Spiritual Practice, Nature, and Change

“I join the living ecosystem before me and know I too belong, right here, right now. Enough. Inherently and already enough.”

Photos from San Juan National Forest, southwest Colorado.

Over the last few years, I’ve upended my life with a bunch of changes: shifting my creative focus from visual art to music, chanting, and song; leaving a secure job and all its benefits, and a place I’d called home for nearly two decades; and relocating from the Midwest to the Southwest. I moved from a dense, fast-paced, resource-rich, and diverse urban environment to a rural one that is comparatively different on every level, in the process joining a new community where I didn’t know anyone. So Much Change.

I was motivated in large part by a sense that there must be more to life than a focus on work and productivity, feeling constrained by a professional structure that no longer fit so well. I had grown deeply depressed at my academic job and experienced major burnout, which forced me to acknowledge an intense desire to explore other aspects of my life beyond the confines of work and its emphasis on intellect. Emotionally, creatively, spiritually, even geographically, I longed for something else.

Of course, the uncertainty of so much change, while opening the possibility of a new way of being in the world, also comes with fear and risk: not knowing what’s ahead, the usual financial insecurities, and a kind of existential dilemma from no longer defining myself in old, familiar ways. We don’t escape ourselves by leaving our jobs or moving halfway across the country, yet we become untethered from known contexts. That untethering is both the benefit and challenge of change.

In terms of where I relocated—the mixed high-desert/alpine-forest wonderlands of southwest Colorado—I was also determined to live in a physical place that fed my soul. I sought an environment that offered wild energy, direct and daily access to nature, and generous space for healing and transformation. For the first time in my life, living close to nature, and not a job offer, was the guiding criteria for my address. I moved to a part of the country that resonates deeply in my bones.

Throughout all this change, the main grounding—other than wilderness and the land of my new home—was the constancy of my spiritual practice. Over a decade ago, in response to the stress of my former job I started meditating and then gradually added yoga, adopting these ancient practices for utterly secular and utilitarian reasons. Yet, what started out as a pragmatic way to deal with stress led to much more profound revelations. About the way unconscious emotional reactions shape my perceptions and the way past conditioning and ego influence my choices. About the wisdom of the body and a nascent strength of spirit. I became aware of disconnected parts that wanted integration and the delusional thinking that keeps me small and separate. Mindfulness, Buddhism, and a new-found spirituality slowly brought about the evolution of my life that led to change. At the same time, these practices also equipped and prepared me to weather the storms brought about by change.

For me, within the context of wild nature, the transformative impact of these teachings is even clearer.

Through the practice, in the quiet of the natural world, I find peace in this moment. Free.

I open to the sun and sky and calm the anxiety produced by an active, questioning mind. Content.

I take a full breath, connect to the ground, and feel the support of the earth. Home.

I join the living ecosystem before me and know I too belong, right here, right now. Enough. Inherently and already enough.

Whether by choice or by the unexpected, one’s material conditions change. External situations can be radically different to what they were, throwing you into a tailspin of uncertainty. Yet the mind/body/heart persists, ever adaptable, itself ever changing, just like the rest of the natural world. We grow, we learn, we respond with care and wisdom. We let go of the old and embrace the new.

I am grateful to experience the power and constancy of a spiritual practice. I am especially grateful when I can embody that practice in nature. May both continue to be a buffer against change, disconnection, and the fear of the unknown.

Finding, Loving, and Leaving Conceptual Art, or When Your Artistic Approach Changes

When I remember my days as a conceptual artist, which I unequivocally loved, it’s a bit of a shock to realize how far I’ve moved in another direction creatively. Definitions don’t always contain the whole truth of any situation, but I’d say that in terms of artmaking I am now primarily non-conceptual, driven by intuition, emotional expression, connection to process, and mindful present-moment awareness. I’d like to share the story about how I got here.

Looking at my history, it’s no wonder that I was a conceptual artist at first. I came to art after I completed a PhD in philosophy, and I continued to teach philosophy at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) while pursuing a graduate degree in art. I was a pre-med biology major in undergrad and took enough art and art-history courses to double major in art. But I didn’t consider myself an artist. Then, in my last year of college I fell in love with philosophy and took a detour, following that love right into a philosophy graduate program.

