What is a doorway, an aperture, a portal, a passage, a pathway?
What is a DOOR?
How do we perceive the passageways in our lives that are already open to us? How do we see through to the other side? How do we dare to go there? These are all questions that bubbled up as I recently began to grapple with a series of events that had been disrupting my life, both physically, and energetically. As various physical doors in my home, car and studio were all damaged or rendered ajar, I realized I needed to investigate the bigger picture, I needed to tap into my inner knowing by doing what I call Conscious Creative Practice.
First I journaled, scribbling lists of my associations with “doorway” and “wall”, and then started sketching various imaginal doorways. As I delved deeper and made more paintings, I began to see mental obstructions and thought patterns (walls) in my life that were closing me off from passing through to what was next. My thought patterns or hesitations were keeping me in, even though there were open doorways beckoning to me everywhere. When I Intuitively painted a small open doorway in a soft grey wall, leading to a star-filled universe, I saw I had essentially created a map showing me a portal to infinite possibilities. In a second larger painting, I created a shining metallic walkway leading up to the open door, a wonderful way to imagine a way to and through these openings.
I hadn’t consciously realized any of this before I began the series…
Once I’d begun creating the series, the investigation expanded, including conversations with friends and colleagues about the process--they shed further light on how they saw my relationship with my life, my future, my dreams, and shared some of their own doorway investigations.
The somatic process of creating the pieces brought awareness into my body, helping me release negative thought patterns and move into creative imagining. Part of the power of conscious creative practice is that it moves the conversation about any thing out of the brain, and into the light, into a physical form that we can see and interact with. Further work with pieces my clients or I make often includes meditation with the artifacts. For example, using one of the paintings or mind-maps to breathe in and out of, and contemplate, then writing afterward. Yet more information usually reveals itself.
The process with the doorways I’ve just described is typical of the work I do for myself, and similar to the processes I design for my clients and groups. This is practical technology for change. These practices reveal information that has often been less conscious, or as yet unseen, and help move and transform the energy.
A first step for any one is usually acknowledging that something is needing one’s attention, something in life is amiss. Listening to oneself, and journaling what comes up—that can be a profound second step. The third step? Create with the material. In ANY way that moves the energy. No way to do it wrong, no way to do it “right”.
What is showing up in your life? How can you creatively investigate and play with imagery and ideas, to consciously engage with and process whatever is happening in your life?