Aesthetic Self-inquiry has been a transformative journey leading me into the darkness of the unknown, while encountering numerous epiphanies along the way. First I have learned that the painting process is a life teacher. In the same way that in the studio, I try to be present, let go, and trust the spontaneous flow of creative energy, this has spilled over into my whole person igniting a greater sense of Being than ever before. Here’s what has happened so far.
In the initial stages of my self-inquiry, I was focused on “surveying the landscape” of my life, what I refer to as “Life Excavations”. I began expressing these in visual journal pages I bound into a book I called “The Imaginarium” .(see rprgallery.com). I quickly realized this was going draw upon the painful and repressed aspects within. I began to honestly walk back and feel into the memories of my childhood; the longing to be nurtured and spoke softly to, the sense of emotional abandonment, an early loss of a parent to cancer; and the inner battle with a wounded, fragile, and insecure self-concept. As I opened my imagination and heart to represent these vulnerable feelings, memories, and experiences in expressive visual language, I researched, described, analyzed, interpreted, and evaluated these events for new insights and meanings. With a researcher’s eye, I began to inhabit an objective distance to these rigid concepts of narrative and self. Months later, as I reflected on those pages, my first major epiphany came to me; I had been utterly and unconsciously aware of how attached I was to those forms, self-stories, and ideas. I had identified with them and believed they were the truth of who I was. Yet, I began to see that my truest identity comes from an awareness to breath and to existent itself. This is prior to, and outside of, those experiences bound by time and space. This was the beginner’s mind I needed to continue on the journey.
At this time in July and August, I began painting subterranean layers of land embedded with roots, and thorns, and seeds. These resonated as earthy spaces of the heart. As I kept pondering the meaning of self in the term ‘self-inquiry’, I found it required a shift of identity perception, from that of the historical, material self, to care of the luminous Self; a peeling off of the old attachments to rigid conditioning, and an opening to the truth of who divinely I am. In this second phase of analysis I entered dark, deep layers of the unconscious where confusion, loss of meaning, isolation, anger, and rejection were buried. This was where epiphany number two emerged: Pain becomes the doorway and opportunity to let go, and to detach from rigid self-will and expectation. As I stepped into this invitation, I found that I was much more than the story of my past, my brokenness, my fear, and depression. During this period in September I increased my yoga and painting practices. These experiences shifted my inner perception further when I realized the power of embodied presence in a union with the Divine Source through the flow of breathe, movement, prayer, and meditation. These events opened a love-gnosis that illuminated the space mind to the sensations, visions, and feelings of the heart. This practice brought me into greater states of awareness helping me to “slip beyond the veil” of reality to draw upon my authentic Truth. My imagination linked to the heart changed the mind-body condition. I am finally able to live in a space where the psychosomatic stress of anxiety, and fear no longer rules. The healing presence, some call Prana, Life Force, or the Wind of the Creative Spirit is not metaphysical, but very physcial in that it releases a whole chain of bodily effects: cleanses blood, balances the neurochemical energies, and deepens and slows the rhythmic brainwaves patterns and heart beat. By late September, these physiological changes opened a state of clarity to Life, what Dr. Michael Samuels, and Mary Rockford Lane,R.N.,Ph.d call, “Illuminosity”..It is this creative, embodied space coupled with painting that helped me to begin to understand and utilize the holistic restorative benefits of creative energy to facilitate healing in my life and with others. I began to envision an Organic Model of Aesthetic Self-Inquiry. Recognizing the dynamics of creativity, and exploring them through journaling, blogging, and dialoguing with images in painting shaped my ability to set my mind free from the fuzz of life and emotion, by rooting my intention to live daily in presence. It signifies the fourth and final phase of Emergence in the spiral of the self-actualization process. This illuminosity is like a pedagogy, showing me how to re- engage in self-care. It invites me to witness self as a sacred energy, or as some identify as the feeling of being a " child of God". It liberates inner potential. This is not to a self-centered practice, but opens oneself, so they can become opened to others. It is here the I am most secure, and brokenness and suffering is received as a tool for humility and growth. Here I can rest and awaken each new day expectant of the lessons in the breath and observation in the present moment. Here I know that when the storm of struggle shadows my life, I can fall into the unknown and know I will be supported. By letting go, opening, and receiving, the river of forgiveness, trust, and transformation regenerates Life back to its original state. Darkness and Light become friends, Wherever You go, there You will be.
