Friday, July 27, 2012

My divided Soul... the Sacral Chakra continued


It took two days to really paint my way through my Sacral Chakra.  I have had this happen before -- where it has taken more than one session to paint the Chakra.
When I ended the first night, I had just put blood red on the painting.  I had covered up the gold block and allowed for the blood red to show up, as well as the tears that bubbled up with that color.  
I had no sense of closure.  I had little sense of peace within my Soul.  I was unsettled, unnerved and heading into the unknown...
I had a restless night with little sleep.  I was up at the crack of dawn journaling...writing and writing and writing.  I attempted meditation but I couldn’t settle.  I was agitated, restless, unnerved.  I couldn’t sit still, except to write (and writing requires movement).
I arrived to paint agitated, unnerved, unrested, teary.  The little sleep I had was fraught with images of bubbles bubbling up through my painting, so that is where I started.  I started by literally bubbling the blood red paint up from the ocean floor, allowing it to bubble however it needed to, like air bubbles coming up through water.
That felt okay to me.  It calmed me:  the repetitive movement,  the bubbling, the dots, the circles, making different paths through water from ocean floor to surface.  I let the bubbles rise from all over the mound of blood red earth at the bottom of my ocean.  Then I paused...
There was this entire section to the left untouched.  I didn’t know what to do with that.  Bubbles would not naturally go in that direction.  Bubbles go up and follow the current of the water.
I walked over to the paint brushes and checked out all the toys.  I found this really cool swirly thing and grabbed it.  I spent a great deal of time swirling up the water in the left of the painting....dipping the swirl into blood red and swirling it on the painting.  It had this cool effect, integrating in with the movement of the water.  When I had swirled up all the water, I stepped back, sat down on the floor and was smacked in the face by the drastically clear divide in my soul.
Look at it!!  
It is clearly divided.  My heart broke.  Tears bubbled up.  There was no stopping them.  I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed.  I found myself moving farther and father from the painting.  Soon, I was across the room, up against the wall leaning on the stairwell crying my eyes out.
I’ve been bumping up against this for a while now.  I am torn.  Torn between two locations physically.  Torn between two spiritual locations.  Torn between callings.  Torn out of relationship.  Torn....in.....two....literally.
So it was not surprising to see it.  But it was hard to see it.  It sent me down.  Down deep... deep into the grief and loss of the past two months... deep into the constant transition I’ve been living in... deep into the pain of my Sacral Chakra... 
My teacher checked on me, after letting my cry it out for what felt like a long time.  I needed to do that...get all snotty and all.  I haven’t been taken down like that in a painting experience before, but my soul needed that cleansing cry.
She encouraged me to get up and put the tears on the painting... let the paint express the wound, the divide, the sadness, the grief, the loss.  Let it all come out through paint.
And this is what happened:
I covered the painting in blood red.  Blood all over my hands.  Blood all over the painting.  Now my Soul was whole, bleeding out all that divided it.  Whole, bleeding out all that tearing in two.
Once I had covered the painting, I was down.   Again.  Down on the floor.  Stuck to it.  No energy.  Just tears flowing freely.  No breathe. Just tears bubbling up and out of my body.  Stuck.  Plastered.  Unable to physically move...
And I laid there, crying...until I felt the need to move.  I kept trying to talk myself into moving and could not do it.  I looked to my teacher and guide and shared what was happening.
She encouraged me up off the floor.  She said just put something on that paper.  Trust your unconscious.  Trust the paint.  Trust your hand’s movement with the paint.  Trust the process.
I forced myself off the floor.  I made myself stand up.  I grabbed the white and began to work it into the blood red and rub my fingers to mix the colors together.  I did it a few times and stopped.  I was having a hard time getting into the painting; engaging this blood red.  I was hugely resisting.
My teacher encouraged me to just grab paint and work through it.  She told me I couldn’t stop now.  I needed to work through what was happening or it would get stuck in my body.  So I kept going with the white.
Then I grabbed another color and put a circle on the paper.  Then another and made a circle.  I changed colors rapidly putting each color on the paper in circular form.  I covered the painting with circles of different colors.  
I ran out of room on my painting so I just painted around it.  I didn’t add paper.  I just painted directly on the cardboard.  I felt my Spirit bursting from that box of blood red.  I felt a freedom, so I kept going.
When I was done, I stood back and took a breathe.  I had painted (in abstract form) that meadow my Spirit Guides took me to in my meditation the evening before.  
I felt more peaceful.  I felt less agitated.  
I felt safe in my internal meadow in my Soul...for now...
I had stared down my divide self.  Quaker author and spiritual guide, Parker Palmer writes this about the divided self:
“Afraid that our inner light will be extinguished or our inner darkness exposed, we hide our true identities from each other. In the process, we become separated from our own souls. We end up living divided lives, so far removed from the truth we hold within that we cannot know the ‘integrity that comes from being what you are.’
The divided life is a wounded life and the soul keeps calling us to heal the wound.”
My Soul called me to begin to heal the divide.  I touched upon it before each time woundedness showed up.  I touched upon it once again in this painting -- more blatantly.  I have continued to touch upon it in the next painting, my Solar Plexus.  
I think this journey through the Chakras is calling me to take the next step in healing my divided Soul and Life.

No comments:

Post a Comment