Academia at the graduate level was a whole new world to me, and unlike anything I could have imagined. After I finished my preliminary coursework and started writing my dissertation, I also started secretly painting. In a literally underground situation, the woman I rented a room from let me paint in her basement storage area of the condo building. Hiding away in that tiny space, I turned to painting to release the frustration of my graduate studies. As much as I love philosophy there was something alienating about the kind of research I was expected to do at that level; it was highly specialized, every claim had to be justified and footnoted, and at times the subject matter felt esoteric and out-of-touch from ordinary life. While a part of me excelled at the analytical rigor and intellectual inquiry, another part objected to the pressure to conform to the conventional standards of the discipline. It felt like the program was only interested in my mind and the quality of my arguments rather than the whole human being. Painting large, colorful, figurative canvases gave an outlet for the parts of me I excluded from my academic writing. It’s no coincidence that in these early paintings I systematically deconstructed images of the female form culled from dominant fashion-industry ads, objecting to the norms and conventions imposed on women’s bodies. In school I experienced a similar imposition directed to my thinking mind.

Yet despite my resistance to certain aspects of academic schooling, I was also deeply invested in an intellectual life—my intellect was a safe haven from early traumatic experiences held in my body. The mind/body dissociation came naturally.

Looking back, it makes sense that initially my approach to art was heavily conceptual even though I was partly drawn to artmaking as a release from conceptuality. Compared to the norms of academic philosophy, the way I worked with ideas as a visual artist – not as an academic philosopher – was liberating, free of the constraints of disciplinary writing. Marrying concept and art materials, giving ideas concrete substance, embodying them in physical form: the act of combining artmaking and philosophical thinking was my entry into the art world. Nonetheless, for all the internal turmoil I manifested in my furtive paintings, I wasn’t ready to abandon the intellect. I completed my philosophy degree and taught philosophy for a year before giving myself permission to become an artist. Even then, I needed the external structure and validation of an academic structure to make the move. Given my conceptual leanings I was a good fit for the conceptually oriented MFA programs I attended at SAIC and UIC, both in Chicago.

At art school during the mid-1990s I found and fell in love with conceptual art. It was the link between the two fields of philosophy and art, and there were decades of art-historical precedents to draw from. I looked strongly to Western conceptual artists working during the 1960s and ’70s and subsequent artists influenced by this era: Joseph Kosuth, Adrian Piper, Douglas Huebler, Bas Jan Ader, and Martha Rosler. I was particularly drawn to artists who created performative actions in the world guided by a conceptual frame: Yves Klein (a post-WWII artist who worked in the 1950s and early ’60s), Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Francis Alÿs, Sophie Calle, Gabriel Orozco, Gillian Wearing, David Hammons, Marina Abramovíc, Yoko Ono, Hamish Fulton, and Richard Long. And artists who worked with language as a primary medium, like Lawrence Wiener, Ed Ruscha, Mary Kelly, Glenn Ligon, Bruce Nauman, Jenny Holzer, and Barbara Krueger. These are the folks I studied and aligned myself with, the artistic companions who inhabited my studio. So deep is the conceptual-art canon, this list is not exhaustive, which is to say I had a lot of artistic company.

Gradually, however, over time and long after art school, as I started to heal the dissociation from my body outside the studio, I yearned for more inside the studio as well. More body, more materiality, more emotion, more heart, more spirit. Most if not all art draws on these elements, even if it’s not apparent on the surface. However, the way that conceptual artists typically work with these aspects is so subtle, understated and pushed into the background that I started to look elsewhere. Thus began a process of freeing myself from another set of norms and conventions, this time from within the academic art world, creating space to move artistically in other ways.

Mapped on to the body, the main direction of this movement was from the head down into the heart and belly, beginning to integrate the thinking mind with the rest of me.

