emotions, my belief systems, and my judgments? All those things come into play.

In my book, The Spiritual Artist, I break it down. Each chapter is about one way that I focus on entering that process. I'll share the most obvious with you. What I noticed most when I examined my process was that when I paint, there is a lot of judgment. As an art teacher, I see that in my students. They start putting marks down on paper, and immediately, their little self, their ego self, starts critiquing. Is it a pretty mark? Is it good enough? Does it represent who I am? Does it show that I'm experienced? When they go into that place of judgment, they step away from the actual process. For me, the process is being in the place that Eckhart Tolle calls “the watcher”, and from there you just put the paint down and dance with it, and react to it without the judgment, without the belief systems that we often bring to our process.

Jeff Carreira: That makes complete sense. If you are judging every step, you won’t ever create something unexpected because you're filtering everything through what you already think it should be. The best you can do is create what you think should be, and the deeper, more mysterious, creative potentials that could emerge will be blocked.

Christopher J. Miller: Exactly.

Jeff Carreira: In your book you write about the art of a spiritual artist coming from a universal spirit. Can you speak a little bit to how you see that higher self, or universal spirit?

Christopher J. Miller: I had two really traumatic experiences when I was younger. I was very religious. I was raised Catholic, and I went to a Catholic high school, and was very serious about it. I actually taught CCD, Catholic education, and I was very passionate. But when I got older, I started realizing that I was gay. I would go to church, and the priest would be up there and saying all sorts of horrible things about being gay. I couldn't bring it together. I thought, wait a minute, I'm the guy that volunteers to paint the rooms and teaches the second graders and is doing all kinds of activities. How can I be wrong just because of one subtle thing? You're just attracted to the same sex instead of the opposite sex. Other than that, I think your humanity is intact. And so I walked away from the word God.

And at the same time, when I was about 12, I had a traumatic experience with an art teacher who shamed me in front of a room full of about a thousand people about my art skills. And so I walked away from art, too. I didn't go back to painting until I was in my 30s, and that's when I started letting myself explore it again. I found that when I was painting I went into a state of flow. Of course flow states don’t only happen when painting. They can happen when you're running, cooking, or anything you do that makes time slip by. That’s a flow state. In those states I realized that I wasn't there, and at the same time, I wasn't there alone. There was a voice, a presence, coming through me and I was actually co-creating. So I considered that voice to be the source of all things. I realized that some people use different names for it. So I really try to stay away from naming it God, Buddha, Muhammad, but it's all of those. It's the spirit, the realm of one mind where everything is connected. And so I feel like I'm dancing with that. So when we let our belief systems or our judgements get in the way, we stop that flow of a power that sees far beyond what we could even imagine.

Jeff Carreira: I love that you brought in flow because it completely mirrors my experience of writing. When I write I am generally in a flow state. It's very spontaneous. When this happens to any of us we tap into a mind that's much larger than our knowing mind. I believe that every human endeavor can be taken to the point of artistry when it is done in flow with a higher being. In one of my books I used the example of a surfer named Jeff Clark who discovered the big wave called Maverick off of San Francisco. I call people like Jeff artists of possibility, which I believe is very similar to a spiritual artist. For years he would surf that wave almost everyday by himself, because it was so far offshore that you couldn't see it, and nobody he talked to believed it existed. He finally convinced a couple of guys from Santa Cruz to go check it out with him. Very soon the shoreline was crowded with people wanting to surf that wave.

What Jeff exemplified was what it means to have faith in a vision. You find so many artists who don't get any recognition, but they're so committed to their art that they keep doing it. I deeply admire that level of dedication to the craft, and would love to hear you speak about how you see dedication to the craft of art.

Christopher J. Miller: What you just mentioned is interesting, and I love how life always leads you to exactly what you need. If you have a certain issue in your life, suddenly it comes up for you to look at in other ways. I just did a two-month show here in Dallas. It was a solo show of 24 large paintings called Love Roller Coaster. For me, it was an expression of love on canvas. I took it down yesterday, and while a lot of people did come, I don't know if I had as many as I visualized. I wanted more. I've been processing that feeling of the completion of a project that we put a lot of energy into. It's like writing a book, sending it out, and some people buy it, but not as many as you want. You feel that the book is good enough to deserve more readers. In these moments what I try to focus on, and what I teach my students to focus on, is the experience of writing the book, or creating the art, or in my most recent experience of putting a show together.

I had an incredible experience creating the show. I listened to beautiful songs that were all very emotional for me. They were about all the realms of love, whether it's good love or bad love. And when I created the art I can honestly say that I entered a flow state in the process of creation for each painting. I totally gave up my little Chris self, my little ego self, and entered that higher place and painted with a higher power.

So from that point of view, of course it was successful. When we focus on getting noticed or convincing other people, we are focusing on the material plane. We want to be seen, and we all have that tendency. To some extent we are all looking for recognition. When I fall into that place, I remind myself that I am a spiritual artist, and I refocus on the spiritual. What happens is not for me to decide. That's for the spirit to decide. That's for God to decide. Sometimes you might reach one person who truly digests what you did, and they share it. We don't know the results, and I try not to focus on the results. I try to focus on whether or not it was a good experience. I want to know if I felt the emotion in it. Was I deeply connected to the process? Did I connect to spirit? Did I dance?

