This has been such a choc-full week for me with The Artist’s Way. Chapter 3 is called Recovering a Sense of Power, and I feel like I’ve been plugged back into the mains power outlet. My hair is standing on end! Now a rich shade of chestnut, auburn brown that I’m very pleased with (Mel, I couldn’t brave the blonde that you’ve gone for). I had a wonderfully reminiscent evening on Friday with my head wrapped in towels and my hair slathered in what looks like cow dung ~ but smells much nicer. My sister and I used to henna our hair when we were teens. One time on holiday in Cornwall, she sat in the bath with this crumbly brown paste all over her, and we just laughed and laughed. We didn’t realize that it would make such a mess; that every little bit that fell on your arm or your shoulders would leave an indelible mark for days. And don’t even think about what it will do to the carpet.
Well, I found somewhere that still sells blocks of henna a few months ago, and it has been sitting wrapped in paper in the back of my closet all this time. I so badly wanted to bring on the transformation, but never felt I had the time or the energy to deal with the fuss. It needs to be left on your hair for anything between 1 and 4 hours, and during this time, you need to keep pretty still, because of shedding of little brown pellets that drop as they dry. When Friday evening came round, I just felt ready to seize the moment.
Oh, god! It’s been such a crazy, tumultuous week that I can hardly order my thoughts to write coherently. I need to jump up and down and shout randomly as things come into my head.
You see, I’m also having that wonderful experience of delicious clarity as things begin to drop into place. Now for me, this is the elixir of life. This is wisdom crystallizing in it’s very first stages. This is the fuel that drives you on to new motivations and new desires.
I’m at that point where the work of the last few months is starting to snowball, and all the separate (or so I thought) threads of what I’ve been refining, pursuing, are starting to join together into some sort of wonderful tapestry.
It’s that point where you can see that there IS a Big Picture to what you’ve been doing. And what really excites me about these times is that it means your instincts work! It means that you were always on the right path, even when you had those achingly terrible doubts. And, I think, it means that Providence is still playing a part in your life. Whatever that means to you, because for me, it’s come less and less to mean God, or some outside Power, or Authority, but more and more to mean my own connection to Source, my own connection to who I was before I came here (Earth) and who I really AM, in the vaster sense of my Soul.
And this is the bliss of being alive. It’s what we came here to do. It’s what I came here for. To create, to explore new desires, new possibilities, to refine my Soul’s choices in this incarnation.
{I have written so much in my pocket journal this week (where I’m also writing my Morning Pages) and my head is so full of inspirations and ideas. This morning, I really didn’t feel I could write them because the noise and the hustle was so great inside me. So, I’ve come here instead, because writing here helps me gain clarity. It’s not Morning Pages, as such. But an attempt at some sort of summary of the week.}
So Friday night really turned into an Artist’s Date for me. Old blue blanket spread over the sofa, where I planned to sit, very still, for two hours. Bathroom floor covered in towels. Rubber gloves. Vaseline. *laugh out loud* …. I know some people who would do all this for other kinds of kicks! Henna mixed up in a cake-mixing bowl, with a wooden spoon. And that’s where it strikes me, that it’s the physicality of this whole experience that gets me so excited. It’s a little bit of witchery; like baking a magickal spell-infused cake. You can’t rush these things. The spell only works if you put in the time, gather all the ingredients by hand …. mix it all by hand too ~ modern shortcuts and fancy machines just don’t help. I could go to the hairdressers and sit with chemicals on my head for an hour, but that’s not me. The henna is plant-based, with only natural products added. And it has a wonderfully conditioning effect on your hair. Sort of varnishes it, and makes it look thicker.
I really struggled to get a good even coating of henna all over my hair. And I was trying not to hyperventilate about the bits that were splashing all over the bathroom as I proceeded with the task. I’d remembered to plaster my face, ears and neck with vaseline, and had black clothes on. I managed to wipe some of the little bits off my shoulders with a cloth when they fell there. 10 o’clock, all done and wrapped in a towel (was supposed to be clingfilm, but when I pulled it from the roll, there was only a small piece left). I moved to the sofa for 2 hours of quiet distraction with a film: “Twilight” ~ another slightly odd choice for me; a real indulgence in teenage fantasies and stories that would have once thrilled my mind, but that Sensible Sam usually avoids these days.
The henna, the film choice, the immersion in The Beatles, The White Album this week ….. everything is taking me back to being 16 or 17 . But it has never been a conscious, left-brain decision on my part …. it is just flowing through me, and washing over me. I didn’t even see the connections til now.
So, I’m thinking this is all to do with Chapter 3, The Artist’s Way, which has been full of questions and exercises about reconnecting to your childhood (describe your childhood room / describe 5 traits you liked in yourself as a child / list 5 childhood accomplishments etc). Cameron talks about recovering yourself through these exercises. She says that we need to restore the persons we have abandoned – ourselves. This just resonates so deeply with me.
(TAW, p.73)
“Many blocked people are actually very powerful and creative personalities who have been made to feel guilty about their own strengths and gifts. Without being acknowledged, they are often used as batteries by their families and friends, who feel free to both use their creative energies and disparage them. When these blocked artists strive to break free of their dysfunctional systems, they are often urged to be sensible when such advice is not appropriate for them. Made to feel guilty for their talents, they often hide their own light under a bushel for fear of hurting others. Instead they hurt themselves.”
