Tools for learning to Love

The self-inquiry process is not a self-indulgent act, as some misunderstanding souls may perceive. Self-inquiry, if engaged in as a reflective practice of becoming more human, facilitates true transformation that moves the individual into a more grounded, relational focus. It produces a reunion between self AND others. Self-inquiry towards inner transformation accomplishes this in two related ways:
First, becoming conscious requires the complete honesty to accept and take responsibility for all parts of ones self. The difficulty comes when we resist this act, lessen its role in teaching us, and try to cover it through the mask of "good behavior" and acts of Kindness to others. This denial of the truth of darkness only perpetuates it, and lodges it deeper within. We need the grace of God to give us courage to taste the bitterness in our hearts, to look at it square in the face, and then chose to move through it. We are commanded to love others as we love ourselves, but what happens when we aren't able to do the later? What does it mean to love,accept, and cherish the child of God within? Many Christians are under the belief that the truest nature of the heart is sinful, not willing to recognize how this inner belief divides themselves within. Just as a house divided can not stand, our faith and life "lived for God" will not shine authentically until we get real within our hearts. A view of Self as sinner seems to go against our identity rooted in the triumph over death and the gift of the resurrection of new life in Christ. True Life means we are actively engaged in growing into the lIkeness of Christ in this lifetime. Self as intimately intertwined to our Divine nature (grafted into the Vine) removes and lessens the effects of human limitations that disconnect us from fully being open, giving, and loving.
This brings me to the second aspect of the self-inquiry process. As created beings within God's creation, we are ecologically interconnected to the world around us. This means we are made to relate to other human beings in profound and nourishing ways. It would seem that self-inquiry as a process of becoming honestly open, allows us to love and be loved in ways we never have experienced before. As the self becomes more grounded in our Divine identity in Christ, we first learn to give and receive love within. This alone, empowers us to socially interact beyond ourselves in pure love. Ultimately, the power of the self-inquiry process is about reunion back to the Divine, which becomes manifested through the quality of union to the creatures in the universe.

Internal Emotional Dynamics

It seems that for me self-inquiry has been a process of exploring my internal dynamics of emotions and how they effect my daily tasks and relationships. I see this as an excavation process in that as I uncover these deep and unconscious phenomenon, I expose them to the light of consciousness. When we can understand why we behave they way we do, we can learn to treat ourselves with compassion and not resentment. Episcopal priest and Jungian psychologist, John Sanford teaches that the heart is the unconscious, and that the soul bridges and connects our unconscious to the realm of understanding. As we learn to navigate and open to both the positive and the negative, weedy aspects of the heart, we can learn to accept and grow into inner unity. This ability to accept and own ones dark aspects has been problematic for me. I have developed internal patterns in which I judge, cut off, reject, and disown these aspects, hiding them away in secret compartments that I don't know I have. I am finding that true emotional maturity is about learning to accept, integrate and learn from these parts of the personality. It also helps me recognize my partnership with the Inner Light of the Holy Spirit to shine and illuminate these caverns within. Only then can the true kingdom of God, perfected, Divine love dwell deeply within the heart.

Entitled: Hidden Seeds

The artistic temperment

Part if this self-inquiry has been a reflective exercise about my temperament and moods.
One major self-realization is that I process the world through a filter of intense and extreme emotions. The negative emotions such as anxiety, fear, and anger sometimes rise up to fill my body and soul with such grief that the truth of existence becomes overshadowed. Like weeds, they come up and choke out any peaceable perspective and all I can see is dark possibilities. Its within these extremes of personality, that my closest relationships have been the most effected. Love is felt so deeply, but when wounding happens ( as it does to us all) it strikes out in the most calloused, withdrawn, or poisonous way. This presents a harsh contrast to the theological and philosophical values I uphold; those that call me to live and serve life through peace, joy, and love. In this way self-inquiry is also a self-intervention; a means for becoming illumined in clarity so that one may have the capacity to survive and thrive in a higher quality of life. The ability to step back from the intensity of emotions, to explore it, and to shine the light of understanding upon it is a life-skill that is strengthening me. I know I now have the inner ability to step aside and let the space of what is, the wisdom of Universal Love, to melt into those dark crevice's. The split part of self, what I call the Fragile Self, is no longer centrally driving my life experience. The Guiding Light of Christ, the divinity within our humanness, allows me to reunite with self in a profound union of wholeness. This is the act of becoming unified within. When we fully embrace our Divine nature, we also let our humanness become cleansed and healed again. This, in the truest sense of the word, is Self-realization; the deepest place in which the Kingdom of God truly lives within.

