Notes From Workshop
This particular workshop is designed to encourage us to experience new frontiers in our personal creative arena, as a journey, not making a product. You are released in this moment of the expectation that you will produce something to carry home with you. It is about developing skills and perceptions that are sometimes hard to realize in the world that exists around our process. We enter into this safe and supportive collective as an opportunity to release the dominate voice that runs how we approach process. Like myself I bet you often don’t realize how deep a rut is until you climb out.
In my training at the Marin Institute for Projective Dreamwork, Jeremy Taylor spoke about an archetypal dynamic that we all have the opportunity to face numerous times in our lives. He uses the metaphor of life as finding our way through the forest. There always comes the time when the Captain who has been leading the expedition successfully up until now must step to the back of the line because she is leading us around in circles and everyone knows it. If the Captain archetype has been intuitive then she needs to hand the helm to the rational navigator and visa verso. It is often the least valued part of us who must now lead. This could be the ratty flea bitten stray dog that trails behind, even though the Captain kicks him and harangues the cook for giving him scraps. Like in nighttime dreams all those in the expedition are parts of our self.
Often the new part that must step forward is a part of our self that we don’t recognize. This part will show up in our dreams as the shadow: teenage hoodlums, terrorist or unconscious blond. They also appear in our charged reaction to others we name inconsiderate, irresponsible, arrogant, goody-two-shoes or free spirits. These are all parts that we have disowned in our selves. So there comes a time when the lowly of lows is the only guide that works to find our way out of the woods. Often at the Y in the road, it doesn’t matter which fork we take. But there is a time when one choice takes us to the high path while the other leads us back to the same choice in the midst of a different content.
The one-capable-of-leading the expedition ‘out of the woods’ is our fully embodied instinctive intelligence. This part is connected to making changes through the vertical rather than making ‘good-time’ in the horizontal that goes nowhere. She works out of the box and may not step forward unless severely pressed. An example is in the book, Mutant Message Down Under, when Marlo Morgan, on a walk-about with Aborigines, is informed that it is her turn to guide the group to the next water source. She has no experience in this and knows they are set to follow her wherever she leads. Their life is in her hands. Somehow eventually she does find the water. To lead takes awareness of all the senses, physical and beyond. And it takes ability to hold an expansive whole systems mind beyond ambiguity, dichotomy, and paradox. It takes developed confusion endurance. In this workshop to support our guides to find higher ground we will experiment with and cultivate various modes of being in relation to our painting process.
The one-capable-of-leading the expedition ‘out of the woods’ is our fully embodied instinctive intelligence. This part is connected to making changes through the vertical rather than making ‘good-time’ in the horizontal that goes nowhere. She works out of the box and may not step forward unless severely pressed. An example is in the book, Mutant Message Down Under, when Marlo Morgan, on a walk-about with Aborigines, is informed that it is her turn to guide the group to the next water source. She has no experience in this and knows they are set to follow her wherever she leads. Their life is in her hands. Somehow eventually she does find the water. To lead takes awareness of all the senses, physical and beyond. And it takes ability to hold an expansive whole systems mind beyond ambiguity, dichotomy, and paradox. It takes developed confusion endurance. In this workshop to support our guides to find higher ground we will experiment with and cultivate various modes of being in relation to our painting process. 