Vision and Awareness
How many of us really get the chance to look within, to see 👀 those structures that support or thwart?
This is an X Ray of my lower back during my 'injury'
Before meditation
Before self awareness
Before spiritual development
Before I understood, loved, and accepted the fullness of who I was(am) there was achievement: awards, jobs, wins but also injury.
I was overworked, unsupported and I was striving to succeed so that I could be seen and *maybe* 😳 one day appreciated, supported and compensated, even while my body was protesting with messages of pain 😰. I didn't know I could stop, that healing was on the other side of a break- beyond the paused needed to see within.
This early X Ray- though fascinating in it's spectral beauty and revealing- like all things outside myself- was not sufficient to uncover or reveal the extent of the fracture which took 4 years, 6 MD's, a high resolution MRI, 4 PT's, and a meditation teacher to find and begin healing.
Sometimes when we look within what we really need to see isn't with our eyes- it's what we need to feel, what we need to accept about ourselves, and often what we most reject.
I was telling myself that overworking and striving were the only path to get what I felt I needed. Like many who have grown up in the US I equated work with security, success with affirmation and I saw acceptability as a trade for supressing those bits of myself I felt or learned were wrong, strange, or unacceptable.
I couldn't have been further from the truths which I was about to discover during the search to heal the 'break' still not visible in this photo...🪔That in a post capitalist society there are plenty who consume without concern or return of what it was costs another to give (the adjunct professor life but hello anti-maskers, climate deniers, far right coup members etc). 💰That producing to please this system will likely (at least for me) result in more emptiness and even more reasons to strive, fail, and ignore what needs to be seen.👀
It is in accepting and cultivating within what I truly desire: love, acceptance, security, belonging- that I finally am (was) able to feel them- and heal.
What horizons are you seeing through and beyond?
Have you ever noticed how brining your attention to something immediately changes it?
This is an 'opened specimen' from a series of enamel on copper pieces I made (waaaaay back in the sculpture days).
I've always find it fascinating how looking into something feels vulnerable but also beautiful.
I love how using our eyes to 'look' helps us 'seek' and 'see'- but have you also notice how it alters or changes that which it studies.
Like when you dissect something you are immediately further from the truth and life of the being because you've changed it from it's natural state.
This can be applied to our benefit when we look into things we want to change or shift- like say- our pain or fears- or even positive things, like our goals.
When I'm stuck in an unhelpful thought pattern- like doubting myself, my work, or my relationships (hello anxiety), it can be off putting to be told that the way through might lie in going INTO the emotion or thought- in being present with it- in opening it up-
And in doing so, rather than being forever lost or sunken in the feeling- I often find the feeling shifts- it changes- without my having to actively change it.
I remain in awe of how immense the power of our awareness and sight are- and how interesting and exciting I find it to explore these concepts through art- which aids in the envisioning and call to deeper contemplation process.
What ways do you turn inward? What elements do you find helpful in 'seeing' yourself. In what ways do you find yourself changed or able to shift when you bring your attention or awareness to what you are doing?
If art speaks to you too, I'd love to hang out during the free art workshop this week. Sign up here.
Art is an incredible way to pause and to contemplate how mysterious and interconnected we are:
body, mind and spirit
self and world
earth and sun
It's something that being in injury, working as an artist, and now being in the healing arts has given me- but it's also something that has been showing up in my art for a long time.
This is a drawing and paper cut mounted on red paper from a triptych called "Systems, Knots, and Ligatures"
What do you see here? What wisdom does image hold for you? What connection points do you find interesting in your life?
I’d love to guide and encourage you in making a bit of playful, no experience needed, epically inquisitive Cosmic Art.
The instructions and event links start this week. Replays are available via email. Show up to your degree of comfort. Check it out here.
