as if guided, we reach for creativity and healing (even when we don't see it)
There is something in you that has reached toward a way of healing intuitively in this life, I would bet.
A decision or way that you may not have even seen as a 'healing' instinct at the time. It was just necessary, or fun or interesting, or took you to relief or joy or a timeless state - and your attention was with it for a time (or still is).
You may not have even seen the need for or presence of 'healing' at all in that reaching. We are never not whole, after all, and our resiliency and adaptability is so natural, in many respects.
AND, some types of hurting are just too much to handle all at once. Our psyches get that better than we do.
So we don’t see the need exactly, but somehow, as if guided, we reach.
So, whatever you reached toward may have just felt fresh and new, or hopeful and arousing somehow. Our consciousness is sneaky-good with timing like that, and our bodies are infinitely wise, pushing sensations that evoke a response.
So often what we reach for is an expression of our creative spirit inviting us to rejoin with an innate freedom that cannot be taken away - no matter what people or the world around us is doing or not doing. No matter how we may be hurting or disappointed or making transitions we’ve yet to name.
So we reach towards what helps tap us back into the Source of that vitality that will see us through… often it’s art, dance, music, writing, working out, making or moving somehow.
Of course, sometimes we do reach for unhelpful or risky catharsis - such as addictive habits and substances, but that’s not what I’m talking about today.
What I’m musing on today can certainly lead to waters of naturally induced altered consciousness, but even when it doesn’t we still receive a practical quenching. Painting is sure like this for me… thank you, Creator, for helping me choose my brush, pen and art over the daily bottle or high.
That inner-healer built into each of us knows this - our unique creative tendencies, the ones which are part of our personal medicine.
She knows that our creative energy must have a channel, must be flowing, shifting or sometimes even resting in a sort of activated stillness - to address a deeper, primal need or re-membering that can't be named or seen, but that is definitely felt, like a longing or restlessness.
It has seemed to me, that the often automatic nature of this within is much like homeostasis in the body - which is not a fixed state, but a constantly adaptive+adjusting movement toward the best equilibrium possible. A way, on all the levels - physical, mental, emotional, spiritual and such - to keep us functioning and engaged with our own wholeness, even in a largely unconscious way.
So when you are tired, beat, overwhelmed, fallen, hyper-sensitive, just don’t know what to do… it’s OK.
Listen for a minute or ten to your body. Move and stretch - literally. What is your body asking for? How is it guiding you to reach toward spaciousness and connection? Not the surface ice-cream craving, but deeper in… listen and ask, what will bring me toward relief and space? What will bring me a little closer to peace or even delight?
In that answer lies the dynamic bond between your conscious self and your largely unconscious inner wise-and-wacky artist-healer.
Some say this: you don't need to be healed at all - because you are not and cannot be broken.
Others say that you, like us all, have experienced brokenness in a myriad of ways and certainly need healing, or at least re-membering and periodic returning.
I say Yes… … … and Yes.
This and that, is to be human.
{Work and life have been pointing me back to 2015 at an interestingly+synchronistic frequency. The art journal spread above is from a 28 day Practice in Presence that year. That whole handmade journal is one that takes me back to a very specific and shifting time. It’s also the same year I shared a popular Creative Practice mini-workshop, Art Heals Art Reveals, which is now available to all patrons at my new Patreon Creative Practice community.}
