Creative Awakening Series: Accessing The Heart Chakra for Art

Welcome to the fifth segment of the Creative Awakening: Integrating Art & Spirituality series.

Check out my blog for the first four posts writing about teaching at the Creative Arts Center.

What's the purpose of grief and love in creating art? How does our inner critic and self-compassion play a role in what we create? Keep reading to dig into our discussion.

Background

The heart chakra is a powerful portal between our physical and spiritual selves. It's the energy center that takes the biggest hit as a result of trauma, and getting it back online is a necessary portal to tapping into the greater interconnection and love abundance that is accessible in the higher chakras.

We started off our discussion with identifying how our inner critics play a pivotal role in what or whether we create. Having an inner critic is an inherent part of the human experience, but thanks to the genius of our pre-frontal cortex and its ability to reenvision a different future, we can create inner coaches too. 

Being able to understand how our inner critics show up and what counterbalances it (flow, self-compassion, coherence) is a KEY part of allowing ourselves to express what we have in our hearts. Below you'll see that we shifted between defining our inner critics and then getting in to the juicy part of this chakra: grief.

 Reflection: What do you think of our definitions? What else would you add to the list?

Focus Point: The Role of Grief and Compassion

What's the purpose of feeling pain? Why do we have the capacity to feel both positive and negative emotions? And what do we do with this? We talked about this in the Sacral Chakra discussion, the importance of accessing and expressing our emotions, but now we went somewhere difference.

What if our emotions and pain were a portal to more deeply connect to others?

At a high level, here are the elements of the Heart Chakra explored:

• Heart Chakra (Anahata): The fourth of the seven main energy centers in the body. It's associated with love, compassion, and empathy. 
• Focus:Compassion, empathy, healing, interconnectedness.
• Color: Green
• Location: Heart space
• Areas of Life Explored: Relationships (with family, friends, romantic), Emotional

Heart Chakra (Anahata) Affirmations

• Love flows freely.
• My heart is open.
• I love myself.
• I express & receive love.
• I follow my heart's calling.
• I forgive myself.

The Discussion  

First, of all, what is grief? Being able to understand grief is an important part of creativity because we create when we feel. Defining what happens when we experience loss in life is an important part of transcending this experience, of being able to do something and express how we feel about what we've lost.

Here's what we came up with...

Grief can be described as:

• Depression
• Attachment
• Regreat
• Sadness
• Recognition
• Loss
• Reflection
• Anger
• Understanding 
• Realization
• Despair

After we'd written this out, I challenged y students to consider, what is its opposite? I offered the word love as its opposite, as grief can also be defined as love that doesn't have anywhere to go.  

Is it possible to trascend grief and what does that look like? Our short list of transcending grief looks like: 

• Unconditional Love
• Compassion
• Integration

 Now, we found in our discussion that adding grief was an intentional, conscious, imperative part of transcending grief. Grief on its own does not lead to unconditional love if we still resist the experience. When we resist reality and life, we resist feeling. And when we resist feeling, we do not create.

I then drew a simple drawing to capture the order of operations of feeling and expression and its purpose:

1. We start off with being present to our experience of the world
2. Our experience of the world, by nature of our humanity, leads us to feel
3.  With those feelings, we can choose to create, suppress, or criticize
4. When we decide to create from a space of self-compassion and love
5. It leads to unity, purpose, and creation
6. Which then creates an experience that others can share with us, and the cycle starts again

Reflection:  What have you been able to create from your experiences of grief in your world? Can you define grief beyond death and expand it to include other losses? 

If grief is love unexpressed, then alchemy is the process of giving it direction—transmuting it into something that serves our evolution

In our grand finale, we dove a bit deeper into what alchemy is. Particularly, emotional alchemy is a process whereby we can convert an emotion into something of greater value for us. We'd already alluded to this but now it was coming full-circle: adding compassion to everything is the alchemy medicine.

When we tune into the things we loathe about ourselves and others, and add love to that, we come into a greater understanding of our humanity and capacity to forgive — over and over again.

If we're operating from a space of unity, then others become a reflection of our infinite selves, and thus an opportunity for us to love into our shadows. Instead of seeing ourselves as "light and joy," we're able to see our own darkness and hate, giving us greater power to transform that into something else.

Because if we are connected to everything, then everything must be connected to us. We are both creations and creators. We are the Universe experiencing itself. And we have the choice to amplify our expressions by sharing them, in the way of art, how we live, and what we say. That, that is our legacy.

Because the only escape to all of this is death. Create accordingly. 

 Artistic Growth Challenge

For our closing commitments, I called on my students to deepen their connections with themselves, to tap into their shadows, and send more love there.

Here are some book suggestions to further your studies of the heart and its healing: 

What's Next?

As we move into the next part of this series, I invite you to reflect: How does grief show up in your voice? Do you silence yourself when you’re in pain, or do you allow yourself to express it? Next time, we’ll explore how the Throat Chakra helps us reclaim our voices in art and life.

Dra. García out!