What Is a Normal Goal for a Young Person Becomes a Neurotic Hinderance in Old Age - Jung

I was finding that when I did the activities that had previously helped induce a state of 'wonderment' I was temporarily relieved of the increasing despair I was feeling.  I was part of a book club and at one of the meetings a new person showed up.  I think we are impacted more often by a persons energy than their words and she transmitted a life energy that I was drawn to.  At the end of our book meeting she invited us to an 'intuitive painting' workshop and I decided to go.

Years before I had heard of a teacher, Michelle Cassou who had developed what she called process or intuitive painting.  I was in the midst of learning painting and drawing skills and eagerly looked at her book:  Life, Paint, and Passion.  I rejected her perspective immediately due to her emphasizes on painting for the process or experience of painting and enjoying it’s meditative qualities.  She clearly stated that it’s not about the end product. It is not about what you “should do.” It’s about becoming conscious and present.

Well, I was ready to give this intuitive painting process a try now.

At the intuitive painting workshop I loved the colors, the feel of the brush on the paper, and putting whatever I was moved to on the paper.  However, I did not want anyone to see my finished painting!  While we were driving home from the workshop I was considering how I could hide this 'painting' from my partner.  He knew I was going to a painting workshop and I was concerned about his judgment of what I was bringing home.

Even though I had heard and resonated strongly with the instructors prompts such as:  " With painting it's what has happened inside of you that is important. Not the product."  Or “Creativity works the same in every medium. It’s not the painting, it’s the process of creativity.”

I could not get past my fear of judgment and what I perceived to be the consequences of a 'negative' judgment.

As it turned out I was unable to sneak my painting inside, my partner was right inside the front door as I came in.  Nothing in me wanted to show him what I had painted.  The pain of this did not escape me either.  Here I was 56 years old and I was stressfully concerned about preserving some kind of 'idealized' self image.  Was this self image worth protecting? This 'upset' was out of proportion and I knew there was something for me to understand and at this stage of life, grow beyond.  Couldn't the art form of a human life transcend egoity?
I remembered reading about Gustav Klimt and how when he began his inspired painting with gold all of his friends, most of whom were painters, told him that he could not paint with gold, it was somehow against the rules of fine art.  He did give up painting with gold.  What if he had been able to endure their criticisms because he was moved by something greater?  Where would this creative process have taken him?
My own expression of art had once come from a depth of felt 'brightness'.  Over time, rather than stay true to that guiding brightness I had been impacted by criticism, something we all deal with and yet the limiting rules I took on as a result of how I dealt with criticism had caused the expression of brightness to dim.
One must have great strength to stay on the path lead by the mysterious creative process.  This pathway does not care about egoic destiny, it is about burning up self image as one transcends self to become one with Light.     

"Who Am I Standing In the Midst of this Thought Traffic?" -Rumi

Where You Stumble and Fall, There You Find Pure Gold - C.G. Jung

Fabric Weaving as taught by Jude Hill

 

I was facing something I did not want to see or acknowledge.  While I was saying " I do art for the love of art" I was clearly not doing this.  I intuited the truth and beauty of doing art or truly any activity as an expression of love and yet once again was faced with a realization that below these words I was ego-driven and not heart lead.

I had experienced this realization before and yet here I was, painfully visiting it again.

I have learned over time that life does not progress in any kind of straight line forward and yet wondered: do lessons ever get learned in some final way?

I also cannot deny that human and non-human suffering goes on everyday.  Suffering is a very evident part of life.  Any person who I have gotten to know below their 'surface' has dealt with suffering.  No one escapes it.  And having done animal rescue and rehabilitation work for years the suffering of the non humans goes without saying.  So I could not feel sorry for myself or blame anyone for the use of my hands being taken away.

I felt, deeply that I would use any activity egoically, insisting on uniqueness of self rather than trusting and following the Mysterious Creative Process.

I clearly felt how in general I was moved by anxiety and fear and not trust in something greater than my ego. 

Yet I also whole bodily knew, that there was something so much greater than the egoic self.  I knew that both stillness and movement could be done in love not egoity and that when anything was done from this place beyond the ego that true Beauty occurred.  

I was clearly obstructing Light from coming in.

I felt both emotionally and physically frozen.

I had stumbled and fallen.

A Journey of Mystery

Experimenting with fabric weaving as taught by Jude Hill

I could not have understood at my core what I had come to believe about 'art' and specifically drawing if I had not lost my ability to draw.  And, like any belief, these beliefs directed how I interacted with myself and others.  Of even more importance I was able to understand how these deeply held beliefs once known, actually were preventing me from growing in artistic expression as I had seen a number of my friends grow and flower.

I realized that 'art' for me had become linked with my understanding of and expression of "me".

I had developed strong convictions that the ability to draw was equivalent to being an artist and I had spent years working to develop this skill. 

After understandably grieving this loss it became obvious to me that I was looking to my ability to produce 'art' as a way to be loved rather than as a way to express love.

How had I so unconsciously taken a form of expression that had once been a source of joy and turned it into something that had to provide my life with meaning?

Carl Jung has written:  " The greatest and most important problems of life are fundamentally unsolvable.  They can never be solved but only out grown."