Healing the Heart
by Sarah Oblinger
“Hearts are meant to be broken.” Oscar Wilde
I teach a painting class that isn’t about painting. This realization and the knowledge that many people yearn for creative expression but experience a lot of edgy feelings about following that desire, made me consider why I paint. What is it I’m doing when I’m painting if it is not to paint a painting?
I paint to heal my heart. When I stand in front of the paper and offer my full attention - without judgment - to what wants to be painted (not what I think should be painted), I have taken the first step on the journey of opening my heart.
Some of what I’ve encountered on this journey is a lifetime of accumulated isolation, shame, grief, disappointment, loneliness, sorrow and unexpressed joy and delight that I’ve been holding. This rush of intense feelings can seem too big to take on, but in painting I don’t have to change how I'm feeling, only acknowledge and be with what's arising in me each moment. I find a place in the painting that invites me in - maybe a simple dot, a line or a squiggle. I work there until the next place is revealed. There are no shortcuts, to heal my heart. I must dare myself to feel what I have locked away.
At one time it was necessary to not feel such intense stuff in order to feel safe. Now I want a new way of being in the world. And to get to that place I must learn to stop listening to the judging mind that says, “too much pain, you don’t want to go there because you will never come back,” or “if you could just figure it out in your head then the pain will go away.”
For my heart to heal I must be willing to break it open. When I say this students look at me in horror -- we have all felt the pain of a broken heart. But when I look at it this way: Hearts are meant to break open to feel fully. Painting allows me to break open my heart, acknowledge my feelings moving through me and let them have life on the paper.
The challenge in painting is getting out of my own way. My doubting, wanting mind says, “Did I choose the right color?” or “I really wanted orange, but I hate orange so I won’t use it” or “I know for sure that I never want to paint anything ugly, only happy things that please me.” When I can let go of satisfying all my little wants and doubts I find, through color and images, that I can allow what lives in me. I discover what I have resisted feeling doesn’t last forever, but can break open to reveal a deeper way of being with myself. It may go like this: Rage arises in me and comes onto the paper as a big red monster with scales; I give my attention to the big red monster and discover sorrow in his eyes. I’m surprised by the black tears that course down his cheeks as I feel the sorrow held in my own heart.
If I stay with sorrow, not judging how long it lasts or what it looks like, I may find my rage monster sitting in a pool of black tears that flow across the paper, becoming the outline of a blue couple caught in an embrace on a bed of multi-colored snakes. In this moment of allowing a deep not knowing about the painting and of who is painting a painting that makes no sense because I’m not giving my attention to my mind chatter, my heart has the space to break open with love for myself. It is at these broken places, where I allow myself to just feel what is there, that my heart grows stronger.
This is hard work. I’ve found that my mind works overtime, reminding me that I can’t do it, I don’t know enough technique, it’s the wrong time, I’m not moving fast enough, where is this getting me, maybe I’ll just quit and stay home and watch T.V. or sign up for an art class where I’ll end up with something to show for it. This is only the old story of my fear and resistance talking.
I tell my students that the frustration, the stuckness, they feel while painting happens when they get involved with the stories the mind insists on telling us. Instead, is it possible to follow our fear and see where it takes us. How is it to walk behind it and observe the dancing demon? What happens when we risk exploring feelings that live deep in us. What if we get curious about what it looks like? What do we find when we look into the dark corners and discover what wants to be set free? This way of tracking my inner condition, with care, has led me to the buried treasures in my heart.
We yearn to be fully present. This is possible. But we must be willing to come face to face with ourselves, offering ourselves unconditional friendliness. We must dare ourselves to break open our hearts and be with the not knowing, trusting the rightness of whatever comes. Then we discover the energy and inspiration that makes us whole.
Sarah Oblinger is an ongoing student of the creative process & sensing as a way to meet life. She offers workshops & private sessions in New Mexico, Oklahoma & Kansas. She co-facilitates workshops at Esalen Institute & Omega Institute through the Painting Experience.
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The Work of This Moment:
Life lessons in the studio.
by Sarah Oblinger
Whatever happens. Whatever
what is is is what
I want. Only that. But that.”
Galway Kinnell
Painting is a way to cultivate present moment awareness. The studio and simple materials are a safe container to explore meet- ing life with presence. When painting is easy, it feels spacious. When it’s hard, it is hard to feel anything but the hardness. Painting offers a direct experiencing of what is arising in the moment. It invites us to breathe deeply and ask, “What’s underneath this hardness? What’s there when there is only staying with the feeling and keeping the brush moving?”
When given permission to paint and feel, without changing or fixing what we're feeling, we are able to explore a softening towards the hardness. Standing in front of the white piece of paper, we are unveiled, ready to practice meeting ourselves with- out struggling so hard against what we meet. Permission to create this way is a powerful antidote to work with feelings we don't want or like. This is done with courage, with love, and there is no doing it perfectly.
While painting we are challenged to accept who we are, what we are painting as our mind chatters away. We find fearlessness to pick up the brush . We find bravery and breathing as we dip the brush into a color. Then, as our hand moves across the paper, we find some hardness, some resistance, to what is being painted. There are judgments: "The painting doesn’t make sense. The colors are ugly. It doesn’t look the way I saw it in my head. I guess I’m just not that creative." In that moment, while painting, we are invited to meet ourselves with friendliness; to soften the hardness we are experiencing. Each time we do this there is a deep shift in us that allows more presence in our living.
One of the things we experience when painting to cultivate present moment awareness is trusting what wants to be painted, even if it doesn’t look right or make sense. When we are willing to stand in not knowing, with our feelings, not saying no to any images, whether they are pleasant, gross, or joyous, a fierceness for living takes root in our hearts. If the paintings aren’t labeled, analyzed or interpreted there is room to acknowledge and accept all of who we are. This is radical. Painting from this place of free- dom, we experience ourselves fully here.
Respecting what lives in us and wants to be painted is another experience of how painting teaches us to meet life. When we respect our efforts and the images coming from us, trusting how they are being expressed, staying with the painting as long as is needed, even when we our full of doubt, our aliveness can wake up. This waking up sparks another softening in the hardness. At first it may feel awkward to paint this way, but it is this way of creating that wakes us up to living with more presence.
Painting is friendly ground for the work of this moment. We paint and meet ourselves. We take creative risks and discover com- passion for ourselves. Through creative expression we cultivate presence and soften our hearts. With gentle attention and a willingness to open to our innate creativity, we start listening to what lives inside our hearts. As our expressiveness opens up, we open up. Present. In this moment. Meeting life.
Sarah Oblinger is an ongoing student of the creative process & sensing as a way to meet life. She offers workshops & private sessions in New Mexico, Oklahoma & Kansas. She co-facilitates workshops at Esalen Institute & Omega Institute through the Painting Experience.
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