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I have another wonderful exploration of Intuitive Art to share with you, this time with Maya from Shetland. I hope you enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed working with Maya.
Kassi: Welcome Maya, it's lovely to see your Art and share this time with you.
Maya: Thanks Kassi. I'm just wondering whether to start at the beginning or work backwards. Like I said the other day, I think I would have preferred to have done my Painting in one sitting...staying with my feelings and the process.
Kassi: What feels best for you?
Maya: I think I'll start at the beginning
Kassi: Can I suggest something?
Maya: Yes, sure
Kassi: This may not sit well, so you can let me know... but because you felt quite poorly during and after painting this, I wonder about you making a little "contract" for yourself... for example I sometimes say "ok this is going to go well Kas. I'm going to make interesting, exciting discoveries and most importantly I am going to pace myself and feel really well. I will feel energised, calm and thoughtful.' ...Something like this Maya, so you don't get poorly again after exploring?
Maya: Ok thanks Kassi. I feel quite detached from it at the moment, whether that's a protection/defence or whether something has shifted...perhaps in a more unconscious way...
Kassi: Ok. We can keep checking in with you?
Maya: Ok and thanks for your concern
Kassi: Your well-being feels very important to me.
Maya: Thank you. I decided to choose an unfinished painting to paint on as I was curious to see how I would feel,
Maya: I've not painted over a painting before and there was a sense in me that I "should" have persisted with the original painting.
Kassi: Thanks for sharing where you began. I feel like I am really 'under your sky' as I look. It sounds like your Inner Critic and a "should" popped up? How did you respond to the "should"?
Maya: I suppose I detached myself from it as I was hearing others' voices
Kassi: That sounds helpful... freeing?
Maya: When I began painting I did feel protective of the sky and the lone tree
Kassi: Would you like to say more about your protective feeling?
Maya: I really liked staring into the sky and perhaps something about the lone tree having survived alone
Kassi: the tree has done well surviving alone? Just wondering what it is about your tree surviving alone?
Maya: That the tree has been able to survive and the more I painted on the ground, the harsher the conditions seemed to be for the tree. I began seeing flames.
Kassi: Yes... I see heat, is it ok to share what I see?
Maya: Yes sure
Kassi: Somehow the tree has already experienced much, and now as you painted, it was having to cope with "more"? I felt as if I was on land that had lava from a volcano pouring out.
Maya: Yes...I felt something apocalyptic about the image. I had initially been drawn to adding gold but when I saw it I wanted to change it ... an urge to make it darker, more desolate
Maya: I was cutting the paint onto the image. and moving the paint with a palette knife over the painting - felt hard going ...the knife was dragging
Kassi: This sounds really hard? Your urge to make it darker, more desolate... sounds 'Determined'?
Maya: Yes, perhaps wanting to externalise something in me
Kassi: Yes....
Maya: and then introducing darker colours. I think because I felt very free with this being an intuitive painting and that I was going to be processing something, these feelings emerged. They were allowed to emerge
Kassi: I am glad you felt the freedom of it being an Intuitive Painting so that you could allow feelings to emerge and flow out… I get a sense of it feeling safe somehow that you know that your feelings would be explored? How did you cut the paint - as in 'softly? fast? furious? How? Only answer if you wish to
Maya: It was in quite a focused way initially. The part of the image above reminded me of the symbol on a radar or perhaps hospital equipment
Kassi: Yes... Like a line indicating heart activity?
Maya: Yes and also that perhaps this would help me explore and process feelings that I may not have done
Kassi: Just curious, if we were a doctor reading that, I wonder what information we would get from it? Unexplored internal territory?
Maya: Things pushed down and not 'dealt' with!
Kassi: Ah.. yes!
Maya: I wonder if a doctor would read it as a sign of life among all the flames?
Kassi: Yes.... I guess I have a sense of "urgency " from the cut lines. Hope that's ok to suggest?
Maya: I hear the word 'burst' in my head as I look at the image.. so yes perhaps a sense of urgency.
Kassi: 'Burst' feels very immediate and quite active... Can I just check in with how you feel?
Maya: I''m doing ok thanks.
Kassi: ok good to know. There feels a lot going on in the "ground" of your painting. I also see a "cat" looking up at the cut lines... Actually possibly looking to the right..
Maya: Ah yes. I get the sense she's looking to the right... disinterested
Kassi: Yes I initially saw the cat looking up and then to the right.. She is a "she" I note. I have a question... "what will it take to get her attention?" Hope it's ok to ask?
Maya: Food! I was thinking "Be more cat.... let it go!"
Kassi: Yes, she can let it go... I'm curious; what is the "it"?
