Spiritual and Artistic Alchemy

Sadly, yesterday marked the end of our “In Quest of the Inner Image” 2-week intensive.  I could handle a whole year of this – loved it!  We journeyed deep within ourselves, but also far as a group, exploring the mystical, magical worlds of imagery, the Self, and humanity.    These past two weeks were definitely in line with my preferred way of being in this world, and I am so grateful for them. Truly inspirational! My prayer is that we continue as a class to bring similar spiritually creative elements into the rest of our time together.  I will need to ponder on how I can contribute to that.

CONSENSUS AND COLLABORATION

The last two days of our workshop were all about the group process.  Although David and Aloria were definitely present, they acted more as witnesses, holding sacred space for our group of 11 students to create together as a team.  Of course this came after they introduced what we were doing and provided guidance for the different activities along the way.

Step 1: Our Siddhis

Our first step was to work individually in order to come up with our siddhis and images that represent them.  A siddhi is a magical or supernatural power acquired through a spiritual practice. Our job was to think about our own unique life journey and to recognize the gifts that life’s challenges had helped us develop, turning these into siddhis.  Once we had recognized our own strengths and gifts, we were to come up with simple images that represented them, what I called our superpower logos.  The ultimate purpose of this exercise was to then symbolically bestow one of these gift to our circle and to the world for the betterment of the planet. I share with you here the two gifts I came up with in the allotted time as examples and as an invitation for you to recognize and accept the amazingly wonderful gifts that are truly unique to you because of your life’s journey – as no one on this entire planet has experienced life exactly as you have.

• My first is the power to remain True to the Higher Self, free from the influences of peer pressure or conventionalism.  This gift was refined through the experience of being bullied when I returned to Canada from Germany when I was 10 years old – I didn’t fit in to the established class dynamic hierarchy and the attention I was receiving both from teachers (for actually doing my homework and helping in class) and the boys (I was far more innocent than girls in Canada – my re-entry culture shock was largely due to the far more advanced boy/girl dating dynamics amongst young teens encountered immediately upon my arrival) didn’t settle well with the popular girls.  This was an extremely challenging time in my life, but I refused to succumb to peer pressure and instead lived up to my new nickname of “goody-goody two shoes”.  I simply stayed True to my Self and learned a lot about human nature and group dynamics (and yes, got beat up for it, cried a lot, and was afraid for 2-3 years until we all went to separate schools, but I learned not to participate in ways of being or doing that didn’t feel right to me)   Rejection for being who and what I am isn’t fun (never was and never will be), but I believe that it has strengthened my independence and my ability to truly follow my own Path to My Highest Good.  This is a gift I would love to share with the world.
• My second is the gift of Connection/ Communication with my Sources of Guidance through seeing/hearing/feeling/knowing.  Since a very young age, I have spent a lot of time on my own, but never truly on my own.  I believe that my connection to God, my angels and guides was still very strong in my early childhood and although it may have weakened for a few years through the normal experience of being human, I was able to reconnect through my personal and spiritual development practice, which also started quite young.  Indeed, my life has strongly been guided and that guidance has come through clairvoyance (visions/dream messages/signs ),  clariaudience (I can remember twice in my life when messages came to me through a voice, including the strong “That’s where you’re living next!” message I heard in Saskatoon when opening my Yahoo homepage and seeing a generic nature shot of Newfoundland), clairsentience (both through strong feeling, like the chills that ran through me when I first saw the Vienna Academy of Visionary Arts website, and strong empathy, which sometimes makes it hard for me to be in crowds), and claircognizance (strong intuitive knowing).  I believe these gifts can be developed and I wish them on everyone as they’ve been such a blessing in my life.

Step 2: Consensus

Once we had shared one of our gifts with the circle and spent a few minutes receiving and internalizing them, it was our job to come up with a way of visually representing them on a long white board that we would later paint.  Wow! What a process.  The idea of a consensus is that everyone agrees with how something will be done – in the spirit of collaboration, without peer pressure.  For every step, we were to come up with our own individual feeling of Yes! or a neutrality that allowed for the group to continue.  Any negative feeling had to be heard and addressed.