During this transition I initially used a mix of conceptual and phenomenological approaches to expand my practice. I would research a project and create a rough framework for creating it, and then build into the equation something I could not foresee or control ahead of time. My site-specific illustrated map projects took this approach. For each map I chose a historical topic and location that caught my attention—the site of the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remote hut in Norway, the canyons of southeastern Utah where early 20th-century explorer Everett Ruess disappeared, the U.S. National Park Service record of suicides at the Grand Canyon—and researched the area extensively before making a trip to the actual location. All the reading and writing conceptually motivated the trip, and gave me a reason to be there, yet I was equally committed to exploring the direct experience of the land through walking and meditating on site. I wanted to observe what the body knows outside of any prior ideas I had in mind. How is the actual world different than what I think it is? Where do my conceptual perceptions match or belie the lived, felt experience of the earth?

Another example of a combined conceptual/phenomenological approach is the piece Conversation Portraits. For this relational performance I created a conceptual frame within which to hold one-on-one conversations with people and, based on their answers, immediately write a biographical text poem – a “conversation portrait” – using an old-fashioned manual typewriter. The participant would sit nearby till I finished typing, then I’d give them their portrait as a gift. The framework structured the interaction, and the list of interview questions gave me a loose script to follow. However, I could not prepare beforehand for what each person would say, and I could not write the portraits ahead of time. The writing was improvised on the spot and in real time in response to whatever the participant shared with me. Built into the project was a dynamic tension between the assumptions, expectations, and conditioning that I brought to the table and the desire to attune to the lived reality of another person before me. What could I learn, see, notice outside of my own limited perspective? How could my listening get to the truth of their experience and not merely reflect my own?

Step by step I created formal, artistic ways to get outside of what I knew conceptually, and attend to the lived reality before me, be it the natural world or another person. Eventually a more radical turn occurred, and in moments I was able to let go of needing a plan altogether when making art, fully tuning to the body and heart to lead the way.

In terms of painting, this meant embracing color, intuition, and the moment-to-moment exploration of process and materials. Approaching artmaking from my emotional imagination rather than a conceptual imagination, slowly over time I dropped the need for conceptual frame when I entered the studio. Rather than researching and writing beforehand, I spread paints and an empty sheet of paper in front of me and let myself feel my way through the process. Using materials to respond to whatever arises in the given moment, connecting internally in a mindful way, and trusting the creative process. I follow the energy of creative and emotional impulses that are not predetermined at the outset.

I don’t mean to draw a hard line between working conceptually versus working intuitively or more materially. Of course, artists can turn painting into a conceptual practice or use it as a formal way to track their ideas. On the other hand, there are always material, intuitive, and emotional choices being made when working conceptually. Within the arts, absolute distinctions between “conceptual” and “non-conceptual,” “intuitive” and “non-intuitive,” and “material” and “non-material” don’t really exist.
These categories reflect the binaries of language.

Nonetheless, as much as my thinking mind is still involved, it feels different to make art intuitively and non-conceptually. Connecting to materials in visceral ways, tuning in and following the energy, heeding emotion and desire without an end-product in mind, I experience such artmaking in a more integrated way: less intellectual and more embodied, less future-thinking and more present, less from the head and more from the heart. Significantly it feels less critical and more playful. Working without a fixed agenda, I am more responsive, spontaneous, and mindful (defined here as being in the moment non-judgmentally). Doing my best to create without self-judgment, I am more accepting and less perfectionistic too, as if all of me is welcome. The implicit agreement with myself to show up just as I am partly explains my more recent expansion into music and song as expressive creative outlets.

There are so many ways to be an artist in the world, among different people and even within one’s own lifetime. The art world has conventional and culturally specific norms, rich material traditions, and academic and art-historical trends that go in and out of fashion. Despite this hegemony of values and ideas, there are no absolute rules defining what being an artist must look like. We get to decide to work within a singular tradition or move among them, carving our own path, each in our own way.

The takeaways, if your artistic path is one that shifts midstream:

Let yourself change, grow, explore.

Be who you are at this moment.

Don't tie yourself to an older version of yourself just because it's what you've always done or what you're known for.

Don’t let fear of what others might think stop you from trying something new or doing something differently.

Embrace change. Evolve.

Love the process.

Love yourself through the process.

It will be okay.

Tone Policing, Anger, and Discussions of Race

[This is a companion piece to “Anger and Unmet Needs,” 8/21/20.]