Maya: a tangled mind. So much was coming to mind as I was painting..
Kassi: Would you like to share any of that?
Maya: Thoughts of death and the menopause
Kassi: lots of "tangle".
Maya: Perhaps the black grasses illustrated this?
Kassi: Wow. I hope it's ok to say, I absolutely love this!
Maya: Yes, thank you!!
Kassi: The black grasses speak of menapause and death? Tangle? I feel incredibly drawn in to this stage... the colours... everything!
Maya: I felt anger and frustration as I painted the grasses. I wanted to stay with these feelings to see what might emerge
Kassi: I am wondering how 'frustration' felt? I want to say, I think of you as so brave to stay with this... I believe it takes courage to hang In there with our big feelings.
Maya: One moment Kassi, the boiler's gone off!
Kassi: I'm sitting here grinning as we are talking of apocalyptic, burning, menapause and your environment suddenly goes cold!
Maya: We've managed to get it lit again....thank goodness ! It's funny, I felt the same frustration just then as when I had to stop doing this painting... stopped in the middle of flow. I feel it can be important to stay with difficult emotions even if I'm not consciously aware of what they're about. I believe a shift can happen and again this might be a sense rather than thoughts....if that makes sense
Kassi: Yes I agree, we don't have to Know what "it's" about. Something still definitely shifts, moves through... changes... The frustration of the boiler stopping is the same frustration about stopping your painting?
Maya: Yes, it just brought that back to mind
Kassi: Amazing how these parallels pop up!
Maya: yes
Kassi: Can you feel that frustration now and would it help to focus in a little or not?
Maya: I'm not feeling it now. It's like being so much in a zone and then being pulled out of it, and that whole sense is disrupted
Kassi: I wonder after your 'boiler interruption' where would be helpful to go right now? We were talking about your black grasses...
Maya: I was thinking back to the feeling of frustration and anger when painting the grasses... the darkness wasn't dark enough for me... other colours were shining through and I no longer felt protective towards the Tree and painted on top
Kassi: "The darkness wasn't dark enough". Those words really grab my attention. Somehow this was the moment your lone Tree "went". The other colours - hot colours? - were shining through
Maya: Yes. But I think then there was a shift in me and it brought a story to mind - Stolen Mother Moon
Kassi: Would you like to share the story?
Maya. Yes.
"There was this village. It was a wonderful village. Everything happened just as it was supposed to happen and all the children were terrific and all the mothers and fathers loved each other. Except, there was one thing that was very adverse - this beautiful harmonious village was surrounded by a moat of black murky bogs. And it was dark there always and it stank because everything was rotting. So it was for that reason - the darkness and the quagmires and the quicksand, that the people depended on the light of the moon to guide them at night. Some nights she did not come and on those nights the bogs were filled with treachery because there were evil things that lived there. Things that live in the darkest corners of humans' minds would come out at night and lead the poor struggling travellers with no light into the quagmires and drown them.
Well it turned out that several people died in a very short amount of time and when the Moon Mother learned of this she was full of sorrow because she cared for humans. In fact she was so concerned, she decided she would come to earth and see for herself.
So when the dark part of the month came she stepped onto a slow shooting star and landed at the edge of the marshes. And she wore a black cape pulled around her so no light would escape and for as far as she could see the bogs were like black mirrors with a few sparse willows sticking up here and there and the smell of muck everywhere. Around the bottom of her cape was a bright donut of light and she saw that and she pulled her cape even tighter.
It was so cold she was trembling and she feared the evil ones, just as we all do, but she loved the human soul more and so she began her investigation guided by the little golden light that leaked through her cape over her beautiful white feet. She felt her way through the grass with the dank ponds on the left and the quagmires on the right and just as she thought she had got the lay of the land, all of a sudden she felt a vine across her ankles and too late to catch hold of herself she began to fall forwards. She reached for a twining tree, the kind under the control of the evil ones. As soon as she grabbed at its branches, it sent out tendrils around her wrists and her ankles, holding her as if they were manacles, and the more she struggled the tighter it held her. And there she was in the blackest dark, shivering and straining.