This wasn’t easy.  As artists, we certainly weren’t short of creative ideas, but it was inevitable that challenges would arise as we navigated the waters of group decision-making for the first time.  Some had strong ideas and talked a lot while others were very quiet; issues were triggered; different processing/brainstorming styles weren’t initially recognized; and tension built up to a point which was far from comfortable.  Someone left the group for a while and was assisted by one of the teachers while the rest of us took this opportunity to examine what had happened in order to bring us back to a loving creative space.  This in itself wasn’t easy, and I tried my best to assist the process, bringing us back to our intent of bestowing gifts to each other and the world through a short visualizing exercise, the holding hands and chanting OM, and asking each of us to pick a Spirit Calling Card for guidance. I started with the “Oneness” card (how appropriate!) and the last person chose “Complete”.  Everything in between was equally beautiful in its message for our process. I don’t think I was totally successful, however, in helping the group discuss what had happened without talking about /assuming things about the member who was absent.  My Real Love training has taught me that it’s never about the other person – it’s always about us and that talking about ourselves, our role, etc. is more constructive than describing or blaming the other’s actions, feelings, etc.  I tried explaining this as people talked about the missing student, but it may have sounded like I was criticizing them in turn … I truly hope not as that was not my intent. Nevertheless, the whole experience reminded me of the teachings in unconditional love I had received and that in itself is a good start.  When that student returned, we filled him in on what we had been doing and listened as he spoke before we began once again from a more loving space.  Aloria and David have been leading collaborative art groups for years and later shared how impressed they were with the transformation we experienced as a group.  Truly, we were able to proceed to eventually achieve a consensus that pleased everyone.  Sure, we had a few other hiccups along the way, especially when individuals got too attached to their individual visions (natural in a group of creators used to creating completely on their own), but we openly addressed these issues and moved on in the spirit of the very important task we were given – to visually represent the collective gifts we wanted to share with the world.

Step 3: Artistic Collaboration

Once we had decided on a basic scheme that involved combining some of the logos and arranging these loosely in terms of the chakras they represented and then more importantly in a visually powerful/cohesive manner, our task was to

1. work out each part on paper in smaller teams (my concept was integrated with that of 2 other students into the crown)
   
   

   
2. transfer these in charcoal onto our white board (ah, it felt so good working on the floor again – the only way I’ve ever really painted)
3. redo them in black ink, blocking and shading them in ways that would make them still visible through the next layer
   
   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   
4. do a coat of mana prima (see October 16 post) on top so that it could dry during lunch time (we used magenta, blue, and ocher, moving around the whole board so that the whole piece had both the energetic and and artistic input of everyone).
   
   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   

   
5. varnish it and let it dry (we did some individual work on various projects while we waited for the fumes to dissipate: I developed and activated more sigils for my term painting and painted on top of an earlier individual mana prima piece with about 6 layers of acrylic white and coloured glazes).
   
   

   

   
6. add white casein to the image to bring out dimension and highlights, part of the technique of underpainting I will be learning here in the next 2 months (I learned a lot from the other students who had all had experience with this before as well as more expertise with the drawing principles of light and shadow).
   
   

   

   

   

   

   

The results are already absolutely gorgeous – amazing what our team produced in only 2 days, not only in terms of progress, but also in terms of powerful visual imagery – so much better than any one of us could have ever created on our own. I believe we will eventually be adding several layers of coloured oil glazes and cassein on top, but I already like it just the way it is.  It truly was, as Aloria and David explained a process of both artistic and spiritual alchemy.

Our 4 teachers, Kuba Ambrose (Left), Vera Atlantia, Aloria Weaver, and David Heskin.

As it was the last day of the intensive, we had a closing circle and altar closing ceremony before heading out to the all-you-can-eat, pay-what-you-can Pakistani buffet for dinner.  We then returned for more painting, dancing, chatting – our closing party.  I left at 10pm, quite tired and quite happy.

This weekend I have no plans at all except to take the time to integrate a lot of what I’ve learned, keep reading the Sacred Codes book, and continue practicing drawing with YouTube and on my own so that I can complete my term drawings in time to start part two of our curriculum  – the under painting.  I’m looking forward to a quiet weekend.