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Chapter XII: Astral Self-Expression2229
Chapter XII: Astral Self-Expression
It is one of the saddest features of earth-life that we find ourselves unable
to express to the fullest the creative impulse, the artistic urge, the striving
of the genius within us to unfold itself. After passing a certain place in the
scale of life, the evolving soul finds within itself the ever present urge of the
something within which is striving to express and unfold itself into objective
manifestation. It may be the craving to express in art, music, literature,
invention; or it may be the insistent desire to be at work remodeling the
affairs of the world nearer to the soul’s desire. In all of such cases, it is really
the creative impulse at work, striving to “make things” in objective form, in
accordance with the pattern or model within the soul. And toward such
expression, head, heart and hand is eager to work.
But, alas, very few are able to realize in earth-life one tithe of what the
soul dreams.
The artistic instinct is ever hungering for perfect expression, and yet it is
given but the crumbs that fall from the table. The soul is ever thirsting for
progress and achievement, and yet it is given but the few drops that trickle
from the fountain. If this one life were all—if these longings, cravings, desires,
and hunger and thirst of the soul, depended only upon the possibilities of
the one earth-life—then indeed would the moaning cry of the pessimists