February 16, 2016 – Taking a breath of self-love

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After reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s book “Big Magic” recently, I began following her somewhat frequent Facebook posts. Last Wednesday, she wrote a long post on her worry about the extent to which, we are hard on ourselves – she asked if we can love all the parts of us we hate. Hate is a strong word, but I can understand the wisdom in using it. If she were to understate our self-criticism, she’d be leaving out, those of us in the deepest pain. The rawness and realness of her post compelled me to share it on my own personal page – inviting you all to join me, in a self-love movement.

The next morning I woke with a fire burning inside. I felt the various threads, of what has been coming through me lately to write on Tuesdays, weaving together. I realized I needed to actually preach, in my three watercolor groups. So, I did just that with each of them – and now I am again here with you – the rest of you who “listen” to me.

In EG’s post, she recounted a meeting between the meditation teacher and author Sharon Salzberg, and the Dalai Lama. When Sharon asked him what he thought of self-hatred, he had no idea what she was talking about. It seems that bashing ourselves is a Western phenomenon. This triggered something in me about the left and right brain – and what I’m gleaning from, “The Master and His Emissary.” Iain McGilchrist is also worried about our Western culture-run world, because of the dominance of the left brain. It makes sense to me that when we habitually operate more from our left brains, with their lack of context, fixation and tendency to manipulation – without the wider view of our right brains that are connection-oriented and relational to balance us out, we are at the mercy (or lack thereof, more accurately) of our inner-critical voices.

Iain McGilchrist gave me another incredible piece to the puzzle, that I’ve not yet written about, which weaves in here too. In an interview I listened to, he said that matter – physical matter – is a state of consciousness. Like the forms H2O takes – steam, water and ice, our consciousness has a non-physical form, which then can become physical – and in doing so, we create our world. I was blown away by this. Of course! Every physical thing – at least those that we create – starts as an idea before we make it into form. I’ve said that the consciousness of the artist is in her or his work, but this takes it a bit further, our artwork is our consciousness – in physical form. Ok, so then when we are picking apart our work, as we are creating it, it’s the same thing as picking ourselves apart.

Iain McGilchrist says that the dominance of the left-brain has been increasing over time, worrying him about our future. If what we need is to operate more from our right-brains, minding our thoughts as we paint, is one way we can do our part to turn the tide. In my “sermons” last week, what I asked of the artists in my groups is this: every time we notice the voice that says, this doesn’t look right, I can’t do this, what a mess this is, I’m ruining this painting, to stop and take a deep, soft belly breath. I invite us to bring our attention out of our heads, and remember we are in a body that breathes. We are alive and here. I have no idea where this came from. I have no idea if this indeed, brings us into our right-brains, but our breath always happens in this moment and brings peace and calm – so it can never hurt. And then I want us to remind ourselves, that there is no reason to think, that we could or even should be painting any differently than we do in this moment – with our experience to date, the extent to which we’ve practiced, our own personal sensibilities and tendencies – we paint as we paint in this moment – and that is just fine – it has its own kind of perfection, even.

Since I fervently shared this with my groups last week, I’ve been painting myself (every day, haven’t missed one so far), and I see that the tricky part is actually noticing the voice. We are so used to living with these voices, that it seems normal to have them yammering and hammering along. This draws in the thread of the importance of awareness and attention – the subject of another recent post. It takes practice to grow our awareness, to have the capacity to interrupt the autopilot to bring in the breath – and the reminder that we are ok. I’m hearing over and over lately, that meditation helps this. (Here are 5 forms that don’t require standing still.) It expands our pre-frontal cortex – the part of our brains that makes conscious choices.

But also so does showing up – for ourselves and for each other. I see it in every single group meeting on Thursdays and Fridays – all the appreciation that is shared from one artist to another, for the work they are doing. We are each other’s reminders, of the perfection of this moment and the art being created in it. Our paintings are a result of a whole bunch of these moments. With awareness – self-generated or when reminded by another – we have an opportunity to re-focus our attention – away from fixating on the part/parts of our paintings (or ourselves) that we find fault with, to the expanded view of the whole painting and our whole selves. What we attend to creates our reality – attending to the goodness of this moment brings that goodness – appreciation – love – into our lives.

For a few weeks, I’ve been finding myself being edgy and short with a few people who are closest to me, including my husband and my dear friend. I have been feeling really terrible about it, and was beating up on myself for it. In my coaching group it was pointed out to me, that I might be being edgy and short with myself. This was an enormous gift of awareness which had me realize, I needed to be patient and gentle with myself, extra patient and gentle, actually. Whatever we do to ourselves, has a ripple effect. When I can bring to myself the gaze of accepting love – for all my parts, even and especially those I’m picking apart, I can bring that gaze to all the parts of everyone in my life, that I want to pick apart too. I believe with all of me, that loving ourselves is the most important thing we can do to change the world. Bringing our light to darkness wherever we encounter it, is the whole enchilada. We all have the light of God in us – the light of love. It’s hard to remember this, but when we do, it shines brighter.

With all my love,

Cara