Thoughts and events recently have led me to question whether the space that I wish to create is necessarily a concrete space. And I don’t mean literally – that couldn’t be further from the truth of my dream! I am wondering whether my intention could be to simply create an energetic space for people.
I have become increasingly obsessed with words, word combinations and their tone or essence, and it seems particularly appropriate that this could also have a double meaning.
An energetic space represents for me the result of being totally connected to whoever I am interacting with, giving each person my full and undivided attention and being totally present with their, and my own, experience.
But its deeper significance could be that this space of acceptance, with no agenda other than for the other person to be totally heard and seen and witnessed as they are, may allow them to release the actual physical energy of their true natures – their vitality, inspiration, imagination, playfulness, vitality and sense of awe and wonder.
Just a thought ….
This post has been rather a long time coming. It feels like I needed to give it time to formulate.
When making decisions in life about the direction I want to take I usually default to one of two methods. Either I plan like mad, in a very linear fashion, get very excited, exhaust myself and then don’t carry out the project or idea!
Or I say I am going with the flow. Which usually means, in practical terms, that I have no focus, allowing myself to be distracted by whatever comes my way, and ending up feeling unfulfilled, with no structure, and then I give up.
Either way is demoralising, leads me to trust myself less, and achieves nothing but confusion and doubt.
This time, I am not planning ahead, but I do have something to focus on.
And there is a major difference in that I don’t have an expectation of an outcome.
My sole (soul) aim is to be creative on a daily basis, mainly through writing and art journaling.
Simply for the sake of it! To have fun, to be joyful, to play.
And knowing that the very act of expressing myself will change things in my life, without needing to know what or why or how. I am going to let the art lead me to myself, show me what steps I need to take, guide me to my fullest potential.
I expect all this will happen organically, naturally, subtlely. All that really matters is that in the process of making marks and voicing my joys and fears this is fulfilling a basic need in me – in all of us – that allows the rest to take care of itself.
I have been putting the cart before the horse – using the concept of being creative to achieve a result of some sort – to perhaps secretly think it might enable me to earn money from it for example.
But now I want to take a leap of faith, trust that the act itself is enough. To rest in presence and stillness. To come from a place of not knowing.
And it’s probably not even about the art either. It’s about getting out of my way, engaging in a pursuit that brings joy and excitement. Art just happens to be my medium, for others it may be sport or music or hedge laying.
There is nowhere to get to. I am already where I need to be.
Over the last week I have been through an extraordinary range of emotions, a roller coaster of excitement swiftly followed by disappointment and despair. But out of it is emerging something new….
From a series of seemingly unconnected events – a hospital procedure, a bout of intense loneliness, being inspired by the backdrop of a video broadcast, a friend in need – I woke one morning with what I thought was a re-visioning of a dream.
One of the various threads that I have been exploring in my life has been the notion of running expressive arts workshops. Not as therapy, but which would be therapeutic. Not to diagnose, judge or interpret peoples’ individual art, but to allow the freedom and permission to create and express whatever was going on for them in each moment. A process, not an outcome. A continuing journey, not a one-stop fix. An exploration, an on-going experience, not a fait accompli. An opening up and letting go, not a Ten Steps to Enlightenment formula.
So back to my vision, my mission – to create an environment in which this unfolding could take place, where the space did the healing, not the interventions or the content. It would be somewhere rural, immersed in nature, with some sort of basic wood structure/workshop, surrounded by flowers and woods and birds and wildlife. People would come to hang out, be themselves, make their art, make friends or revel in the peace and quietness of alone time.
A Space To Be.
To be authentic, free, released from convention and rules and societal pressures for however short a time, a place to discover what is and what is not important, a chance to drop the barriers and have fun, to Play with a capital P.
And then I told a friend.
She suggested that perhaps I should do this for myself before offering it to others. That perhaps I would be bypassing my own needs, denying myself what I was craving. As she was saying this I nose dived from extreme excitement to total hopelessness in a nanosecond. Complete Defeat in One Easy Move.
I wasn’t cross with my friend. I didn’t jump up and storm out. I knew she was right but I hadn’t wanted to address it. But the despair came because, even though it was, and still is, a viable dream, I was using the whole concept as a sticking plaster, a way of distracting myself from what I was feeling and needing. Coming from that place it could never work because I would be attending to the wrong thing, the wrong people. I’d be putting the cart before the horse.
As a last ditch attempt to rescue my dream I did rather lamely proffer the idea to my friend that perhaps you need to give to others what you need for yourself, you teach what you need to learn, you act out the wounded healer. But I knew I was on to a losing wicket – these were merely out-dated intellectual concepts that may once have helped me feel better but which no longer held much sway.
Following the bursting of my bubble I went into complete dismissal mode, abandoning any hope of an exhilarating life and resigning myself to a life of drudgery and unfulfilling work. It seemed there were only two choices – fantasy, creativity and magic or humdrum, ordinary and suffocating repression.
A week later however I am beginning to see a third choice, the subject of my next post.