I’ll preface this post by signaling a trigger warning for those who are affected by new religious movements. The author of The Genius Potential Principal is Wulf Zendik, the deceased leader of Zendik Arts Farm, a now disbanded movement that has been flagged by various ex members as a sex cult. Like many NRMs, it seems to have been founded on good ideas that through time and power became corrupted. Zendik had utopian ideas about art making and living in a creative intentional community that resonate with MOHA principles, and so I’ve decided to include the following excerpt.
The Genius Potential Principal
Within each person there resides a unique combination of talents and attitudes—and no matter how small, how insignificant, how unrelated they may seem, there exists a particular task, craft, or art which exactly fits this unique combination of talents and attitudes.
When a person is made aware of and brought together with this particular task, craft or art, she or he has then found a work which may be done with a seemingly miraculous ease, a work which can be performed more efficiently than any other—a work at which they can take great joy and pride and at which that person is potentially a genius, a natural genius.
Even though this work may be of a nature that seems relatively insignificant, nonetheless it is profound: For it is a phenomenon that genius in any given area engenders the ability to achieve genius in all related areas—and it will be eventually understood that everything in the universe is related and that there are no creative activities that are insignificant.
In brief, the technique used to discover one’s unique combination of talents and attitudes is a process of exposure to, and training within, the crafts and arts—a process of observation and interrogation which will ultimately reveal the true depth of the individuals varied accomplishments, ambitions, creative urges and impulses, which previously might have been considered inconsequential, or were below the conscious level.
A society consisting of such people, people who are geniuses in their individual contributions, must grow into a most efficient and powerful, a Creative Society—an instructive and inspiring example to the world—a Genius Society. This is our objective at Zendik Farm.
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A belief in and an adherence to the Genius Potential Principle can result in that work and that struggle being progressively eased until, as we approach the higher degrees of Life Artistry, work and struggle are lessened and more and more become play and ease.
Such a metamorphosis, from struggle to ease, of course, can often be found in Art, found in that sublime state of well-being, that feeling of oneness and unity with Universal Reality, with Truth, that simple and uncomplicated feeling shared by All fine artists—for such artists are sublime in the areas of their work.
Fine artists are workmen, first and foremost, workmen. They have worked and struggled learning how to work. They have learned to work so well, so efficiently, so precisely that work has become play and that play in form and content has become sublime.
Everyone must work and often struggle.
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We must succeed Cozmically, and to do so we must be Life Artists.