Now, I’m not saying that’s how it’s been in my life. And putting that quote up here in my space makes me feel like a total fraud. First off, I start questioning whether I have any right to call myself an ‘Artist’ in the way that Cameron uses the word. And perhaps I haven’t made this clear before, because she doesn’t just mean someone that creates visual art. In fact, her own ‘main’ form of art is writing plays, films and musicals. So ‘Artist’ can mean Writer, Poet, Painter, Photographer, Musician, Actor, Performer …. I don’t know, the list could be pretty long. But part of my nagging worry at the moment is that I’m not really sure what sort of Artist I am ….. {breathe} …… if I can even call myself an Artist in the first place. I don’t think it really matters right now. This process is valuable to anyone.
But that part of me that always wants to jump ahead and see where I’m going just wants to know one way or the other,
“What are you trying to recover, Samantha? Are you going to start drawing again, or start playing your flute again, start singing again …. or you wanna do something else? Well, what makes you think you’re any good at painting or creating visual art? Better stick to something you know you can already do fairly well.”
Whoa! That just came out of the blue.
Anyway, back to that quote. My family have never disparaged me in anything I have done. Though I may have been able to hear their own doubts, fears and concerns behind their words a little too clearly. My experience of learning to hide my light under a bushel really came at school. Embarrassed by my achievements, or my talents, I tried to hide them, and then just stopped trying so much. Besides, where was the fun in that, when I could complete the task and still get an A without putting my whole heart and soul into it?
I’m getting some anger coming up now at my teachers. You know, you could do a really lovely, wonderful piece of work, and they would still just look for something to criticize; somewhere to put the red pen. Yes, that’s a lovely story, Samantha, well done, but you need to get your handwriting all leaning in the same direction. Here, go away and write this stupid pointless sentence out across three pages in your class book until your handwriting looks more regular/neat/uniform …… ARGHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!! CONFORM CONFORM CONFORM …..
I think for most of them it was about power, and the need to maintain their authority. Plus, particularly in this country, there is a really strong agenda that runs through everything we do, that you mustn’t be too good at anything, you mustn’t be too brilliant. If you do, someone will just have to bring you down a peg or two. It happens in the media with our great performers and achievers all the time. I think it goes back to the class system. Notions of getting above your station, which just wouldn’t have been acceptable. The working class wanted to pull everyone down to their level, to feel validated, better about themselves. And anyone who dared to shoot higher, to shine or to reach up and mix with the Lords and the Ladies (should they even be invited to do so) was rejected as a class traitor.
Now, I’ve been a teacher, and I wonder whether I have also been guilty of pulling students back down to earth with a thump. You see, by the time they came to us in Secondary School, most of them already had a terribly poor opinion of the worth of their work or their achievements, and we would spend 5 years trying to convince them that their efforts were good enough, that their work was as good as they wanted it to be. We just spent all our time trying to encourage and endorse them. Mostly to no avail. I can only think of a few students who grew in confidence about their abilities during their journey through high school. The damage is pretty pervasive, and I believe it starts earlier.
So we have to go back, and discover which parts of us we’ve hidden from view, and hidden from ourselves. And often the emotion that caused us to cut ourselves off from part of who we are is Shame. You know, Shame is an emotion that I think we are even too ashamed to acknowledge most of the time. Let alone look at the thing that causes it. Or is it just me? Shame is so damn uncomfortable that I will slice off my arm to get away from it and run looking for shelter. Did anyone see me do that? No. Good. Now start creating your ‘cover’.
Cover-stories become too difficult to live after a while. You start to forget who you’re supposed to be in certain circumstances. Which part of my cover has this friend seen, or that one? Can I be more open, more honest here? But you never are really being honest, because you’ve abandoned that part of yourself completely. What do you do when you catch a glimpse of it, unawares? Shudder. Shiver. Start running again.
You know, it makes me think of Harry Potter and the Horcruxes in The Half-Blood Prince (I love it when I can reduce something back to popular culture ~ but anyone who says JK Rowling didn’t have her finger on the pulse of something so much bigger needs to take up the matter with me personally ….. a long evening over a few drinks, perhaps, to discuss). When Professor Slughorn explains to Harry that they only way Voldemort could split his soul into separate pieces was through the act of murder. When we split off part of ourselves, we are committing a little act of self-murder. So it seems this week, I have been experiencing opportunities to reclaim the parts of myself that I had thought I’d killed. It’s been a lot more fun than I would have first thought.
I’m not even half done with this topic ~ argh! but time is racing away from me, and I want to go out for a walk before Rubin gets home. And maybe I’m shifting and avoiding a little bit here, because I’ve come to the nub of the stuff that was really difficult to release this week. The Shame Stuff. This has been good, really good. I really want to ditch some of my cover stories, and reclaim all the parts I have hidden away from view over the years.
(TAW, p.70)
“By telling our shame secrets around our art and telling them through our art, we release ourselves and others from darkness. This release is not always welcomed.
We must learn that when our art reveals a secret of the human soul, those watching it may try to shame us for making it.”
I haven’t quite decided how I’m going to tell my shame secrets yet. Blurt them out here in plain simple words? I had thought I would, but now I feel that they deserve more. They may need to be cradled more carefully, in order to return their sense of worth and the honour they deserve.
I can only say that the flood of power that has been released in me this week from this part of the recovery process is amazing. wonderful. delicious. Now, the sea is beckoning to me. I must go.
If you’re still with me, after this very long and slightly random ramble:
Bright Blessings!
