Refusing to Fly

Last week I started an ASTAR course where we will be working with “ARCHETYPES” and the roles we play in our lives.

According to Carl Jung, founder of analytical psychology, Archetypes are ancient, universal patterns of behaviour that are embedded in the "collective unconscious."
It is believed that every person has been encoded with a set of 12 primary archetypes. Four of these are universal archetypes related to survival: the Child, Victim, Prostitute, and Saboteur. These four Archetypes are said to be vital to our growth and functioning as adults. The other eight are drawn from the vast storehouse of archetypes dating back to the dawn of human history. They play valuable roles that relate to our work, relationships with individuals and society, as well as to our spirituality, finances, values, and our highest potential.

Author Caroline Myss has created a unique set of Archetype Cards which we used in this process art class. Each card is designed to provide the basic Light and Shadow attributes of the different Archetypes. We started by each choosing a card from the deck. The card I pulled, the Saboteur, read, "Highlights your fear of self-empowerment and the changes it would bring to your life" and "Induces self-destructive behaviour".
I could totally relate to both.

 

We worked in clay in this first session. We held the ball of clay in our hands and did a lovely, relaxing, guided meditation which always helps you to get into the session and to leave your busy day behind you.
We then had about 2 hours to created our sculpture. Working freely without any preconceived ideas or plans, my sculpture started off as one thing and then change direction and end up as something else. My tall, confident, standing figure ended up as a kneeling angel, with exaggeratedly long arms which were folded in her lap.



 

At the end of the session we took time to reflect on each person's work, leaving them a short message on a piece of paper.

When reflecting on my own work I wrote, "I have been given the wings of an angel but I am refusing to fly."

 

I called this work "Refusing to Fly"

 

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From the Caroline Myss website:

"The Saboteur"
This may be the most difficult of all the archetypes to understand, because its name is associated with betrayal. Yet the purpose of this archetype is not to sabotage you, but to help you learn the many ways in which you undermine yourself. How often do you set new plans in motion, only to end up standing in your own way because of the fears that undermine those optimistic plans. Or you begin a new relationship and then destroy it because you begin to imagine a painful outcome. You begin a working relationship with another person and find yourself once again in a power struggle that could be settled peacefully -- but you fall into the same destructive pattern because you fear the other person.
The Saboteur's fears and issues are all related to low self-esteem that causes you to make choices that block your own empowerment and success. As with the Victim and Prostitute, you need to face this powerful archetype that we all possess and make it an ally. When you do, you will find that it calls your attention to situations in which you are in danger of being sabotaged, or of sabotaging yourself. Once you are comfortable with the Saboteur, you learn to hear and heed these warnings, saving yourself untold grief from making the same mistakes over and over. Ignore it, and the shadow Saboteur will manifest in the form of self-destructive behaviour or the desire to undermine others.
To learn how to become aware of the action of the Saboteur within, ask yourself these questions:

• What fears have the most authority over me? List three.
• What happens when a fear overtakes me? Does it make me silent?
• Do I allow people to speak for me?
• Do I agree to some things out of fear that I otherwise would not agree to?
• Have I let creative opportunities pass me by?
• How conscious am I in the moment that I am sabotaging myself?
• Am I able to recognise the Saboteur in others?
• Would I be able to offer others advice about how to challenge one's Saboteur? If so, what would it be?

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If you are interested in reading up further about Archetypes, I can recommend visiting the Caroline Myss website where she has a list of over 70 archetypes, including a detailed description of each. There is also a section that can help you to determine your own Archetypes.

RAZIEL (by Anonymous)

I have been receiving some wonderful feedback about my blog posts to do with the Process Art classes that I am doing.

This message really made me smile... :)

"Hi Wendy I just wanted to share with you how you inspired me to join ASTAR. After your initial classes you shared your journey and I was intrigued. I found classes close by and have completed 2 courses and all I can say is WOW! And thank you for the inspiration. It's been an incredible, symbiotic, spiritual and artistic journey xxx"

I was very excited to hear that someone reading my blog had experienced something similar to what I'd been experiencing. Something magical. I was even more excited when they agreed to share their profound experience with us, here, on my blog. :D  They would like to remain anonymous.

Here is their story...


My ASTAR experience has been a deeply profound and spiritual one. The art has opened the spirit and the spirit has embodied the art.

The last course I attended was Chance Art and as a natural control freak I found the "letting go" to be most exhilarating and terrifying. Each lesson revealed a deeper understanding of myself and culminated in a mind blowing experience which I am still wrapping my head around.

The exercise involved cutting up our "poems" we had written through the previous weeks, putting all these individual words into a bowl, we sat with this bowl and then with eyes closed pulled out eight of these words.
We then strung these words together to make up a coherent or semi coherent sentence, after which we wrote this sentence over and over again on a sheet of paper using wax, bleach, ink – whatever we wanted to use. Once the entire sheet was haphazardly filled with these words we filled in the blanks with colour ink, coffee, tea, more bleach again whatever we wanted. By the end I thought my sheet looked like a morning after a heavy night.

After tea we sat quietly looking at what we had done as if we were cloud watching, forming images out of shapes and shadows.
When I looked, all I could see was the outline of a face and the suggestion of wings. So in the spirit of chance I went with it. The entire experience was out of this world. I did not feel as though I was doing it, as I followed the lines I found that the shadows that were there already revealed the lips, the eyes and the body. It was surreal.

After class I was exhilarated, and in the week following I kept thinking about my angel. During a meditation the letters RAZIEL flashed in my mind. I wondered if this was the name of an angel so after swinging between wondering and telling myself I was loosing my mind, I decided to Google it!

And there it was. Raziel, the angel that holds the messages of God. The angel that opens the third eye.

This experience has challenged my spiritual beliefs and has opened a whole new world of wonder to me.




Raziel

 

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Dear anonymous.

This is so SO beautiful. It gave me goose bumps.

Thank you so very much for sharing.

xxx Wendy

 

Daddy's Little Angels

A couple of years ago I did a sweet little photo shoot with my 3 children. Our twin girls were 6 months old at the time and our son was 3 and a bit. I wanted to make a card for their daddy's birthday.

It will be Father's Day here in South Africa on Sunday 16th of June, so I thought today would be a good time to share this with you.

I bought a pair of Angel Wings, made of cardboard and feathers, from a toyshop that also sold fancy-dress bit and bobs. I lay the wings down on my bed and put one of the girls on top to see if my idea would work. I wanted to photograph them to look like little angels.



I decided that a black background would work well but didn't have any black fabric handy. I ended up using our dark blue denim play mat and lay it down on the floor near to a window so that I could make use of the natural light.

 

I took lots of photos of the girls lying on the angel wings gurgling away with arms and legs flailing in all directions. They were being adorably cute.



 

 

 

 

My 3 and a bit year old son was not in his most cooperative mood and I only managed to get 3 photos of him before he rolled away, but they were cute enough.

 

 

 

 

Once I had chosen a few of the best shots, I opened them in Photoshop where I converted them to greyscale. I adjusted the levels and tweaked the brightness and contrast. I was then able to paint out the background and make it a solid black.

 

 

I chose two photos of each child for the final card. I added some text which read "Daddy's Little Angels" in red. (I was very tempted to put two little red horns and a tail on our little boy :) but didn't want to upset him)

 

 

Daddy was pleased with his Birthday card.

 

(I also made a version that read "Little Angels" which we used for our family Christmas Card a week later.)