RADICAL REVISION

or

the painting is on its own path.

or

our karmas are intertwined.

I’m enrolled in a writing class at our local university this term. It’s a basic composition class, very similar to a writing class my first year of college nearly twenty-three years ago. The professor speaks a language that is very familiar to me: she teaches a process-focused class, quotes the sage Carol Dweck and encourages “shitty first-drafts” (with appropriate shout-outs to Anne Lamott) that invite RADICAL REVISION.

And I have been immersing myself completely in the opportunity to make radical revisions. To edit with such a heavy hand that the second draft bears almost no resemblance of the first. This is at once totally familiar and completely unfamiliar. In some areas, I have freely cut cords, jumped out the emergency window, burned the bridge before choosing to swim across the river. I am, after all, a former attorney who moved all the way across the country as soon as I graduated from college. I’ve moved my home numerous times, among states. We travel for long periods of time. I got a puppy and had a second baby at 39. I am comfortable with initiating change. And yet there are some narratives that have been harder to revise. Some stories I keep repeating even though they don’t quite work anymore. There are subtle impressions that although they have become more and more quiet and less obvious, still assault my subtle body.

So I have been revising.

And painting. I’m making large paintings again for the first time in a long time. And the approach is different for me. Before, the painting was a place that really was like therapy for me, in that I had almost no plan. I let the moment direct the movement and mixing of paint completely. Now, however, I have a longer gaze, more forward vision about where the painting is going and what it will be saying, the words it will choose are still a mystery, but the structure is a little more formed in its infancy.

Which brings us to a breakthrough I had (a BOON I received from this painting, really) while working on a piece last week. I had a pretty specific idea of the colors and shapes I wanted to include in the painting, but as the layers progressed, I really felt like I was fighting with the canvas on some level, like I was so attached to sticking with the plan– the plan that I formulated before even one drop of paint had plopped on to the canvas– that I was making the whole painting suffer. And then I knew something with all of my being. Every layer of myself felt this realization. It was a full embodiment of jñana: The painting is on its own path! JUST LIKE ME! The painting has no idea where it will end up. JUST LIKE ME. So as soon as I let go of a few elements and a color story I had in mind, it just FLOWED, like the painting was free to emerge after all my hang-ups and bullshit and projections on-to the painting just moved out of the way. 

My obstacles are not me, Jai Ganesha! But my obstacles might very well be my samskaras, my karma, just revealing itself, asking me to acknowledge, to thank, to release.

And this leads me to collective karma. My actions, my work, my patterns that affected how I was connecting the paint to the canvas, they weren’t just affecting my experience of the painting or even just my experience of painting. They were changing the painting itself. And that’s not all they are changing. We are relational beings. I have the potential to change every thing and everyone I connect with, so what am I bringing to those relationships?

Step one is to know, to care for, to love the self. Step two is to get over the self and into full, liberated contact with the other divine beings on this planet. I’m into it. RADICAL REVISIONS will definitely be required along the way. This is what I’m here for.

LOVE to all, in all ways.

P.S. In addition to the paintings, I’m making something NEW for the Sunrose Yoga Shop. If you’re not on my email list yet and would like to know when a new practice is available, sign up here. xo