Enlarging–The Heart Finds a Focus

“That in you which recognizes madness as madness (even if it’s your own)

is sanity, is the arising awareness, is the end of insanity.” Eckard Tolle

 

What is (what I call our Inspiration) cannot be fully presented as a something, yet it animates us to go forward and to get near to what is essential and fundamental. Our left-hemisphere brain, knowing only what it knows, resists such a crazy notion.

If we persist, in our introspection and reflection, Inspiration constructs on the stage what most concerns the Heart. This concern eludes clear or simple definition, but it’s what perturbs us to depict a particular drama.

If there’s a Heart-drama to be enacted, as I mean it here, then there will be an increasing pressure to reveal what has been concealed. As we stay on the energetic path, we witness an unfolding—a revelation—of what has obscured our possibility and potentiality. These have been veils, or shadows to the light of the Self.

By pressure to disclose, I am referring to the dramatic tension at the core of a drama: the tension between what is “present” and attempts to heal, versus what has not—would not, could not—remain long in the here and now and so hides reality, skews our perception with primal adaptations or survival distortions. Because we live in a traumatized and traumatizing society, when we begin to bring more attention and inquiry to what has been neglected, we can stir what has been lying just under the surface, trigger old emotional states and our physiology. When we activate action patterns of the sympathetic nervous system, we will feel the neurobiological pull of fight, flee, submit, or collapse.

The first step: Enlarging

It (spontaneity) propels the individual towards an adequate response to a new situation or a new response to an old situation. Thus, while creativity is related to the act itself, spontaneity is related to the warming up to the readiness of the act.                    Jacob Moreno

Entering the field, not as a modern distortion of the hunter/warrior (cruel and other-hating), not animated with fierce driving power (though that clearly has its place), not even to gather a specific flower or herb or mushroom, but simply to encounter the life and beauty that lies in the unseen spaces, we find ourselves amidst a slow gathering of beings. There is an infinite and diverse mixing of lively energies and color, as patches of dry barren ground teem forth with living things, the tiny dust on wings shining in the light. The twisting sprouts, refusing to give up life. Embodied, moving with the pace the Heart feels is best, always in a playful flow, there is no need to speak. We become as unhurried as the puffing clouds. We feel the warmth on our skin, the air moving, blowing, or suddenly dropping off. We inhale the scents, the stinks, and become as wide as this place, infinite and ancient.

Why this painting?

We spend too much time in a house of mirrors. Reflections distorted into a fun house, but often quite devoid of fun. As we Warm up to Enlarge, the usual illusions dim; we start to pay more attention to what has not been prominent in our social media, aspects of us that have not been carefully groomed by our explicit identity. Warming up is waking up. Enlarging is connecting and becoming fluid, boundaries dissolving.

Most of us have had the experience of getting to the edge of what we consciously understand, on a threshold—where the egoic reflections have diminished enough or when we have been broken open or the familiar has cracked wide. When the day is dawning, mirrored reflections in our rooms magically become windows again to the world. We see through to a more Inspired way of being, maybe noticing a far field where we can make a new decision, meet something new, or we see the benefits of letting go of something that no longer serves us.

But then, too often, we step fearfully back, like the archetypal hero who refuses the quest and hides in a small town. We draw down the heavy blinds. Go back to bed. Forget the opening we have declined. Binge-watch our favorite shows. Maybe we have done this again and again until it’s a pattern.

This painting asks, “Are you ready to step away from habits and explore the far fields?”

Inside-out

Even if you choke, that is not pathological, just resistance. Indeed, in a traumatizing society, a “normal” reaction to something weird is to avoid it, to remain safe, to not take the chance, to stay on the shiny surface of the mask, replacing spontaneous action with acting out defensively. Faced with the unfamiliar, we often pretend to be a “student,” attempting to get an “A.” Writing quotes down, memorizing something witty to make good dinner conversation later. In such a posture, a left-brain kind of tunnel-vision, the Enlarging Withers, becomes just information that can be regurgitated. Since we all have been in classrooms, a part of us has been exceedingly well trained to be the smart one or independent one, the gadfly or the disinterested scowling one in the back row. If we allow the Enlarging to shrink and returns to the familiar tunnel vision, we will skate on some of the Work we know we need to do. Or we may make absurdly brief inquiries, then go on to something new, doing a drive-by of reflection.

I suppose that in the Warming up, at the very least, we have invited some heat into the cold bones. To persist requires that we decide to give our life the loving attention it deserves. In the Enlarging, we must commit to following energy, to push the force of creativity against the energy forms that want to pull us off course. We want to perturb the status quo, bring up the disturbing. Invite the dramatic. Speak the unrehearsed, welcome the uncomfortable, create confusion and, prompt and harness enough anticipatory anxiety (moving from fear to seeking) to better allow us to slip the confines of passive experience.

Can we be the Child, the Artist, the Lover, even the Visionary? Or will we tell well-rehearsed stories or ask predictable questions, letting the sediment clog the filter to the moment, starving the enlivened Heart of oxygen, until the mind-machine returns to make its usual judgments? What will you decide?

Upside down:

This Work is for you. If you are doing it for anyone else, then you will lose momentum.

Too often in this society, what the ego (Abnormal energy) might think is safe is just snarky debate and smug intellectualization or meaningless aggression. And, if we announce to our acquaintances, our colleagues, our family members that we are doing this creative expressive Work, we will often hear the ego talking from their mouths. “What exactly is the point of this?” Trying to provide answers risks inviting others to question you further, until you enter a kind of philosophical courtroom, and feel increasingly defended and at a loss.  However well-meaning they may seem, don’t let anyone become such a distraction. The ego craves distraction and wants you to pursue a career as a prosecutor or defense attorney. My suggestion, if you feel scrutinized: Do not defend yourself unless you are in an actual court of law. And then, hire an attorney.

It is important to remind ourselves, in Enlarging, there is an aim but not a point that satisfies the ego. We seek only to create a refuge where everything can be explored. We’re removing the screens, the coverings, and looking deeply. We’re taking the time to join in a Heartful place, promoting Mindfulness, Flow, Attunement and Spirituality. With these Enlarging energies, as Moreno has written, we seek to create a “living laboratory for experimentation.” But we must choose carefully who we tell about what we find.