gesture of gratitude

there is a gesture
from inside
that is so grateful for this process

more than ever
just to do something
to express myself in the moment
with a red line
a pink line
a black dot

the process unfolds me to myself
it enfolds me in presence

i want to keep posting on this unveiling
and it is so profound
and about nothing and everything
that i'm kind of quieted
and eased.

and i'm eased into a real life
with real challenges
and i'm feeling steady and ready
for more.

a kind undoing and joining

Damn! I am just amazed.
To begin this painting with the entry point and to think that I knew what even THAT meant!
Oh, the mind is quite the spinner of the dream. It wants to be the creator, so badly, and it will use the slightest breath of a thought to stay in control!

The heart is the true weaver.

As I finished the previous painting, I could sense that something new was waiting to become known. I was willing to paint to know it. I could see that however I was painting, was the way I would know it. And yet, I could feel that the ways I knew before were not opening the painting further - I tested them but the flow was not there. So, that must have been a sign that it was finished.
The new could not move in the confines of my trying to open the way for it.

As I look at the new painting above (still in process) I can see that the whole appeared out of the womb entry, and in deed, I was born through and as my own form. The vulva and fallopian tubes begat children, pleasure, my self, and unknown galaxies....

I am being new born this spring through my own living process, finding a new strength in my legs. I am standing on my own two feet, in my center.
I am seeing through what comes up within and meeting it.
In the past few weeks I have felt such a new shift in my perspective...from the center everything looks just the way it looks, not more or less - friendly, above all, friendly and kind.

I'm just amazed, again and again for mind to be seen through - through paint - uncovered.
I continue to be in awe to watch knowing be dispelled so generously by this painting process.

Today I learned to hear the difference in a question from the soul and one from the mind.
The question posed by the mind gives me work to do and it does not open any door; it does not open me.
The question the soul asks awakens the dormant life force to come out and play, to join in, to participate.

This dormant life force is also me.
There is an including of myself that is occurring through this process in paint, in meditation and in daily life.
I am learning how to participate in my life.
When there is less of me in the way, there is more of me to smile to listen to pause to respond to paint to write to live and to meet life.

Barbara Kaufman has played such a valuable role in my seeing through what my mind says is so or should be so. She has been my sounding board, my projection, my friend, my mentor this year. I have a long held condition of bowing to authority - that whatever the other presents, I am lead to be that, too. And it is so impossible to be other than myself. I can join in the conversation now, as I am.

This is such a wonderful surrender and homecoming all rolled into one.
Again and again,
and again.
I send out my gratitude to Michelle Cassou for putting her experience and love into a form that we can all receive the best of, for ourselves.
It is a win-win, and that makes the world go round so well. This is the same world we all live in.  We can help one another see our blind spots when we are willing to have the conversation about what is true, through the heart.

It was a long journey to return to the friendly world of myself.
I am no longer an outsider.

life desires to be known

So a few weeks ago
Turmoil was boiling in me
I was pushing up against her every where I turned
The old ways of shutting her down appeared uninteresting
And I paced the rooms
She wouldn’t leave me alone
I was cornered.

The form this cauldron had taken was a painting
A process painting
A painting whose only purpose is raw and infinite possibility.

And I was reaching a new edge
What used to open all the doors
Connecting the dots
Finding more and more layers of connection
Wasn’t the way this one was going.

So I paced.
And paced some more.
Then I went directly to the book of questions.
I had to find my own way into this source,
to the doorway of the secret waiting to be known.

I wrote down what I was feeling:
I didn’t know what was happening
In the painting in my life.
I felt turmoil.

The path in is always at the point of what is appearing.
I asked myself what would I paint if it was ok to feel turmoil.

The hint came by noticing my resistance to this state I was in.
I didn’t like it.

What would I paint if it was ok to feel turmoil?
My answer was great desire.
I sensed, that this pressure wasn’t turmoil, that is what I had named it.
It was great desire pressing to the surface for air.
Great Desire.

And what would I paint?
A penis emerged out of a black hole that had appeared earlier in the painting.
It had no meaning, no reason to be there, and now it was the place for this emerging energy to be given a form.
The pleasure in process is the letting go of meaning.
A form has a life of its own and I just get out of the way.
And more and more and more penises emerged out of the black holes.

My desire had been met, honestly.

The next painting I began with a great deal of openness.
And the head of a child began to take form and then another figure.
But when BK asked me what is one thing I would paint from the last painting,
I knew it was the penis emerging out of the black hole.

So I began again.
One big emergent penis.
For no reason but to express my desire.
Oh, yes, my mind had a field day with the form it took.

Then flowers filled the space around the tall presence of desire.
And again, my mentor asked...what was I feeling before I painted all the flowers?
I knew exactly what I was feeling. I had been stopped.
What was I supposed to do with a penis?

My mind was happy with all the flowers. I was at ease with them. I liked the story about devotion and the lingam and shakti. I also did really feel that the penis was inside me. And there was an innocence to the flowering.
But of course there was more to this than the idea of shiva and shakti.

Something more than stories feeds my soul.
Something in my own life was waiting to emerge.

