How many broken love affairs have led to outstanding symphonies and songs? How much cultural and economic suffering has created some soul-sastisfying blues? How much pummeling by life has found expression in the most soaring dances and paintings? How many daily frustrations and problems have been sewn, woven, or knit into beautiful quilts and pieces of great charm and ingenuity? How much angst – personal or collective – has led to soaring sculptural and architectural masterpieces?
Pema Chodron’s wise council: ” . . . never reject what is problematic . . but rather become very familiar with it,” is a challenge to each person’s path to wisdom and happiness. It is also a call to artists! The artist’s way is allowing all of the body, mind, and heart to open, to know, to feel, and to express. It allows our natural intelligence to shine. Sometimes I have a hard time knowing fully what impact something is having upon me, relying on the old human psyche’s standby mechanisms of defense or repression. But painting, writing, drawing, playing the guitar or dancing manages to slide and slip right past these mechanisms; it requires honesty. Whether these arts, or others, such as cooking, gardening, photography, riding a horse, it is a wildly creative way to journey on the sacred path.
It is fun to allow my body to express it’s own intelligence, my heart it’s own fulness, my right-brain its own intuitive knowing. The experience is cathartic and healing, the expression fun, and the product often not only enjoyable and beautiful, but able to be shared. This brings the solitary challenge – to embrace it all, the pain and the pleasure without aggression or repression – back full circle to connection and sharing with others.Please share your artistic journey, path or gifts. There is great healing and joy in sharing these things.
