Question: How can you keep your ego out of your art?

Sri Chinmoy: You have to be clever. If the ego comes, then think that you are one individual and your ego is another individual. This other individual is undivine, but you are mixing with him. You have got a piece of bread and you are sharing it with somebody whom outwardly you call a friend. But from your personal inner experience you know that this ego is really your enemy. Why should you share with somebody who does not have the same goal as you have? If somebody has the same goal, naturally you will share with that person. But the ego does not have the same goal. On the contrary, it will stand in your way when you try to run toward your goal. By feeding someone who has a different goal from you, you are only delaying your own progress and weakening your own strength. Your Beloved Supreme is waiting for you; He is crying, crying for you to reach Him. Yet you are giving half your strength to somebody who is really your enemy. The Supreme gives you the opportunity and the capacity to run the fastest, but you are sharing half your capacity with somebody who is running to another goal, to the goal of destruction. You have to feel at that time that he is your real enemy. If you feed a real enemy, then you are only delaying your own progress. If you see the ego in this way, then you can easily separate your creative capacity from ego.

From:Sri Chinmoy,Art's life and the soul's light, Agni Press, 1974
Sourced from https://srichinmoylibrary.com/al