Paint My Life
Paint My Life, as a process, has become pivotal to my experience of designing and facilitating Decloaking and Living Authentically - key to my own emerging future – and, now, Discovering Your Own Magic: The Art & Science of Huna.
Paradoxically, there is no process to the process… and that is what makes the experience so remarkable. In my own willingness to step into the experience of painting of what I do not know that I do not know about mySelf – in the same way that I write – to discover what will free itSelf from my body through my hands and fingers, I have uncovered an increasing joy in MySelf that I did not know was there. Now, program participants can immerse themSelves into that experience, too, as an ever-deepening dive into the buoyant waters of Self-discovery.
A little history about how I came to pick up my brush…
When I was a child, I watched as my sisters and my mother created drawings and paintings – and, since I believed that I had no gifts in the context of ‘art’ as I percieved it, I counted them as the talented ones – not mySelf. Because I knew comparison as a truth in my own life, I experienced my creations as ‘not good enough’. Art, for me, became another area where I felt intimidated by my own perceived expectation of mySelf. I had more than my share of expectations that needed meeting if I was going ‘to make the grade’, so to speak, so I had no experience of the practice and the play of art, for me, as ‘safe’. I knew the potential for comparison as dangerous… so I refused to ‘go’ there.
Fast forward more than thirty years later to Southern California, where I found mySelf in a program for colour consulting; I was asked to draw a picture of my future. On lined paper, with coloured pencils, I drew a three-dimensional diamond with at treble cleff anchored to it; it was unique to me. I discovered, among the participants, the owner of an art gallery and an artist – both of whom asked me if I had ever taken art lessons. I responded ‘no’, that I was never the artist – that my mother and my sisters were. I was still comparing mySelf to Self and to others. I was encouraged by these wonderful women to move forward with lessons. I continued my reluctance.
Eleven years later, I spent one wonderful weekend with Brenda Carter, Canadian Wild Life Artist extraordinaire, in one of her programs – and was encouraged again to proceed. Still, in this area of my life, while I felt the longing to engage, still I found mySelf unable to move… and I created all kinds of rationalization as avoidance.
Twelve years later, Christmas of 2007 came with gifts of easel, brushes, canvas, and paints from my adult offspring – and still I was slow to proceed… one painting as my daughter coached me through – in eighteen months. Then, recently, another CODE Model Coach™ shared with me that she had first lifted a brush to paint for herSelf – just a short 2 years ago. As I was and continue to be so inspired by her creations, I knew, in that moment, that there was hope for me… and I had hope for mySelf. I knew, in that moment, that it was now time to pick up my brushes and to load them with paint… and so I did.
I did not know where, what nor how to start, so I just did. I chose to not read the book about technique that came with my paints… I simply started to paint – and I discovered a connection to mySelf that, until then, I had not known.
Since then, I facilitate Decloaking and Living Authentically as well as Discovering Your Own Magic: The Art & Science of Huna with the gift of painting – and without expectation of participants to create according to technique and form. It is all free-flow and play. The participants paint as they are called to engage… or not. It is all perfect. It all unfolds naturally and as it should. What I know, for certain, is that something opens, inside, where one lives… magic happens and life is transformed. It is not about the paint or the painting per sé; it is about accepting the invitation to allow oneSelf to step out of and beyond the perceived rules, technique and expectation and into a new world of burgeoning colour, intensity, contrast and texture – as a metaphor for living – to create a life that is fully lived in one’s own design.
I am long in the tooth. I have spent a life-time getting to the place where I stand now – where I have discarded expectation that I must colour my life inside the lines and judgement about colouring my life outside the lines. I simply inhale and exhale… and trust my body to lead… and my brush to move.
I believe that you can, too.
Aloha,
Sheila.
