I was especially interested in some of the musicians at the Anchorage Folk Festival who had succeeded in taking a complete stance within a musical tradition and conveying that fully and completely to the audience.  They certainly seemed to have the intention of giving themselves completely to the task and to serving the audience (and also, perhaps, to something greater than the audience sitting in the seats).  There was the sense that they had made a choice and put everything into bringing forth that choice with a sense of joy-filled service.

To me, this is art at its peak. It transcends self-gratification and becomes conscious surrender to something more than one’s small self,  no matter what it takes. The motive, at least for that part of one’s existence, is to surrender to the whole.  When these musicians played, they were, to me,  an example of the part surrendering back to the whole– through self-effort.

I was then, as a listener, able to experience my own inner ecstasy.

At some point on the path of inner evolution, it seems that one does learn to give oneself completely to one’s actions. The actions do not need to be creative or artistic. They can be the actions of everyday life. And, in fact, we must come to the point where we do do this for every tiny action in our lives (if we wish to experience our true wholeness).