Falling in Love.....

I’ve fallen madly in love....with my painting.  Yes I will totally admit it.  For the first time ever I am madly and totally head over heals in love with this painting.  I can’t believe it came from me.  I mean, I’ve been dark; deep into my Shadow as of late.  And this.  This beautiful sensual flowing painting arrived, greeted me, and blessed me last week.

I have begun re-painting my chakras.  This time, instead of once a month, the class is one chakra a week.  It is going to be more intense.  I signed up because I was curious to see what would happen to revisit them again.  I was curious to see what movement had occurred.  I was curious to see what healing had happened.  So, I signed up and jumped into it.

To begin, my teacher talks some about each chakra.  Then she takes us through some breathing, centering, yoga, movement to get our bodies connected into our creative expression.  She asked each of us to allow a word to bubble up from our Root Chakra for the night.  Before I share my word, I will share what happened as I engaged my body.

I began breathing, inviting my breathe to my pelvic floor, to my root chakra.  I allowed the chakra’s movement and spin to come to my vision and heart space.  With each breathe I heated up.  I mean heated up.  I felt like heat was emanating out of me.  I was completely uncomfortable.  

My arms, my head, my ears all on fire by the end of the exercise.  I mean on fire.  I could feel the heat at the tips of my fingers.  My ears felt like they were bright red (but apparently they were not).  I have had physical reactions when painting, so I knew I was about to learn something, release something.  Movement had begun.  I just needed to paint it out.

So I began.  I put my paper end to end.  I needed length in this painting.  The paper went floor to ceiling.  At first it felt overwhelming, but as I painted it felt more and more right.

I  began with red, orange and yellow.  I began with fire and heat.  I began to allow flame to appear on the painting in red, then orange, then yellow.  Flaming up the center of the painting, all the way to the ceiling.

I added gold.  Not a color I have ever touched.  Honestly, I don’t like gold.  I’m a silver person.  But I added it to the top corner.  I rubbed it into the top of the flame.  I fell in love with how gold brought out the orange red of the fire.  Gold.  Who’d have thought?

Then I touched blue.  The blue on the right was great.  It felt like a river next to the fire, especially when I added the purples.  It gave the painting flow, movement.

But the blue that took me down....that was the light blue.  I put it on the bottom and on the top.  I instantly had a visceral reaction of hate to it.  All I wanted to do was take it off.  It stopped me in my tracks.  I could go no farther.  Anger rose and rose and rose.  

I heated up.  Again.  Heat overwhelming me.  Stopping me.  Distracting me.  Heat.  My arms, head, heart, ears.  Heat -- overheated.

I sat on the stool I used to reach the top of the painting.  I became agitated.  I began to thump my water bottle on the floor.  

My teacher joined me.  I was stuck.  Stuck in my agitation, heat, anger.  Stuck in the light blue.  The only movement I could find was out, away from my body, away from my heart.  It was orange.  I had no shape or form.  I had only movement away.  So my teacher suggested I go with orange, put it up on the painting and pay attention to what showed up.  Orange is really my new black right now!!

I resisted, but I went with it.  Because my teacher suggested strongly that I leave the light blue alone and not cover it up I went with orange circles following the flow of the fire and the flow of the river.  That loosened me up again.  It did not get rid of the heat, but it got me back in the flow.

Next came a strong whack of orange paint in the top corner on the gold, then a melding of the two.  More work between the gold and orange.  

Then a few deep breathes.  Some shaking of my arms and head to try to clear away the heat to no avail.  So I decided to cover up the light blue.  I mixed some orange because I was tired of the oranges that were already mixed.  I added white to lighten the orange and began to cover up the top corner.  I rubbed my fingers through the paint to give it texture.  That was fun, and released some anger and frustration.  I did it a few more times until it looked cool and I felt like I released all I needed to.

That helped.  The heat lessened.....

So, I turned my attention to the bottom corner, to the blue at the base.  I figured if covering up the blue on the top released this heat, maybe the rest would go away once I covered all the light blue.  So I put orange on it and had a huge negative reaction.  I did not like it and this time took it off.  I scraped all the paint off that corner, removing the orange, green, blue, all the layers I had put there.

It had this really cool look to it.  Orange circles over top a faint light blue.  I stood there looking taking it in.  I backed up and took it in.  I went to the opposite end of the room and took it in.

I stood there at the opposite end of the room breathing, tears bubbling up filling my eyes.  I took deep breathes and awaited a color.  Green.  I took a few deep breathes to find the courage to put green on the painting.  I took another deep breathe and a step and grabbed the green.

I put green all along that side.  A deep green.  I covered that orange and blue up with the green.  I rubbed it in so that it flowed with the red of the fire.  I stood back...  I was stuck again.

I walked over and sat by my teacher with a green hand -- that’s how stuck I was.  I didn't even wash the green off my hand.  She wondered why I stopped.  I was in the groove and then I stopped.  Hmm....

We chatted for a few moments when I realized what I had done.  The only color in my heart was light blue.  It was tears, those tears that bubbled up on the opposite end of the room, those tears that I scraped off and covered up.  That is why I was stuck.  I took them off and they really needed expression.

They wanted expression to come in dots.  But when I was attempting to pick the size dot I wanted, I realized I’m not a dot person.  I did not want closed circles on my painting.  I am an open circle person at the moment.  I want that openness, that empty center.  I wanted circles.  So my teacher and I went in search of the right size circles to use and found them (creatively of course).  A candle holder, a paint cap, a pen cap.  

And I went to work, adding the light blue circles.  That is was brought the painting together;  brought the fullness of movement that I so love.  That is what got rid of the heat in my body.  That is was lightened my heart, emptied me of tears.  Blue tears in the form of circles.

I stood back once again and looked at my painting.  A sense of peacefulness present in my heart and body and soul.  A smile across my face.  I realized as I looked at that painting I was in love with it.  For the first time ever when asked how I was I responded I thought it was the most beautiful painting I’ve done.  I loved admiring how pretty it was.

I saw the healing that has taken place of the past six months as I have painting my way through my chakras, deep into my Shadow and back toward the Light.  I noticed parts of myself formerly living in my Shadow showing up in the beauty and Light. 

Artist, liturgist and theologian Jan Richardson wrote this blessing for her devotional this week.  It echoes what my painting is saying to me:

Curl this blessing beneath your head
for a pillow.
Wrap it about yourself
for a blanket.
Lay it across your eyes
and for this moment
cease thinking about
what comes next,
what you will do
when you rise.

Let this blessing
gather itself to you
like the stillness
that descends
between your heartbeats,
the silence that comes
so briefly
but with a constancy
on which
your life depends.

Settle yourself
into the quiet
this blessing brings,
the hand it lays
upon your brow,
the whispered word
it breathes into
your ear
telling you
all shall be well
all shall be well
and you can rest
now.

Blessed Be.