Creative Awakening Series (Manipura): Redefining the Power of the Mind in Creating Art

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

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

Up to this point, we've been deconstructing art, spirituality, and what creativity means.

Whereas in the other discussions we focused just on spirituality, in this discussion we brought religion into the mix too. All of us in the class (myself included) have broken away from our childhood religions in some way, and have had to redefine what personal spirituality and leadership means to us re: creativity. 

Background

What is religion, anyway? What I love about the students in this class is that we are opening to defining and redefining concepts that we've assumed we understood for most of our lives.

As you can see in the visual below, we were able to create a well-rounded list of what this concept meant to us, which allowed us to further explore how art and spirituality intersected with religion.

Oftentimes in religion we are taught that there is only one way of doing life and it's according to a specific doctrine, but that's the beauty in facilitating an open-minded discussion on what else is possible.

We spent quite a bit of time dissecting the positives of words like "power" and "money," words that are often used to signify evil, domination, and abuse. In order for us to reclaim power of ourselves and use money for change, we must create space in our minds for duality: the quality or state of having two different or opposite parts or elements (according to Merriam-Webster).

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

Focus Point: Redefining the Power of the Mind

Starting with the root chakra, we started with defining our identities, the purpose of our ancestors, and what science has to say about how life evolved and thus, creativity. As we delved into the sacral chakra, we focused on defining emotions and feelings, both important inputs into what we create with our bodies.

For this class on the solar plexus (manipura), only one student was able to make it. It didn't dampen our discussions, however, as instead, we were able to delve deeper into each other's ideas of what our minds did, why they were designed that way, and what we've been taught about how to live life.

At a high level, here are the elements of the Solar Plexus Chakra we explored:

• Solar Plexus Chakra (Manipura): Manipura means "city of jewels." A balanced Manipura chakra can give you a clear sense of purpose, inner strength, and resilience. It can also help you feel empowered to take action and make decisions. 
• Focus: Confidence, empowerment, resilience, purpose
• Color: Yellow
• Location: Above the navel
• Areas of Life Explored: Mindset, Occupational  

Solar Plexus (Manipura) Affirmations

• I am a powerful being.
• I am empowered.
• I am confident.
• I have control of my life.
• I honor my self.
• I honor my needs.
• I am motivated.
• I am worthy of success.

The Discussion  

Why did the Creator equip us with the capacity to create structure? On the heels of defining what the purpose of religion was and how it was meant to help people make sense of an inherently unknowable world, I posed the question of what the purpose of structure was period. Oftentimes, we blame systems and processes of not serving us well, but do we know why we are created with the capacity to create this structure, period? If all structure is bad, why do our brains do it?

Here's what we came up with...

Structure allows us as a human species to do the following:

• Survive through organized systems
• Gives us rules to help us learn to get along
• Rules and structure allow us to agree on how to build unity
• To build more love for ourselves, humanity, and the world

I wasn't ready for that last one! More love? How does structure allow us to create love? As we double-clicked on that one, we started to describe the outcome of that love.

What does love create?

• Art, people, nature
• Desire to support others
• Desire to work together
• Desire to teach and learn
• A healthy ego
• Freedom

Oooh, freedom, that word again. So if one of the purposes of having a mind that creates structure is that it creates opportunities for more love to exist and be appreciated, we have to revisit what freedom means.

Enter quantum and astrophysics again. This is a topic I've talked about in every single class, because it allows us to view humanity from the lens of outside the mind and outside the systems that humans created. From that space of chaos, there is order, and we've already seen in other classes how order and chaos are two sides of the same coin. We'll circle back to this at the end of this blog.

For this discussion, I deconstructed Albert Einstein's infamous equation describing energy (E + mc^2). If energy is equal to matter x the speed of light squared, then describing energy is like saying that it's matter going really really really (really really) fast. So, we are slowed down energy, who happen to live on a planet where we have senses that allow us to take in the world, the cosmos, and ourselves. There is purpose then, in the way that Mother Nature designed us to be able to experience the world, and then express it.

Fundamentally, then, we are:

• Matter
• Energy
• Purposeful – 13.8 billion years in the making
• Sacred – we come from an unbroken ancestral line
• Unity – everything (scientifically) begins from the Big Bang

And if we are unity, then what part of us is it that creates boundaries like religion, systems, and processes?

Here's what we came up with:

• Mind, thoughts
• "When we believe we don't matter, we use matter to believe we matter"
• Our minds have a choice to select a reality we want to create
• The mind is both the barrier and the portal to creation

 Reflection: What came up for you as you read through this section? How have you associated the power of the mind in either creating barriers or freedom? How does this relate to art and creativity for you?

In our grand finale, I mapped out a matrix of the relationship between rules / structure and chaos / freedom. As you'll see below, I tagged the logical nature of the mind to masculine energy, and the intuitive nature of our being to feminine energy. The mind is both the portal and the barrier means that the same way that it creates limitations, it creates opportunities. All of the human and Universe's experiences lie between this duality of structure and chaos. Both needed, but in balance. From that duality, we create.

Rules =======> Structure =======> Belonging =======> Logical Mind (Masculine)

^                                              t h e        h u m a n         and                                            ^

|                                              t h e        U n i v e r s e                                                      |  

|                                              E x p e r i e n c e                                                               |  

Chaos =======> Freedom =======> Individuality =======> Intuitive Mind (Feminine) 

We must have a SELF to EXPRESS, but who we express it to is ourselves and our community. And when we do, it adds layers of love, belonging, and self-expression to an inherently meaningless world.

Artistic Growth Challenge

For our closing commitments, I challenged my student to journal about the mind. All practices related to meditation, journaling, therapy, coaching, etc., help us to access the minds logically or through some other form. But it is the mind that is needed, in this physical vessel, to help us create art.

Here are some book suggestions to further your studies of the mind and its flexibility: 

What's Next?

In the next class, we'll explore the Heart Chakra, the seat of grief, love, and inner self-compassion. Can you guess how I'll apply this concept to the exploration of Creativity and Spirituality? Stay tuned.

Dra. García out!