Inner mirrors...
Reflect unexpectedly
Self reflection is a shape-shifting phenomena...
and mostly depends on what you refer to as your self.
Even if looking inside becomes habitual and running like an app on your phone, what comes out is still unexpected!
Since I can remember, I always drew... not necessary what I saw, but how I felt.
And regardless of what I saw, what I drew was taken over by the Feels:
Squeezing, stretching, exaggerating, highlighting, overlooking, losing, evaporating...
Visual Self-talk
In my early teens I was given the task of a self-portrait, then was told that it was too pretty. ...what does a conscientious teenager do, whose only dream is to become an artist? Start seeing herself ugly! It hasn't really surfaced until I finished uni and moved to London. I started to draw inner self-portraits digesting all the uprooting. The very few ones I trusted enough to show these were always shocked at how ugly/old/miserable I draw myself.
Most likely it has nothing to do with that particular art teacher from my teens...
that story was only confirmation of something much deeper: a subconscious view about my existence in this body...
The Leela School's special Therapy has transformed that too...
Deep-dive to Who Am I
To see ourselves we become aware of what we're looking through:
is it a microscope? - enlarging all scars to canyons?
is it a telescope? - diminishing all that we are to an insignificant spec?
is it warped, smudged, filtered?
Along with integrity and willingness to face whatever is behind our face... the looking glass gets clearer and sharper.
All is needed: to tell the truth. Inwardly. Ruthlessly but not rudely.
It's a plunge to a beautiful buoyant world of thoughts, emotions
and physical sensations... for me, in this order... or not.
And there are tools to transfer them as visual self talk: inner self portraits. How I experience myself in the moment.
As everything, it comes in waves... I will share some below.
Sign up and check in how your self-talk is going? How your looking glass is playing along? How is the narration?
'All that's needed to be a human' ~ Papaji.