 “When people of color speak out about systemic racism, they are opening up all of that pain and fear and anger to you. They are not doing this because they enjoy it; it is an incredibly painful and vulnerable experience. We do this because we have to, because systemic racism is killing us. And yes, that pain and fear and anger will sometimes show in our words and our actions. But to see all that pain, and how we fight still after entire lifetimes of struggle—and then to tell us to be more polite is just plain cruel.”

—Ijeoma Oluo,
So you want to talk about race (2018)

Detail, daily drawing, oil pastels and pen on paper.

In her chapter about tone policing, written primarily for a white audience, Ijeoma Oluo describes the harm it does when someone white censures the angry tone of a person of color who is speaking about racism. Tone policing is criticizing the tone or style of someone’s message to shift attention away from the content to something wrong the speaker is doing. Because we don’t like what a person is saying, we invalidate their right to speak at all by claiming they’re too angry. Tone policing is a way to assert dominance over the situation, deflecting attention away from the message, and making our participation conditional on a certain form of polite speech.

I know I’ve done this: police the tone of people who are speaking to me. I do it regularly with my husband, who is white like me. During the early years of our marriage our arguments were often heated, and neither one of us responded well. In our case, we both grew up in unpredictably violent and abusive families, so when we detect anger, our nervous systems immediately go on alert. We get defensive and the anger escalates, we shut down and withdraw, we feel victimized and hurt. When someone comes at me with anger, the small child in me feels threatened and bullied. As an adult, I want to stick up for her. But since anger is natural, and something both my husband and I feel fairly often, we wanted to find a way to deal with conflict without anger being at the forefront. We agreed to communicate without such an angry tone. In the process, we’ve become mindful of our reactivity to anger, and we’ve gotten a lot more skillful in dealing with it. Working with anger intentionally, our interactions have given us the chance to heal old wounds associated with that emotion.

We consciously decided to check each other’s tone because it was so upsetting to the one we love. People are not always aware of how angry they sound or how it affects others. This doesn’t mean our anger is bad, wrong or shameful; each of us is entitled to feel whatever we feel. Anger gives us important information and the energy to speak up, defend ourselves, and fight for change. But in our relationship, talking to each other in anger destroys the feeling of safety and trust. So, when we’re hopped up on anger, we pause, take a break, independently work through the anger to what lies underneath, and return to the conflict when the high state of anger has passed. Neither one of us learned how to do this as a kid.

Having learned to express anger in less destructive ways, we’re now more comfortable being around each other when we are angry. And we’re less likely to interpret the other person’s anger as a personal attack. Expressions of anger are not always expressions of harm. Nonetheless, anger is a powerful emotion, and we do our best not to push each other around with it. Given our histories, this approach works for us.

However, what works in a private situation between people of the same race doesn’t always work in more public cross-racial settings. Especially in discussions about racism. I’ve found this out in my college teaching. Years ago, in one of my seminars, I objected when I thought anger was too strong in group discussions about race and institutional bias. After things kept getting heated in class, I suggested that anger is not the best way to fight injustice and wondered out loud if we could find a way to allow for personal emotions without interjecting them into the tone of the conversation. I cautioned against anger because it tends to upset others, making it hard to receive and listen to what someone is saying, much less empathize with or care about someone else. Since the person who expressed the most anger in our class was a person of color, I effectively singled them out in my general comment. I put the onus on them by asking them to tone it down for the sake of the group.

At the time of this interaction, even though we were talking about racism, I wasn’t tuned in to my whiteness and white supremacy, and didn’t see my behavior in that light. In fact, given my position as the professor, I thought it was my responsibility to protect others from someone else’s repeated anger. I assumed that my past experience with toxic effects of anger in relationships gave me better insight and firm ground to stand on. Out of that I felt obligated to coach another person in how to talk about the issues, at least “for people like me.”

It’s hard to look at my racism and see the harm I’ve caused. It doesn’t matter that my intentions were good and that there’s truth to my experience. In this particular instance, while I encouraged emotions to be part of our discussions, and acknowledged my personal discomfort with anger, I wish I hadn’t foregrounded my feelings of upset at the expense of my student’s. I didn’t recognize at the time just how vulnerable it is for a person of color to speak up about their experience of racism to a predominantly white audience. The initial trust to reveal their anger and pain was inadvertently broken when I asked them to dial it down.

