Question: Would you say that the role that art plays is to point to beauty that perhaps, at least momentarily, stuns the mind into abeyance; a taste of the eternal? Is the spiritual journey one of discovery and discernment of how we sustain ignorance? I love that the root of ignorance is to ignore!

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What points to beauty, which is beauty itself, is beyond the mind and shines/appears/manifests onto/as the mind, as beauty. Indeed, it silences the mind and brings it to the feet of the Master, to the feet of God in a moment of silent recognition.
It is an indirect glimpse into the absolute.
Although this glimpse does not slay the illusion, as you say, it is a taste of the eternal.
The spiritual journey, which is not a journey in the way the mind interprets it, is about freedom from the false.
In part it is a discernment. Discernment between the false and the real. The recognition of the real I as opposed to the body mind imagined entity.
What am I truly?
What is the reality of Self this very instant that is not in time or space?
The mind spins, but does not reveal that which is beyond it.
Love,
Magdi