The Nightmare: Invitation, Disorder, Transformation - BLOG 5 NF 05/04/17

The Nightmare: Invitation, Disorder, Transformation

(Henry Fuseli, The Nightmare, 1781)

The woman’s slightly transparent white dress strongly contrasts the dark background. The position of her arms and neck seems to almost fall off the bed. She looks unstable and vulnerable. On her stomach, an incubus is sitting, facing front with his big eyes. His weight presses on the woman, suffocating her. A dark horse is peeking from behind the curtain in the background. This painting gives me the impression of invasion and violation. Clearly, the incubus and the dark horse do not belong in her bedroom. They are self-imposed guests in the deep dark night. However, her dropped arms and hair, her slightly opened mouth and rosy cheeks make me wonder if she is experiencing ecstasy.

Again, I woke up from another nightmare. A gigantic snake tightly wraps my entire body, suffocating me. It doesn’t look like the snake has any intensions to kill me. It is just suffocating me, watching me lose my breath and slowly become unconscious. It is just impossible for me to even try to escape.

Dealing with my “nightmare hangover”, I looked up snake in The Book of Symbols: “The snake has always conveyed power over life and death, making it a form of the ancestral spirit, guide to the Land of the Dead and mediator of hidden processes of transformation and return.” Its interpretation of symbol somewhat lifted my spirit.

This week I could not get one image out of my mind: a dead womb where life can no longer grow or survive. After the snake nightmare, I have performed a kind of ceremony of releasing the dead in me. It was a ceremony of the dead. I realized why we need funerals. It is a ceremony of releasing unbearable pain and the dead so that they would not be buried in my mind but be unchained from my unconscious obsession. Saying a proper good-bye is an important exercise in life.

I did not call you

But you found me

You found your way to reach me

I did not hear you

But you called me through the crack

I tried to ignore you

But you did not go away

I followed you

You led me to the west where I met the dead

Now I unchain them

It’s our funeral day

I gently lay them down in my tears

Shalom…

Like Water, Like Water - BLOG 5 SK 05/05/2017

Water kept seeping into my awareness this week and I felt it was an appropriate symbol to focus on in my final blog at the very beginning of this journey. As I was reading through research articles for a term paper exploring contemplative pedagogy, the paragraph jumped into explaining the example of how we'd approach the topic of water. I took a pause in my research, and went into the practice it was explaining as a possible approach.

Let us think about water, the great spectrum of reflected on a still body of water versus moving water (there is the smooth flow and there is also the thunderous crashing of waves). There is the feeling of wetness. One can submerge them self fully into it. We cannot live without water, we are hydrated by it, cleansed by it.

As I read through the book of symbols for the exploration of water, a particular piece stood out to me in exploring the symbolic nature of the ocean: "Their convulsive shocks give birth to seismic sea waves that rise up like gigantic renegade tides, overrunning the coastal habitations that form the tenuous boundary between sea and land. Lethal storm waves lashed by hurricane winds to borne up by storm tides invade the "ordered world" and batter it into chaos."

Order. Disorder. Re-order.

“Chaos is what we've lost touch with. This is why it is given a bad name. It is feared by the dominant archetype of our world, which is Ego, which clenches because its existence is defined in terms of control.” - Terence McKenna

I had a dream this week where I watched a person drop straight into the water. It was a large, deep body of water, what I assumed was an ocean. It was an interesting sight though, it was not a dive, or a fall, the person stood straight, there didn’t seem much of an emotion or accident. I was unsure whether they had drowned, yet it didn't seem like that would be the ending or the 'death' per se. I contemplated on this for some time, and it mostly brings me to think about the symbolic nature of water as the unconscious. Am I going in, submerging myself into the pool of my unconscious?

This has certainly been a time of quite a heavy load of chaos for me, chaos in my external world, but chaos too in my internal world. I have worked my best to stay aware and respond with healthy and investigative practices. Yet my emotions and thoughts have been of a fairly chaotic nature nonetheless. I think this class has allowed me to find a structured journey of moving into exploring the unconscious. As I better understand the ways of identifying, engaging with, and building on symbols that arise all around in my waking and sleeping life, I feel better prepared and confident in my curiosities of delving deeper.  

Water is flexible, it takes form of the object or surfaces in which it fills. Water is all connected - and because of this, when one area is contaminated, all of it becomes so as well. Without disorder, however, there cannot be a re-ordering. I am transforming. As I swim under water I become more aware and more light, I have not yet figured out the destination (although, there never really is a final destination), but water is teaching me to dive deep and find parts of me I do not recognize. When water is clear, you can see all that is there - I am finding clarity, but to do that I must open my sees and see all of it, not just the parts I wish to see or want to believe.