And I began another painting of a tall erect penis.
No black hole this time.
And when the penis was complete, I waited.
It did not take long for the vulva to begin to wrap itself around the head of the penis.
The doorway was the womb.
I am living in the body of a woman, after all.
And this is really not about penises or wombs or vulva.
And I am present to the connections these forms offer me to meet.

All this
(life-painting-writing-being-learningloving)
is taking place through a body and I am at my own doorstep now.
I can feel that I am painting in a new less exacting way, that what I painted before is done, the paintings of this past year were the stepping stones to now.
I am at a new edge and I can feel the urge to shut down and turn away.

Process painting can be done alone but one won’t go as far as is possible without the support of another.
The best other is one who has already passed through so many doors that doorways are all she sees now.

Door upon door upon door.
And the wonder of unlocking the next one,
in whatever form it takes.

process reveals what is true, beyond the idea of connection

I could have titled this post penis process, but alas I am stepping into this doorway with care, not daring.
What I am discovering lies beyond the form of the penis. But it was the form of a penis that released me from a mind in turmoil, a mind afraid of my own experience of desire.

I had been painting, continually finding more and more layers of connection.
They appeared naturally in the process and I wasn't trying to make them happen.
It felt like an expansion of unending connective possibility.
Then the black lines came in, - opening, opening - and then the white teeth like shapes came along the smaller black lines.
I began to feel really distraught, the feeling of completion was not arising despite all the connections, a sure sign that there is something more to discover, yes?
I was stopped, blocked, looking for the next passageway.

 I went to Michelle's book of questions and practiced to bring my own question into form.

I wrote to myself:
I don't know what the painting (my life) is about, I feel turmoil.
Then I wrote the question out of the experience I was having:
What would I paint if it was ok to feel turmoil?
I would paint great desire -
In the turmoil was this resistance NOT to be feeling the way I was feeling.
I named it turmoil.
It was desire.

And it took on the form of a penis.
Glad that I was alone, I was free to paint a penis.
Not forced, but inviting.

The first one emerged out of a black hole that had appeared as a kind of lock shape, in my center.
And then one after the other, more pink desire emerged from the other black holes which had appeared earlier in the painting.

The penis was not threatening, and that was good for me to notice.
I enjoyed painting it and remembering all its qualities.
I haven't seen one in so many years, I had to really call in my memory!
The mental drama around a penis is lessening.

Is the penis the great connector in my belief system?
I hope not.
I mean, because without one, I would experience disconnection.
And I am not disconnected, far from it.

Belief number 3456 has burned up as I write this.

It felt like the only form I knew - in that moment - to express desire.
I am worried a bit about myself (I am conditioned to worry)
that that would be my way, as a woman, to express desire....

I can see that it is one way to express desire.
There are beliefs in me about desire.
This completion gave way to ease.

The next painting I began right away, letting the energy lead me on.
I thought I knew where it would lead but a child's head began to appear.
I painted the beginning very, very, very openly, not knowing at all what was arriving out of the brush.
I let myself slow down to let the lines relate to one another on their own, not from my ideas.
 I'm learning.
My dreaming that night was magical and friendly.

That's what this is.
I am learning
all the time
that the next moment and the next, I cannot know.
It brings with it awareness of living on the edge.

To feel connected to life is what I desire.


More concern at times, and at other times the furthest thing on my mind :
that I either don't want to do anything or I want to keep painting!
Desire takes many forms and I am releasing myself from the judgements I place on my experience, painting myself free from judgements that live through learned conditioning.

Clearly, I'm still on the mind see saw.
And insecurity,
though troubling to a mind that wants to know,
is also becoming more of a truth I am learning to live with.
In every moment I can pause and make a new choice.



I hope you have a wonderful day as your own truth is revealed,

BH

connection

Connecting the dots is what I am called to do.
The most satisfying way I do that is through painting.
Why would someone question the validity of what one is called to do?
Only through comparison and judgement would this be put into question.

I’m laying that one down now.
I paint.
That is my business.

We all have our calling.
For some of us it is a given, it has simply been the way we live.
Sometimes this is more challenging than you might imagine, to have one thing to do all one’s life.
To have the artha - the means - to pursue my dharma - my path - has been the baseline of what has held me through years of still life, landscape, self portrait, interiors and countless drawings.

My sight has been altered.
I cannot say ‘changed’ as that would imply something like changing my clothes or shoes. I didn’t change my subject or learn a new approach. It wasn’t like that.
But process painting caught me and has carried me while I found my feet and my sight on this new earth.

Tonight I recognized something.
I am attracted to my paintings. Through them, while I paint and when they are completed, I connect to something deep within myself.
 
Painting is how I listen and follow the call I hear, enacting a mystery play within my own life. I am the player and the stage. Many characters arrive to express what is unknown to me.
But I am not the director.
The director is that which I listen to, that which calls me, deeper and deeper in touch with itself.
This may be obvious to many in relationship to what they love.
 And tonight I put it into these words and say it for myself.

I am grateful for this life as a visual devotee of Love.
Now I know what love means.
It means to be held no matter what else is happening.
If we don’t get in the way of aggrandizing this most creative of impulses, we are fed by what we seek and are met and self expressed by the call itself.

I bow to what has held me when others could not.
I owe my life to it.