In retrospect, I could have handled the situation better. Yes, it’s hard to share space with someone who is actively angry. In a classroom setting, I’ve found it hard to ask others to witness that anger and then expect them to deal with any personal reactivity and aversion toward that emotion. Anger is a trigger for many of us and can be retraumatizing. However, anger arises when we talk about race and white supremacy. It’s not going to be all love and positivity all the time or even calm and level-headed. Especially in mixed groups, there are going to be moments of rage, pain, grief, and despair. Moments of conflict, tension, misunderstanding, and disconnection. In the struggle for freedom, we need to celebrate moments of unity and peaceful coming together and also understand that there’s tremendous racial anger. As Oleo points out, it’s not about me liking or not liking someone else’s manner of fighting for justice. When a person of color generously shares their experience, the least I can do is listen without correcting their tone.

Admittedly I haven’t always been able to meet racial anger with the presence and resilience I describe here. Anti-racism asks me to rethink the tactic of asking others to tone down their anger in discussions of race.

So, what’s needed for me to show up in a better way? A commitment to do my own work and change my behavior, which includes:

• Cultivating emotional intelligence and flexibility

• Cultivating conscious awareness of my reactivity and past conditioning that make anger so distressing for me

• Processing these past experiences so I don’t continue to project them into the present

• Healing my own issues with anger so I don’t block out others in theirs

• Keeping energetic boundaries so I can remain present to other’s emotions without absorbing them or taking them so personally

• Being clear about the difference between anger and abuse and watching any tendency to assume a victim role

• Remembering that my internal sense of safety is my responsibility even when my nervous system thinks otherwise

• Not expecting others to modulate their tone and delivery for my sake

• Not expecting that I can ignore my whiteness

• Learning to acknowledge my part in racism without internally collapsing or blaming the person pointing out my biases and privilege

• Learning to tolerate discomfort during discussions about race

• Learning to listen in a mindful, compassionate, heart-centered way

When I choose to take better care of the people of color I share spaces with, I also choose to take care of myself. Each interaction that creates discomfort in me reveals where I can heal and grow. This conscious awareness enhances the whole.

The commitment to practice anti-racism is actually making me rethink the way my husband and I tone police each other. I don’t want to crumble in the face of someone else’s anger but compassionately stand my ground and listen for what is underneath the anger—for the needs not being met, for the way my actions have inadvertently or directly caused harm, for their past experiences that have informed their present emotions, for what we each need to move forward in our relationship. What served us in the beginning of our marriage is evolving. Just as my own behavior toward diverse others is evolving.

Language and Being

As someone who regularly expresses herself in writing and teaching, I am also acutely aware that naming something is not the same as the thing I name. Language is convenient, useful, often helpful, but it never exhausts or exactly represents what it symbolically refers to. Words matter but they are also limited.

Most of the time we don’t question the gaps between words and what they reference. We depend on conventional meaning and practice.

Sometimes we name things we simply don’t understand. As a way to incline our minds and actions toward something we aspire to. As a way to reach for something outside our grasp. As a way to experiment creatively with language. As a way to dream and imagine. As a way to bluff our way through a situation. As a way to appear to be someone we’re not. As a way to empathize with experiences outside our lived reality. As a way to hide our ignorance. As a way of thinking out loud in unfamiliar territory. As a way of processing and learning something new. As a way into or out of confusion and uncertainty.

While we rely on language to communicate with each other, the fundamental disconnect between our words and the world allows for a great amount of play.

For both connection and misunderstanding, truth and lies, fantasy and fact.

For trust and doubt.

This range is part of being a language user.

In any given moment, we may or may not be saying all there is to say. Nonetheless, there is always more is there than words convey.

Taking Back the River

[This is a companion post to “A River Within,” 8/10/20.]

“I love my creative life more than I love cooperating with my own oppression.”

–Clarissa Pinkola Estés,
Women Who Run With the Wolves (1992)

Detail, Minneapolis painting, 2017, qouache on paper.