It is interesting, I have always told people I have the greatest fear of animals that live in the water. I despise the feeling of not knowing what is under the surface of the water. What if it touches me, hurts me? I fear what I do not know, I fear what I cannot control or watch. Perhaps it is time to surrender, let go, and let it flow.

Crossing the Water

Black lake, black boat, two black, cut-paper people.
Where do the black trees go that drink here?
Their shadows must cover Canada.

A little light is filtering from the water flowers.
Their leaves do not wish us to hurry:
They are round and flat and full of dark advice.

Cold worlds shake from the oar.
The spirit of blackness is in us, it is in the fishes.
A snag is lifting a valedictory, pale hand;

Stars open among the lilies.
Are you not blinded by such expressionless sirens?
This is the silence of astounded souls.

Sylvia Plath

Final thoughts | BLOG 5 | CA | May 3

This journey began with the color blue and ended with the color blue, but the in-betweens are full of dynamic, iridescent hues. When I look back on when I began this journey of discovering a story that was already woven within me, I remember being slightly skeptical, a little afraid, and extremely curious. I have attempted in the past to find peace, to find inspiration, to find meaning in the nuances of everyday living; it was hard, and often, I was too exhausted to begin this journey. As a practicing artist, process and self-synchronicity is extremely important to my approach within my paintings and poems. This journey was meant to strengthen my soul and also provide me with tools to guide other young artists on a journey towards being agents of change in their artistic processes and practices.   

The collage became not only a jumping off point, but a beginning to a story told a million times through a million voices in a million different languages. The collage began with old and new: of faith, of family, of fate, of the familiar, and of the ephemeral. I saw familiar symbols that followed me through the different chapters of my life and unearthed symbols and discovered an archetype that I had inadvertently ignored most of my life; the wolf/coyote. The wolf/coyote figure introduced itself to me through the collage, and I explored the symbols and archetypes of the wolf/coyote through these channels. From the visit at ARA and delving into the magnificent library and archives, ultimately I discovered that I had attributes of the wolf: a loner at times, but dependent on a pack, cunning, mysterious, nurturing, protective, and at peace of ego. To also further enlighten, when I first began the active imagination series, the wolf came to me, and has since then been a spirit animal of sorts that allows me to delve into the unconscious that percolates to the surface of my soul. Through practicing active imagination, I am able to be at peace, to be inspired as an artist, to be aware, and an agent of my own change. As a tool, I will make a point to practice active imagination at least once a week, as this has given me the prospects of therapeutic tranquility, inquiry, and self-sustainment. As an art educator, specifically an instructor of painting and drawing, I am curious to implement active imagination within the classroom for an assignment to see how students can interpret and practice observational drawing and painting of the places within these other worldly reams. It could be exciting, all encompassing, and profound.

After getting to know the wolf, I had moved on to another symbol that has encapsulated my life ever since I could remember: water. Water has been in my dreams, water gives me peace, water is a premonition, water feels right. Water has been a sibling, a parent, and a friend to me; it was time that I really understand how I can dialogue with water to become more in tune with myself. From researching about water and its archetypal histories, I came to understand often in dreams, water resembles the unconscious. This discovery was extremely helpful to the extent that I can interpret my dreams and active imaginations more clearly as the type of water illustrated can give me a reflection into the emotions of my soul.

Through understanding the stages of Submission, Containment, and Enactment in Moore’s Archetype of Initiation, and retrospectively looking into the deep waters (no pun intended) of my symbol, I am able to enact, through ludic behavior, with my symbol in order to not only allow myself psychotherapeutic releases, but also delve into my artistic practices more clearly and with conviction. As submission involves a conscious decision on the part of a person to submit to the processes and ritual rites of passage it is meant to invoke, water became ever present within all realms of living, this easily created a platform for me to move into the containment process in which I created a vessel for I could safely explore water and my relationship with its various archetypes. Moore described enactment as the process of true practice: You have loosened up the surface and controls of your ego. You have begun to sit a little looser with all these ideas you have had about yourself. You really thought you were one thing, but now you realize, “Wow, that may not be true at all!” So you sit a little looser to it, and then you try on other possible personas and self-images: images of parents, images of women and men, images of sex, and images of world, and so forth. You do not have to commit to any of them, for no external authority is pressing upon you. It has to feel right to you (p. 67). I

It feels right. I’m finally able to extend and expand my artistic practice, and I can’t wait to share what I’ve learned with others.