The fisherman has snagged Skeleton Woman from the depths and inadvertently brought her back home with him. He has untangled and ordered her bones, wrapped her in furs and fallen asleep. She creeps closely and drinks from the single tear forming in his eye as he sleeps. reaching into his chest she extracts the drum of his heart to beat bringing flesh once again to her body. They spend the night in love making and were consistently well fed by the creatures she had known in her life under the sea.
PART 6 CALLING FORTH the HEART of NEW LIFE, Drum of Transformation.
You may try to go from the finding of accidental treasure to love making, but you really cannot skip the chase, the untangling, the tear and the fleshing out through heart. You cannot go from concept to product without passing through the maturation of your history, vision and values. To enter breath to breath, skin to skin contact with loss, pain, disappointment and failure is the path of life and also the path to meaningful artwork. It is the story of Skeleton Woman.
In Skeleton Woman, the heart is lent in order to create. We begin our painting in the sacred way of drumming, prayer, meditation or trance. As we paint we sing up the flesh, we summon the physicality of the psyche.
Giving your heart is the willingness to descend into the realm of feeling. The heart of the archetype of Birth/Death is the greater container of Life. Eckhart Tolle calls it, singing up new life. We stumble on to the quest, then the chase of blind terror begins, eventuating in clearer vision, followed by the discipline of concentration of sorting out the small self and the large self-the ego mind and the Divine. Then comes surrender to trust and developing presence. None of this is creation until the Heart is used for manifestation. Heart symbolizes essence. It is what enables us to love in innocence.
The agreement that Skeleton Woman makes is to create a life bigger than daily life. You must, however, free yourself from separation by making her ally, lover, teacher. She will guide us through our wounds if we give ourselves wholeheartedly. The drumming and singing in the story and painting in our groups is preparing the vehicle for the inspiration and transformation.
In Painting Circle we participate in the magical activity that converses with the psyche. In that sacred space healing, integration and innovation are birthed. Song and music are of the same timeless catalyst of image making that touch the soul and as in the story transcend the obvious.
In the story of singing up the flesh, the whole woman is brought into being, not just the approved of or glamorized parts. Just as in our paintings, no mental judgment or aesthetic preferences decides what shows up on the canvas. There is an entirety that is called forth in our paintings; warts, woundings, shadow and all
Giving your heart is the willingness to descend into the realm of feeling. The heart of the archetype of Birth/Death is the greater container of Life. Eckhart Tolle calls it, singing up new life. We stumble on to the quest, then the chase of blind terror begins, eventuating in clearer vision, followed by the discipline of concentration of sorting out the small self and the large self-the ego mind and the Divine. Then comes surrender to trust and developing presence. None of this is creation until the Heart is used for manifestation. Heart symbolizes essence. It is what enables us to love in innocence.
The agreement that Skeleton Woman makes is to create a life bigger than daily life. You must, however, free yourself from separation by making her ally, lover, teacher. She will guide us through our wounds if we give ourselves wholeheartedly. The drumming and singing in the story and painting in our groups is preparing the vehicle for the inspiration and transformation.
In Painting Circle we participate in the magical activity that converses with the psyche. In that sacred space healing, integration and innovation are birthed. Song and music are of the same timeless catalyst of image making that touch the soul and as in the story transcend the obvious.
In the story of singing up the flesh, the whole woman is brought into being, not just the approved of or glamorized parts. Just as in our paintings, no mental judgment or aesthetic preferences decides what shows up on the canvas. There is an entirety that is called forth in our paintings; warts, woundings, shadow and all
PART 7 INTEGRATION of SPIRIT and the PHYSICAL, Dance of Body and Soul.
We arrive at the last phase of our story and also the creative process. It is different from the beliefs of popular media in that deep sacred union takes place when all other stages are complete. It is the satisfying exchange that yearns for a greater completion or perfection. Intercourse is synonymous with communication, communion and consummation which all speak of an urge towards union. It is not forgetting yourself but joining another in a way that changes you, brings about new life. To join together as one is to really understand one another. The desire to know and be known is what Aphrodite archetype generates. This desire leads to physical intimacy, impregnation so that new life may flow. This union of mind, heart and spirit, creates new growth in the psychological, emotional, spiritual or physical spheres.
You may try to go from the finding of accidental treasure to love making, but you really cannot skip the chase, the untangling, the tear and the fleshing out through heart. You cannot go from concept to product without passing through the maturation of your history, vision and values. To enter breath to breath, skin to skin contact with loss, pain, disappointment and failure is the path of life and also the path to meaningful artwork. It is the story of Skeleton Woman.The story has progressed like many fairy tales from an untenable condition; in this case a masculine energy does not honor and understand the feminine and so throws her back into the primordial matter where her reality is dramatically altered. She becomes related to the sea world of the unconscious and it changes her and in turn will change him.
Note it does not destroy her although it may look like it from the old perspective. This is the initiation that art requires again and again, in an unimaginable variety of ways. You would be right to say that life requires the same thing, but our culture conspires to put us in denial of the dynamic of death/birth in our daily life, as well as, in the greater field of life. That is changing with Eastern and Indigenous spiritual influence and the Consciously Dying Movement. So often, however, people go into their grief of a loved one shocked and stunned, even when it was an obvious and inevitable loss. The death dynamic of the creative process can not be denied as it is in your face, unless your head is in the sand. If you do not acknowledge it your creative work will not be consummated.
In the Skeleton Women story we may well consider the question, who is the artist? Is it the lonely fisherman who, although he was originally terrified, entered into relationship by putting her bones right and covering her gently with sleeping furs. Or is it Skeleton Women herself who uses his heart to re-created herself? Of course, as with ourselves, it is both of them. We are the alienated masculine principle and the crushed feminine principle who together transforms the seemingly dead end into new life. They both risk. They both in their way draw from imagination and inner vision, all apart of the artist/shamanic skill of trusting in transformation through the greater cycle beyond death.
