Our ancestors wrote the stories on the cave walls in images, stitched them into clothing, wove them into rugs, painted them on pottery and enacted dramas and songs to live the legends into the future. They worked with image. When we remove image making from the culture, we then are subject to the images and stories of the over-culture...
Painting Title: Brainstorm : An intimate portrait of my Muse
#intentionalcreativity
Shiloh Sophia’s INSIGHT painting,
a process guided across the world with over 1100 women over 4 weeks
For the past four weeks, once a week I have been painting what you see above in a group of over 1200 women. It has been such a stretch and also so incredible. I have been in the middle of a personal move and so each week showing up for filming was a kind of riddle. Where are my pink boots? Why doesn’t the lighting work? Why have our computers decided now to stop working? It was a comedy of errors and still I treated this as if it was the most important thing I had to show up for. I was often late and my standards of delivery were not up to par, but I did it. I am dedicated to awakening consciousness like never before.
This decision to be all about awaking consciousness isn’t a new one but it has been clarified by the bizarrity of happenings in our world and in the United States.
When you complete a painting in Intentional Creativity, part of our ritual is to ask what the message is and to pretend like we are giving the painting the pen. What comes out is often profound and insightful and delightful even at times. Here is what came forth from the painting.
We are living images, living in images, with a consciousness, constructed of imagery.
When we try to heal without addressing images and how they live in us, the results are fragmented. The old traumas live in image, moving images, which are our stories. We can’t just approach this sacred work of healing only mentally and expect the fullness we desire. To heal the story we work with image, in body and brain, so that the patterns begin to fire differently.
This seems so logical, yet the approach to it is often missed. To heal internal images, work with imagery aka the imagination in the external so you can SEE it.
We aren’t going to the heart and brain of the matter if we are mostly ‘thinking about change’, no matter how great our efforts. This is the riddle of the transformation movement.
Our ancestors wrote the stories on the cave walls in images, stitched them into clothing, wove them into rugs, painted them on pottery and enacted dramas and songs to live the legends into the future. They worked with image. When we remove image making from the culture, we then are subject to the images and stories of the over-culture.
The trauma lives within our body, field and mind as a living moving image that summons itself when triggered, and for many of us, tortures us via the critic and self esteem, lack of ability to be self expressed, living authentically etc… This is one of the hugest pain points. But again, we often miss that to be self expressed you don’t need talent, but you do need FORMS of self expression to work out in real matter based time.
When we work with images as related to our story, the good, the bad and the ugly, the right and left brain are activated and begin to fire differently INSTANTLY. The brain then ‘sees’ the story is being worked with – and the energy connected to the story begins to SHIFT. Sometimes we are just looking for a micro-shift to get us through each moment. Eventually these micro-shifts can add up to minutes and days and lives where we can feel that our story has changed the grip it had on us. And by the way, that grip is where the critic is housed.
This is WHY my life has been dedicated to healing through image. I have always been focused on healing – all my life. This is the best personal medicine I know.
Tomorrow I start filming for my new 13 moon class, CODEX – The Intentional Creativity course and I am excited and always nervous. And ever so grateful for the chance to live out my sacred work in the world.
with gratitude for all of the insights and all the connections,
A few painting details…
To see what I’m up to, and classes coming next, come on over and watch this video: www.cosmiccowgirls.com.
Graphic recording image created from INSIGHT seminar
– created by Color of Woman Graduate and Guild Member, Lori Danyluk.