It's funny how you brought that up, because I've been wrestling with it recently. I'll be honest with you, I'm human. And when I get up in the morning, I wonder if I wasted all that time and effort. I ask myself if it was really worth it. All I know, and what I'll tell your readers, is just do it. Just be in the state of a spiritual artist. Be present. Feel the connection, let go of the belief systems that are holding you back, and do it.

Jeff Carreira: I love what you're saying because we're all human, and we're creators, and we all need affirmation. If you created things and nobody at all noticed, you'd have to fall into some degree of self-doubt. But the reason I love examples of dedicated artists is because, as you said, they don’t let it stop them. There's a Portuguese poet I love named Fernando Pessoa. He wrote his entire life with minimal affirmation. Anais Nin, whom I also love, wrote with very little affirmation until the end of her life. They both wanted affirmation. The fact that people weren't recognizing their art was an issue for them their whole life. But their devotion to their art was stronger than their need for affirmation. Their desire to do art wasn't conditional on affirmation. They were going to do it anyway.

I think that many of us, and maybe all of us, will discover that there's an artistic, creative spirit alive in us. Afterall, the essence of life is creative. As you said, if we remove the obstacles, we would find our creative spirit, because that is what human beings do – we create.

Christopher J. Miller: Right, exactly. Going back to your surfer story, he did it because he had to. It was the feeling of the wave. It was his feeling when he was riding that wave and connecting and trusting his intuition and trusting the spirit within him. That's what I would encourage anybody to pay attention to if they’re feeling a lack of validation. It's human, we're going to feel a lack of validation sometimes. But just focus on the experience of the ride.

Jeff Carreira: I wanted to ask you another question because you are a painter and an artist,, but you also put a lot of energy into supporting other spiritual artists. How did that happen? What makes you want to support other people in discovering their own spiritual artistry?

Christopher J. Miller: When I share in classes or on retreats, I mix spirituality with painting. I try to teach people to discover what I call your creative DNA. I can't tell you why I do it, except for that it's part of me. It's just innate – I'm a teacher. I don't consciously try to be a teacher. I find that I'll start talking to people, and I see that I can connect with them when I share ideas. I just turned 60 years old, and I'm learning to just go with it. Let's talk about trusting the divine, which to me means moving into divine intelligence and letting go. Two years ago I stopped telling God what I wanted to be, and started letting God tell me what I am. I am just letting go and listening. I teach people to listen to what's coming to them.

Jeff Carreira: I use the term “Artist of Possibility” for someone whose art is expanding what's possible. Some art shows us the best of what's possible, but some art actually expands what's possible. It shows us things that could be, but aren’t yet. It expands the future. Before technological innovation, for example, there are often artistic movements that explore possibilities metaphorically before they are concretized in technological innovations.

I feel like what you're doing as a spiritual artist, in supporting other spiritual artists, and hopefully what I'm doing in a different way, will help our world in crisis. Because fundamentally I think what we have is a crisis of imagination. We just don't have an expansive enough imagination to imagine our way out of our problems. I feel like the kind of work we do is expanding the potential of human imagination, and allowing people to embrace more of the wisdom that lies beyond what we already know. It allows us to tap into the imagination of a higher mind.

Christopher J. Miller: I love that. When we have a problem, I would encourage anyone to go into the spiritual realm because you will find more solutions and more flexibility there than in the physical realm. The physical realm is limited by lack and friction, but the spiritual realm is full of opportunities for new growth and new discoveries. Imagine driving down the street and running out of gas. Your instinct is to go be limited by the material. From that perspective, the obvious solution is to walk to the nearest gas station three miles down the road. You get out of the car and you start walking to the gas station. But if you took a moment to consider options, you might realize that there is a friend you could call to bring you gas.

We're trained to look for the answer in our material circumstances, but there is more possibility in the realms of ideas, or what I heard Deepak Chopra call the gap of pure potentiality. When I go to the easel, or into the art studio, I give up control, let go of my belief systems, and just be in that space of pure potentiality. I call it a state of love. I'm in a state of love with spirit. The longer I can extend that time, that gap of pure potentiality, the more things can come in, and more solutions come into play. It's a practice to just keep being in that place of ideas. The spirit is full of possibilities.

Jeff Carreira: Going back to your example of the car and running out of gas. If you wait long enough in the space of pure potential, you might even realize that there's a higher reason you ran out of gas. Maybe you were supposed to go for a walk and discover something. Maybe someone was going to come to help you that you were supposed to meet. Maybe there's more going on than what we currently imagine.

Christopher J. Miller: Yes, if you step back and look at the spiritual realm you might find that there was some negative future that you avoided by being delayed.

Jeff Carreira: How many of the truly life-changing things that happened to any of us were predictable beforehand? They just happened. We don’t make them happen. But we do have to be available for them when they do. I would like to say that being a spiritual artist means being available for revelation. It means being available for something to show up that you couldn't have predicted or manufactured, that came to you from somewhere you can't understand, but was given to you as a gift to be expressed in the world. And being available also means being willing to be the vehicle of expression.

Christopher J. Miller: I agree, and that takes us back to how we started this whole conversation. You asked, how did I get here? I just let go. That’s how you get anywhere, you just let go, and start listening instead of directing.