The umbilical cord of painting

And she said, " The creative process is almost like an umbilical cord." I thought this represented a perfect metaphor for the way painting facilitates a relationship and connection to divine love, where flesh and spirit are ecologically unified in the experience of creating inspired work. The painting process from this perspective is a meditation experienced first through letting go, then opening to the true nature of what is, and then receiving the direction, love and power to move. Jesus shared that "I am vine, you are the branches. If you remain in me and I in you, you will bear much fruit". (John 15). God as divine and infinite motherly Life Force puts a seed within humanity and hopes it to blossom. But when you are debilitated by emotional moods that spin out of control, the capacity to live life freely and abundantly is made impossible. One important function for painting is that it provides a level of aesthetic pleasue and helps to redirect one's mental focus, thereby relieving psycho-biological stress.

However, I am realizing that my spiritual and devotional life has never been in complete union with my painting experiences. Although the themes of my work have been transformative and redemptive, the execution of an authentic practice, free from preconceived notions and cultural restraints, has been difficult to achieve. Instead, my work has been conditioned by an academic art background focused on the communicative formalities considerations to the quality of the end product. This overlooks the spontaneous, childlike faith in self-exploration and playful experimentation that facilitates an authentic process of self-inquiry.

Investigating the Human Nature of Art Making

Studying human nature is an amazing thing. Researching your own nature is, however, an altogether different story.
After years of teaching art and developing progressive secondary curricula, I discovered a gap within myself. As a public school teacher and masters student in art education, I have been exposed to socio-cultural theories and art pedagogies that were successfully implemented into a solid public school arts program. Yet, spiritually and artistically, I felt cut off within myself. Little by little the literature and theories I interacted with seemed to overshadow whole person of mind, body and spirit. While working on a book project with scholars in the fields of cultural studies and its critical theory/political economy counterparts, I began to recognize that these cultural perspectives no longer resonated with me as anthropologically sound. First I felt it biased a view that all cultural experience is regulated through contested differences of race, class, ethnicity, and gender. Second, this extreme rational and materialistic bias overlooks the holistic nature of individual experience. It diminishes the a.) interdependence of nature and humanity, b.) the psycho-emotional/ spiritual aspects of survival, and c.) the existential meaning-making processes in daily life. Furthermore I recognized that social reconstructivist pedagogy can only work for social change when individuals commit to personal responsiblity. This includes their ones actions and attitudes towards themselves and others. Real sustainable global change can only happen through inner revolutions; the kind that comes through humility and grace. Art educators can facilitate such processes by establishing spaces that ground socio-political issues and action within a pedagogy of authentic self-inquiry. This vision returns learners back to the practice of self-processing as a mode of spiritual and moral development.

In response to my internal conflicts with cultural studies, I took a huge academic risk and philosophically shifted my research from social issues of teen identity and visual culture, to a more authentic strand of arts-based research. This allowed for a greater interaction with my own identity as a working artist and opened a space to investigate the ways human beings with artistic temperments,(some people call these people artists) intuitively, emotionally, and expressively come to know and interact with the worId.

After many confusing graduate years of searching for an authentic resonating investigative space, I returned to the study of the painting process. My new research question became: How does art function in human experience as a transformative practice of healing and wholeness? To research this problem, I considered moving into ethnographic studies utilizing narrative inquiry with various local artists. However, in honesty, I was motivated by a more personal expereince and dilema- to discover how painting could actually contribute to my own need for emotional healing and wholeness. I knew that to really grasp these internal dynamics, designing a dual self-inquiry between a participant artist and myself would allow for rich discussions and provide deeper insights into the experiences that have potentials to bring mental, emotional and spiritual transformation.
I soon discovered Rita Irwin's (University of British Columbia) Artography methodology. Her emphasis upon self-inquiry as an investigation of the spaces of identity as artist, researcher and teacher provided the structure I needed to embark upon this incredible (and scary!) journey.
This blog site is dedicated to the documentation of this self-inquiry project.