On Work and Labour.

Work is not labour.

Work is done with the awareness that it is a necessity for the given Cause. Art is greater than the artist; work is necessary to unify the two.
The worker does not take days off. The worker has become what he or she does. To rest from work is to die. The Artist must always perform Art to survive. The Scientific Method pervades all that the Scientist does. The poet must have an ear constantly open to the wind.

The laborer is strange to the worker, and vice versa.
The laborer is not in service to the Ideal but to one's self. The laborer works with the intent of finishing; she flees at the earliest opportunity.
All that she does feels to the outsider as though it were procrastination.
There is a restlessness to Escape the very environment as though the 'work' were not a ritual that absorbed one totally.
Yet what does one escape to?
The stifling routine of labour, a crime in the world of all Creative Innovation, persists into one's rest. One becomes a divided being with all the inconsistencies of a fractured, undeveloped personality. If consistency of internal character and inconsistency of external circumstance are the ingredients of a worthwhile Life, then Labour is a crime against one's own Humanity, and thereby all Humanity.

Work is intrinsically rewarding. The untold Joys of the Quest for which work is a vehicle are a measure of what one has done for Humanity.

Labour offers the false hope of some reward in the future. Labour does not adapt; it stagnates.

Work is a push into the Unknown. Labour is a perpetuation of the Known. Work does not look down upon others, but only passes judgement in self-defense. Labour condemns all that challenge its paradigm, enviously and jealously.

Work reforms. Labour conforms. Work cannot be hammered into a routine because the intrinsic Order of the Ideal lies beyond all control.
The zeal of the worker is his piety. It is a service to all humans who can be inspired by it.

How does one work for a living? Clearly, the Artist must become so open in every valve and cartridge -- every Atrium -- that when one Being becomes concealed to him another waits to enter into relationship. The professional artist's life must be a polyamorous love affair. Others will criticise him, yet even more (especially those who labour) will criticise the monogamous artist, wandering about on call for a break-through that like any emergency may occur at any time.

It is imperative that the Artist stand his ground. The guilt of unemployment, one knows in all private honesty, is nothing to the Shame of having fallen short of one's potential.

dm.A.A.