Then she heard a voice calling from far off. "Help me! Oh please help!" She listened and the cry came nearer and nearer and she heard footfalls stumbling. And at last by the dim light of the stars, she saw a haggard, despairing face with fearful eyes and she knew it was a poor soul who had lost his way and was floundering onto his death. He now caught sight of the glimmer of light from the captive moon and made his way towards the light thinking it meant help, but there was a quagmire right in front of the moon. She was filled with sorrow because she was luring the man towards her, luring him with her light towards his death. Frantic to warn him she struggled until her hood fell back. Her dazzling hair lit the black waters. The flood of yellow, the precious light of the Moon Mother glinted and the hole was as bright as day. How relieved the traveller was to see the evil ones rush back into their underwater holes. But the moon stuggled against the branches that held her tighter. She was so glad he was safe, but he ran towards the edge of the marsh so quickly and with such haste and relief that he forgot to wonder about the wondrous thing that had just occurred and the Mother Moon sank exhausted into the mud. And as she did her head fell onto her chest and her hood fell back over her head so that her hair and all became darkness again. The vile things that love the dark came too then with a kind of whisper chatter. "We'll get her now, oh yes we'll get her. We'll kill her"
They gathered around the Moon Mother snarling and kicking and grasping and they drove her into the ground. They, who hated humans. At last no more light shone across those dark waters. And the one who gave light, even more the one who shone down on mothers nursing their babies; the one who made sleeping women kiss their lovers' backs; the one who put words into the dreams of poets, that one was pushed deep into the mud. For the evil ones didn't care about mothers or babies, they didn't care about lovers or poets. And the Moon Mother let one last ray of light zig zag over the waters before she disappeared completely. And the evil ones rolled a great boulder over her grave and they danced a crazy dance on top of it.
Then on nights there was no light to guide and so many people became lost and so many children became orphaned and so many people suffered. Then the villagers decided they must go and find what had become of the moon. So armed with torches and clubs they trekked through the night into the bog sinking down into the wet and slimy grass all the way up to their knees. Cold and wet they continued on, the evil things were about and surrounded them scratching and clawing at them, but the flames from their torches kept them safe.
Then they came to a great boulder. They said they didn't think this boulder was in this place before and there was a little lip of light all the way around it that shone whiter than white. With great excitement they lifted and they hauled and they tugged until the boulder rolled away until they found themselves staring down at what seemed to be the most beautiful face they had ever seen, with eyes filled with the love of humanity. And the light rose up and up lighting their faces first from beneath, then straight on, then from the top as the Moon Mother escaped from her prison and climbed the dark staircase back to the sky where now on most nights she travels across the sky with her hood turned down and her light radiant everywhere. And on those few, now predictable nights when she veils herself in grey and does not shine, travellers have learned to stay by the hearth and wait until she shows the way again."
Kassi: That's a very impactful story. I notice I got goosebumps right at the end. I want to be sure I am fully with you... You were feeling frustrated and angry as you were painting in the black grasses, but the black grasses were not dark enough for you, but somehow you became aware of the colours shining from underneath which I called the hot colours - hope that is okay - and somehow a shift took place at this point, you let go of the tree… and this story came to you?
Maya: Yes, letting go of the Tree was more a part of the darkness. When I saw the gold shining through the black grasses, it reminded me of this story
Kassi: Ok, thanks for clarifying... can I check in with how you're feeling right now?
Maya: Not a feeling.. am just thinking about the story and how rich it is
Kassi: It is... very. Would you like to say something about it's richness for you?
Maya: I was just thinking about all the elements of the story making up who we are... the stinky murkiness and the beautiful light
Kassi: Ah yes all the different parts... we all have a stinky murkiness? And we each have a beautiful light? Can I ask a question?
Maya: yes, sure
Kassi: I am just wondering if you would like to name or highlight other aspects of yourself that show up in this amazing story? Or… perhaps share a part of you which you are not so comfortable with?
Maya: I was just thinking that if I was to enact this or paint a part of it... it would be the bog people
Kassi: You are pulled towards the Bog people...?
Maya: I suppose like in the painting, I was drawn to exploring something darker. I have an image in my head of what the bog people might be like. Oh and I can smell them.
Kassi: Just wondering if your impulse at the beginning to explore something darker was "satisfied" by what you did actually explore?
Maya: Yes, I feel I felt it and moved through it. When I returned to the painting a few days later I was seeing flower bursts in the sky
Kassi: "Flower bursts." That's lovely. I am wondering how that flower burst feels?
Maya: Just going to share the rest of the photos..
Kassi: I'd like to share something that caught my eye. Or would you rather we don't go back?
Maya: that's fine
Kassi: these are beautiful! How do you feel as you look at these?
Maya: I'm ok with going back.
Kassi: Well actually it is in the first of these last few images you have just shared.
I saw this quite some time back but we were discussing something else and the moment passed but this figure is still around for me. Shall I say what I saw?
Maya: yes sure
Kassi: I immediately saw a "she" and in the form of a Native American dancing across the sky...