In the chapter, “Clear Water: Nourishing the Creative Life,” writer and Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés offers the metaphor of a river for the innate creativity that runs through our bodies. This inner river wants to flow freely but can be contaminated, poisoned, overly managed or dammed up. Estés writes that in the quest to live creatively, we must take back the river by intentionally clearing up anything from our history and culture that has polluted or blocked it. Negative psychological complexes and limiting beliefs that are internalized and anything external in the environment causing distortion, from family, friends, and mates to jobs, culture, and religion. She lists the following actions to reclaim the internal creative waters:

“Receive nurturance”: taking in the good when others acknowledge and compliment your work. Not deflecting it away.

“Respond”: being able to respond to everything around you and—among all the possibilities—to choose how to shape it into a unique expression. Not suppressing or limiting choice.

“Be wild”: letting ideas loose into the world, streaming out of the mind and body without censorship. Not controlling, managing or blocking the initial flow.

“Begin”: if you’re scared or unsure, starting, and if you’ve failed, starting again. Not letting fear stop you.

“Protect your time”: establishing clear boundaries around your creating and thinking time. Not letting other demands usurp your time.

“Stay with it”: showing up consistently, learning and growing, committing to the process. Doing the internal work. Not giving up when it is difficult or challenging. Not starving your soul.

“Protect your creative life”: with fangs, if necessary. If your soul is starving, taking care of it, then honoring your creativity every day. Not letting anyone or anything force you into famine.

“Craft your real work”: building warmth, balancing responsibilities that pull you in multiple directions, and insisting on a quality creative life. Not allowing anyone or anything to steal it away.

“Lay out nourishment for the creative life”: stocking up on the four essentials of time, belonging, passion, and sovereignty.

After we refresh the river, the creative waters flow as intended. The river swells and slows in natural rhythms of increase and decrease. Natural contaminates are taken care of within the ecosystem, purifying itself. And we are finally free to drink from its waters without worry or fear.

Once taken back, the river returns to us as a source of nourishment. Calming and healing from within.

Sit by the river. Behold the clear, clear waters. Offer thanks to nature’s resiliency.

Anger and Unmet Needs

“Anger is a tragic distortion of an unmet need.”

–Marshall Rosenberg,
Nonviolent Communication

Detail, daily drawing, oil pastels and pen on paper.

I've been listening to recordings of Marshall Rosenberg describing the process of Nonviolent Communication, which he calls a language of life. Rosenberg suggests that when I get angry at someone—judging them to be bad or wrong, blaming them for how I feel, punishing them—what I’m actually saying is that their actions aren’t in harmony with my needs. Anger distorts the underlying message. Rosenberg cautions that given the way most people respond to anger, if I were to express myself more directly, I’d be far more likely to get my needs met.

The idea that anger is a tragic distortion of an unmet need asks me to reevaluate my relationship to anger. To see anger as a wake-up call, a sign that I am disconnected from my needs or that someone else is operating out of unmet needs.

In this light, anger is a reminder to shift my awareness, to not stay focused on the anger itself or the intense reactivity it causes. Whether I direct the anger at myself, which leads to depression and self-criticism, or at another, which leads to blaming and judgment; whether the anger comes at me from another person, which I tend to take too personally: in any of these situations, can I notice the emotion and instead of deepening the judgment against the person who is angry, build an empathic connection? Can I sense the emotion and instead of getting hooked, look beneath it for the unmet need? The need for warmth, love, security, safety, respect, healthy food, clean water, purpose, livelihood, honesty, connection, joy.

In that moment, if I listen for the unmet need underneath the anger, I shift attention away from the emotional energy and the reactions it triggers. I don’t deny it’s there but I cease giving it power to direct my behavior. Instead, I acknowledge what is at the root of the anger.

Behind the scene, in my own way and in my own time, I take care of the emotion and the part of me feeling it, releasing it so it doesn’t linger or build up. Drawing, drumming, singing, dancing, yoga, hiking, biking, stomping along on a dry dusty road, I find ways to safely move the energy through my body and mind. It’s not mine to keep or carry.

