Why a School?

The School of 3 Lights is rooted in a much older tradition of wisdom than the model of education that most of us are accustomed to.  Most artists who apply to the residency program have honed their skills in their respective disciplines long before they arrive at the door to this school, and many have already spent years or decades developing themselves.  In that respect, there are no classes in painting, composition, movement, writing or any other disciplines.  (This is not to say that the school is not waiting for the rare untrained artist whose inner burning and natural gifts demand that they enter the rigor of the residency program.)

There are, however, group gatherings that take place in the vast silence of this tradition of the sacred feminine.  Likewise, there are opportunities for one-on-one dialogue that might spark the inspiration for a new piece of work or a shift in direction.

Artists who are interested in what is offered must also be interested in failure.  Without failure, there is no room for wisdom to take hold of the traveler and lead her to a realm that is beyond the imagination as she has known it.

Those who journey through the door are not necessarily looking to become artists or to find themselves through creative work.  In many ways, artists lose parts of themselves as they step deeper into the mysteries. 

If there is no painting instructor, no method, no classes, and no degree or certificate program, why are we called a school?

A school is a gathering place, a place to wait for what arrives, what word is necessary, or what note completes or begins a composition. 

There have been various schools of art and philosophy that have emerged over time—places where consciousness was primary—where artists, scientists, thinkers, and those who traveled beyond the material world converged.  Consciousness has been dependent upon such schools and the artists within them. 

Consciousness cannot be seeded alone.  A school of fish travels as one, immersed in water. One must reach the limits of one’s own ability to travel the inner realms.  Guidance is needed to travel the depths.  Guidance is also imperative in order to learn to return from the inner worlds ethically, safely, and sanely with a message, a gesture, a song, a color, a fragrance, or a vision.  This is why we are a school.

The School of 3 Lights is for those who must experience what is behind the painting, what is unseen or invisible. We speak of training as a way to point to the process of firing that the artist undergoes.  Even with the artist’s prior experience, dedication, practice, and even outward success, the training that exists within this school is rigorous.  One agrees to this internal rigor.  Even more rigorous is the longing to return to the source.  For a few in this school, one’s work as an artist and one’s unbreakable focus on the source of life are connected, and a high frequency of love is required to guide such an individual on this narrow path. 

Like the creation process, much is hidden.  Artists, by nature, have always enlisted themselves in a kind of inner school. What would it be like if that inner school was shaped to receive the artist in the shape of that individual artist? What if a school has to do with the freeing of the imaginal world from the collective confines of what has defined art thus far? Many such questions surface during our time together. The school is shaped as the artists arrive.

How did the school form?

The School of 3 Lights was founded by Laura Clarke Stelmok, an acupuncturist and teacher of alchemical Taoist medicine of over 30 years, as well as the founder and program director of The Unseen Hand, an ancient mystical lineage.  Through her training under multiple teachers and her lived experience of being guided into the living map of the human being, Laura was welcomed into the inner worlds. 

Over time, artists of various disciplines began finding her, and with them she entered a deeper dialogue about the intersection between art and medicine. Conversations, projects, performances, and gatherings began to form organically—beginning with work in New York City.  Together—Laura and those artists who were drawn to her—learned, shared, argued, and enlisted themselves in a kind of pressurized transformative container (via various gatherings) in reverence to the unknown, the imagination, and a passionate inner longing.

In 2014, Laura began a 10-year project called the 3 Lights Project with a focus on purifying, freeing, and nourishing the Muse and the creative imagination for the purpose of consciousness.  The 3 Lights Project took place in New York City, Vermont, and Maine.  Laura wrote of the 3 Lights Project:  “Art. Medicine. Prayer. How to respond to the crisis of meaning in our time? We call these disciplines together at the core of each person. As an artist can give herself entirely to the blank page, as a physician can give himself entirely to the precision required to reach the cure, and as the ancient scribe vanishes into the mystery of Love, the 3 Lights awaken a passion and devotion to what lies behind life, what calls from the hidden depths.”

Participants included artists, physicians, and those seeking to travel past the illusions that hold us captive.  At the heart of the gatherings was the dissembling of deep structures of violence in the psyche of individuals and our civilization.  The work was dynamic, raw, psychological, and ultimately created a space for the School of 3 Lights to emerge.

You speak of training, teaching, and guidance.  If there are no instructors, who is offering the guidance? 

Out of Laura Clarke Stelmok’s dedication to artists and the Muse of our time, she created the Residency Program for the Arts.  In the residency, Laura engages with participants via group gatherings and also individually.  She also holds and leads meditation sessions, a practice in the silence of the heart.  The guidance is highly individualized and exists outside the realms of a conventional teaching/schooling environment.  Though Laura exists as a guide and provides visible teaching and an arena for discourse, much of the training occurs through the heart. 

Teaching weaves in and out, sometimes verbally and sometimes silently.  One artist spoke of silent and invisible guidance wafting into her studio like a fragrance.  Being touched by the currents of a tradition of love brings alive that which has been waiting.  Love warms and stirs that which has been frozen, bringing back color where it has been siphoned out. 

Laura writes: “What we in our current collective culture mean by artist has been severed from the sacred root of the vocation; yet our longing remains—a desperation that the fire itself be purified and trained in service to creation…The training is highly individualized, held within the container of a small group of similarly focused artists of all disciplines. The apprenticeship pulls upon the deepest yearnings of the artist’s vocation, requiring patience, stamina, courage and above all love.”

Click here to read more from Laura Clarke Stelmok about the School of 3 Lights: A Living Tradition.