Maya: I'm seeing a more Wizardy figure
Kassi: I wonder what the Wizardy figure is doing?
Maya: I feel he has his eyes closed but is in some way sending blessings to the Earth. I sense a sadness to him
Kassi: I wonder if he would like to share anything with us?
Maya:: I feel there's something about him being there in the darkness, a comforting presence
Kassi: A comforting presence for you? For the world?
Maya: I think for all our darknesses
Kassi: How are you feeling? Can I check in
Maya: I'm doing ok thanks
Kassi: I am wondering if there is something we could have explored that I may have missed?
Maya: My last session with the painting became a bit of a story
Kassi: This sounds very interesting. Would you like to share?
Maya: The Flower Angel in the sky injected light down into the earth and little earth flower angels began to emerge. They are still a bit hidden as if the earth's not ready to see their full light
Kassi: Oh that's so lovely
Maya: The flower angel in the sky's 'tail' reminded me of an umbilical cord or dna - something inside the body, something that connects.
Kassi: Yes! I sensed an umbilical cord when I first saw that. What a lovely feeling to have that connection
Maya: The earth angels I feel are very childlike, carefree, joyous and together. I noticed their arms were in the shape of a Y and it made me think of the word 'why'.
Kassi: Oh yes they are. As if they are asking "why?"
Maya: Because they are carefree and childlike, they asking, 'why the darkness?'
Kassi: they don't understand why the darkness exists? They can sense it?
Maya: I think when I first painted it they were oblivious to the darkness, they shone out and seemed in stark contrast... I wanted them to be more contained within. I'm thinking now how I may have dampened their spirits
Kassi: Carefree, happy playful exploring ...then gradually they become aware of "life"?
Maya: Yes. I wanted them to hold onto their light amidst the murky boggyness
Kassi: Is there anything you would like to say to them? Your "Y's"
Maya: I'd want to say to the earth flower angels about holding onto their light. I feel sky flower angel will keep on injecting light into the earth
Kassi: Would you like to say that to them now? And notice how they react?
Maya: They're so wrapped up in Being they didn't hear ... a bit like the cat
Kassi: ah yes. How do you feel, that they didn't hear? Hard to reach them...
Maya: It's nice to feel that they are so immersed. Just hoping sky flower angel will keep reminding them
Kassi: And maybe not so concerned by the darkness? Would you like to speak to Sky Flower Angel?
Maya: I have told her what wonderful work she does
Kassi: Did she hear you? Did she respond?
Maya: She nodded, she seems very humble but realises the importance of what she does. She likes to serve in this way.
Kassi: I hope this ok to say... I feel she is like you and she shares in very similar ways of Being and Giving
Maya: Perhaps, although she never questions it
Kassi: And do you ever question your way of serving?
Maya: I think I have had a lot of negativity projected onto me about the way I am. I wonder if my way of being brings up something in other people? For example, if I was being understanding of the person, it would be put down to counselling crap, rather than my way. I would be belittled and disregarded.
Kassi: and I wonder then what you do with this?
Maya: As the years have gone by, I've distanced myself from people who don't value my way of being and gravitate to people who think and act more similarly.
Kassi: and so do you experience much less of those kind of projections?
Maya: yes much less now
Kassi: am thinking about a groove in a stone that has been dripped upon for a long time… Leaving its mark… And wonder if your previous experience has left a mark on your way of being somehow?
Maya: I think the hurt is still there, but I feel I have a very strong spirit that won't be changed
Kassi: I'm pleased to learn that you won't change your natural, innate spirit.
Maya: When I think about them, I find myself feeling frustrated angry. Misunderstood for feeling different.
Kassi: I wonder if you might experience a "shift" to say that aloud? As if telling "all of them" of your frustration?
Maya: When I imagine saying it to them, I can feel a sense of resignation in myself and physically...a sense of what's the point?
Kassi: The sense of resignation... can you find it in your body?
Maya: I get a sense of folding in on myself from the middle...if that makes sense. I think for me an acceptance and a moving on has helped
Kassi: ah yes I can imagine that "folding in". Acceptance and moving on from others?
Maya: from others
Kassi: I'm glad that came and it helped
Maya: I'm wondering Kassi if this is a good place to end?
Kassi: How would you feel about us ending here?
Maya: it feels like a positive note for me to finish on... "F*ck 'em"
Kassi: Sounds good to me! Thank you so much Maya.
Maya: Thank you Kassi.
I hope you have enjoyed Maya's beautiful Intuitive Art process and our exploration together.
If you would like to experience a Free online taste of Intuitive Art with me personally, please get in touch I will gladly offer you this.
I will be back soon,
warmly
Kassi