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."