Friday, June 8, 2012

Ignoring won’t make it go away.... lessons from my Throat Chakra


The Throat Chakra is the place where we express ourselves in the world.  It is out of this chakra that we create consciously, that we find our own voice; that we communicate and listen; that we express ourselves in the world.
I have been doing work at finding Clearness in my vision for life.  I called a Quaker Clearness Committee together (a group of wise friends that would come together to hold heart space and journey with me toward clearness through loving, challenging, probing questions and reflections).  This painting was the night before that Committee was to meet with me.  I was murky, unclear on what I wanted to manifest in the world; how I wanted to live out my life; what my priorities were.  There are so many options, I felt overwhelmed and unable to discern the road to travel.  My hope was this Committee would help me find clearness in my spiritual, physical, and career-oriented journey.
So, with the Clearness Committee the following evening, I arrived to paint my throat chakra with my chocolate and a bottle of chocolate laced malbec red wine.  I decided that this was going to be a fun, lovely, painting experience.  I was going to create a thing of beauty.  Why not?  The throat chakra is all about consciously creating, manifesting in the world.  So, I talked myself into believing that I could paint something pretty...ignoring the reality of the murkiness that led me to a Clearness Committee.  Yeah, that’s right.  I had no clarity on the direction my life was going in, but I was going to paint a beautiful throat chakra.
(Yes, you can laugh at my ability to mess myself up.)  
So, I grabbed orange paint and began to paint a thing of beauty.  Playing with orange and blue -- playing with the intersection of conscious creating and unconscious creating -- all along ignoring that black that wanted to be on the paper.  Ignoring the murkiness.  Ignoring my reality.  Ignoring the potential of what I could learn about myself.
I added some black in, but as soon as it started to feel like that murkiness was entering in I stopped.  I went back to color... to green... to yellow... to spirals of green... to red dots in the center of each spiral.  Here is how much I got in my own way:  my inner conversation was all about how I was rooted; how from that rooting I was journeying out from the center of my heart; journeying out into the world through manifesting, creating, expressing my dreams and hopes.  What a fabulous dream I was dreaming in that moment. The problem is, it is not my reality.  It is my hope; my dream; where I wish I was.
No.  I am not there yet.  I’m working on it.  I’m working on that re-rooting in the Holy, on opening my heart to resurrection and growth, on manifesting my dream in the world.  But right now.  In the here and now.  I’m in the Shadow, in the darkness, in the fear. 
So, after making this thing of beauty, I ended up on the floor, sitting, staring, stuck.  Stuck because I was not listening to my throat chakra, because I was not opening my heart to myself.  Stuck.  Stubborn.  Done with black!!!
And that is what I told my teacher when she asked what was next.  “I’m done with black!”   Of course, she suggested black.  I resisted.  She suggested it again.  I resisted and then gave in.  Unhappily, of course.
So I added black dots to the painting.  Starting at the bottom and allowing it to bubble up as if it were air bubbles in the water.  Then I covered over the red spiral with black placing two purple hand prints in the black.  Then I got mad, angry at the painting.  it was ruined.  The beauty was gone.
 
I WANTED BEAUTY.  
So, I wiped it clean and began to put hand prints of various colors on the painting, all over.  And, guess what?  It was still ugly.  The beauty was gone....
I was once again on the ground.  This time angry.  Angry at my painting.  Angry that beauty was not happening.  And that was when my teacher said the words that made me smile and enraged all at the same time -- because they were true.  “What made you think you could paint something pretty today?”  She knows me.  She knew about my Clearness Committee the next night.  She knew about my murkiness, the falling apart of my life, the shaking out of my soul.  She confronted me with that question.  
My answer:  Because I’m tired of this shit.  I’m tired of living in the black.  I want color.  I want life.  I want resurrection.
Sometimes you have to go through the black....
Okay.  The pastor in me knows that to be true.  The pastor in me knows that I have to work through the crap of life.  The pastor in me knows that those down times, that hard road, those are the ones filled with blessings (which we usually only notice after the fact).  The pastor in me just preached that.
But this night.  I was ignoring the pastor in me.  I was ignoring all of me.  I was wanting to live in denial...have a moment of something else.  But, unfortunately for me, that is not the case.  If I want to be resurrected, I have to travel in this darkness until I have learned what I need to.
So, I wiped the painting clear.  I added black and got rid of the color.  And in the process, ripped the painting so much that I needed to tape it.  I added duct tape to the front of it.  
And then, denial took over again.  I thought I could hold it together with the duct tape, so I began to add it as rays going out from the center, from those two hand prints.  I worked, having a great time, feeling better with each piece of duct tape.  Then I began to paint them yellow and the joy of what I was doing dissipated because I realized I was about to be undone again.  Undone because I was redoing what undid me in my third chakra painting....
And, yes you guessed it, I was undone.  Angry.  Tears.  Lost.  Wanting to attack my painting.
What I had hoped would bring back that beauty had taken me down.  What I had hoped would hold me together had just band-aided me.  The duct tape was band-aiding my painting, covering up the crap, the wound, the murkiness.  
Duct tape is a wonderful thing.  It can hold anything together.  It can “fix” things.  The problem is that it covers up the rust that is eroding the thing we are ‘fixing.’  The duct tape keeps us from seeing and truly fixing the problem; from taking out the part that needs to be replaced; from scrubbing the rust off; from doing the real work of healing, growing, opening, igniting.


So I tore it off.  Each one of those ray-like band-aides came off.  I stuck them back on because it they were part of the painting.  I crumbled them and stuck them over the rip.  And in the process, brought forth the one thing I was ignoring the entire time I was painting -- that annoying wound deep in my soul that keeps popping up, bubbling up, showing up.  There it was.  
I kept the two purple hands.  There is something powerful in this for me.  My vision showed up and the same time as my wound showed up.  They are both there.  
One shrinking (the wound).   My teacher reminded me of that, suggesting that I look back at all the other paintings were my wound appeared.  It is shrinking!!  Taking over less and less of the paintings.  Very cool.
The other (my vision) growing, rooting, holding its own again the darkness, not giving in to it, seeking that Light.  
I was looking for beauty; beauty without the darkness.  What I found, when I stopped ignoring the darkness, was beauty -- beauty shining forth out of the darkness.  HOPE!!!
Sometimes ignoring the darkness could mean missing valuable lessons and moments of Sacred Beauty.
Thanks be to the Holy that through gentle guidance and confrontation I did not miss that moment!

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