To be honest, I’m not particularly comfortable with anger. I’m slowly undoing a long habit of internalizing it in unhealthy ways. And, having grown up with an unpredictably violent father, I prefer to avoid conflict in my relationships. Nonetheless, this discomfort is worth facing because ignoring anger leads to more suffering. Anger builds walls, sometimes for good reason, but those walls push people away. Protecting myself from anger builds another kind of wall. Pretending otherwise keeps me cut off from the important information that anger gives. There are a lot of unmet needs in the world and people get angry. The prevalence of this emotion is a sign that there’s more work to be done, socially, personally, on every level.

Learning to deal with anger consciously is an important skill. To know when it’s useful and not. To know when it indicates an imbalance in power and privilege. To know when it masks pain and vulnerability, longing and grief. Being able to trace anger back to its source reveals the underlying conditions that need attention. 

Protecting myself from anger is a poor excuse for ignorance, because I can’t change what I don’t see.

If I can look at myself and others in the face of anger, mine or theirs, and focus on our mutual well-being, then I can be with the anger with less defensiveness and more awareness. Once on the other side of anger, needs can be seen, understood, and negotiated. Communication is possible. Connection is sustained.

Listen With Full Presence

Reading Marshall Rosenberg’s thoughts about Nonviolent Communication (NVC), I realize that communicating to sustain life and connection rather than discord and separation is not just about the way I speak and express myself—my needs and emotions—it’s also about the way I listen.

And the way I want to be listened to.

Here’s what I glean from Rosenberg:

Listen with full presence:

don’t give advice,

don’t diagnose,

don’t try to fix,

don’t educate,

don’t interrogate,

don’t compare,

don’t tell your similar story,

don’t interrupt,

don’t change the topic,

don’t shut down,

don’t walk away. 

Listen with an open heart, an open mind, and open ears. 

Thoughts Unsaid

I first saw this quote, “Thoughts unsaid then forgotten,” in a black-and-white photograph of a 1973 installation by the Dutch artist Bas Jan Ader. In the photo the words are hand written low on the wall and lit by a common clamp-on lamp affixed to a short tripod; a vase of flowers sits on the floor nearby. This piece has always struck me as extremely sad. I imagine the artist missed his chance to say what he needed to say, then before he got another opportunity, he simply forgot.

It reminds me that however important or insignificant, painful or pleasurable, thoughts unsaid are ephemeral. Despite how weighty they sometimes feel, of their own accord they don’t hang around. Words naturally want to move through our system, unless we cling and attach to them or put effort into remembering them.

Not-saying can be a form of defense or forgetfulness. It can be protective of self and others and either deliberate or unintentional. Not-saying can be a way to gradually reduce the strength of certain words, relaxing their hold on us.

Thoughts unsaid can also be a a way to minimize and dismiss, creating a silence that denies one's own or another person’s reality.

What thoughts of yours want to be said, and what want to be forgotten?

A River Within

“The creative life ... is the love of something, having so much love for something—whether a person, a word, an image, the land, or humanity—that all that can be done with the overflow is to create.”

–Clarissa Pinkola Estés,
Women Who Run With the Wolves (1992)

Detail, Minneapolis painting, 2017, guoache on paper.

Defining creativity as an overflow of love, a river within that naturally wants to fill the forms and spaces we create for it, writer and Jungian psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés likens creativity to a natural force that moves in and through our bodies.

Estés describes the way these internal waters feed everything they touch downstream so that creative acts are not solitary but communal. Creativity nourishes the individual and the whole. Abundant, generous.

This inner creative river, which Estés calls a being in its own right, in turn grows us into life-givers:

"As we create, this wild and mysterious being is creating us in return, filling us with love. We are evoked in the way creatures are evoked by sun and water. We are made so alive that we in turn give life out: we burst, we bloom, we divide and multiply, we impregnate, incubate, impart, give forth."

Estés also points out that this creative river can be poisoned, diverted, misused, and dammed up. Yet ideally its nature is to run clear and freely.

The take-away: Nourish your inner river, remove the barriers, and let the waters run clear and free.

Be a life-giver, and bloom.

Detail, Minneapolis painting, 2017, guoache on paper.