Creative Soulful Expression: Means for Authentic Experience
What an amazing week this week - I felt like I was intervened upon by many different situations and circumstances in one week...ever have one of those where you feel like you smashed in a year's worth of lessons in one week? I am going to munge them all here as they are all connected.
I will continue on with the last two blog posts about living one's truth where ever we are; work, home, social settings and the list goes on. It is so natural to label ourselves for the world and say "this is who I am". Monday night, as women who I have painted with, on and off, for many years closed our painting circle some inspiring conversation was ignited. We used to get together in a little green house heated by a wood burning stove near the ocean, meditate, paint, share, not share, and push the envelope of what it means to create. For our last coming together we discussed the power of our painting to allow us to dis identify with the "labels" of who we are. What would it mean to not put a title on a piece of art, to freely give our art away to leave space for something new, to allow the viewer viewing our art to come up with their own title and experience of the piece? We shared where we were with these questions and how some of us (myself included) still needed to put these labels on our art to say "this is me" or "that was me at that moment in time". I was challenged by another woman in the group to consider letting the art go as a moment passed. Her challenge also got me thinking about this blog and its meaning for me.
Aren't we all, us human beings, just like these paintings? We can give ourselves titles, we can give others titles, we can label our children but in the end each moment is a new experience, new expression, new creation and new ways for our soul to interact/intertwine with the world, with living?
What about community and self expression and self/other confines? It is so scary, isn't it, to not put labels on ourselves and others but remain in the flow of experience and let go of control...the rawness of allowing the experience of emotions, practical needs, primal expression, soulful interaction all of it to arise and then shift into something new or be different moment by moment.
I also have been reading David Whyte's The Heart Aroused - a book about allowing soulfulness into corporate American culture. David Whyte is a poet who is encouraging us all and especially managers to allow for creative soulful expression back into the workplace: the good and the bad of self hood bc it cultivates a sense of "belonging" and community that people are not only loyal to and are fulfilled by but in the end that increases personal and corporate profitability. It is the same theme of creating and allowing the primal, the soulful, the authentic into our work just as in painting and art. How scary though, eh? Can you imagine? Check the book out...it is really great.
But there seems to be no place where we are forced to get in touch with our primal selves, our souls than in childbirth and more doubly, an unmedicated childbirth. I was part of a group of four couples last night all sharing the hope and intention for an unmedicated childbirth but more importantly for a conscious birth, medicated or not. To be totally mindful about the experience, whatever we choose, instead of the experience being dictated by doctors and again, this same thing of soulful, authentic, primal creative expression came up. These intersections between life and death are profound and birth calls the couple to completely surrender to their primal selves in such a profound and challenging way that it is no surprise to me that now culturally we reach for medication to keep this under wraps - to not have to confront the illusion of our being. I get the fear not only of the pain but of surrendering to our bodies and labels of who we are.
How does this all tie in to I LOVE ME? What is the point of creative soulful expression? What do you think?
