Embracing the Dark: Change your Energy and your Life with Art

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Take in all the many seasons and gradations of gray that

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are you wrap soft glistening tendrils of hope around the malnourished

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places that are hard to love about.

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You.

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Feed the darkness with curiosity instead of brightness.

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Look beyond what you think you.

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And invite the gloom to be itself completely.

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Welcome to a Lone Traveler's Guide to the Divine, a podcast and vlog.

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For empaths, healers, dreamers, and Seekers.

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My name is Amanda Lex, and today's episode is the first of its kind where

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I am combining both audio and video.

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So if you are listening to this podcast, I just want to encourage you

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to check out the show notes and look for the link so that you can actually

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watch the video that accompanies this.

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And if you're watching this on YouTube, I just want you to also know that

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you could listen on Amazon, Apple, Spotify, wherever you hear podcasts.

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And in today's episode I'm gonna be talking about a creative process that

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involves some conscious ritual action that is for shifting and changing one's energy.

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So in this episode I'm talking about.

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A specific issue that I have had in my life and how I painted my way

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through it, and that doesn't mean that I don't have the issue anymore.

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, Uh, it doesn't mean that I'm, I've completely resolved it,

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and now it no longer bothers me.

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, what it means is that I have a new way of relating to it.

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New tools, new consciousness, and my energy.

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Is creating new patterns.

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And so my experience around it is different and that's ever evolving,

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so, and it's much more interesting than just staying in the old rut.

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I'm gonna begin by just reading a poem that goes along with one of the

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paintings and kind of the overarching theme of this entire series, and

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it's called Embracing the Dark.

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Do not deny the beauty of the dark outside your window.

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For the window out is the window in do not retreat in misery.

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Wishing for frolicking sunny days whenever the skies are weeping and the

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gale winds are moaning through the creaky trees, bending under the misty gray.

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As though you could be relieved of your own shadow, do not despise

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those endless cold drop ceiling days.

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That may as well be nights dare to savor the contrast instead to let

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the dreary be, Rather than seeking to extinguish the darkness with light,

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remember that you are the weather.

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Ugly and beautiful.

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Mournful and joyful.

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Whole and grateful, fluctuating and change Full take.

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In all the many seasons and gradations of gray that are you.

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Wrap, soft glistening tendrils of hope around the malnourished

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places that are hard to love about.

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You.

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Feed the darkness with curiosity instead of brightness.

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Look beyond what you think you see.

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And invite the gloom to be itself completely ponder its stories, revel in

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its mysteries, allowing the dark inside, outside to unveil its strange beauty

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to feel at home in the embrace of you.

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So the theme of this art series that I engaged in, um, over the last

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few months was about the weather and my feelings about the weather.

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Here in the Pacific Northwest.

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I grew up here and then I moved away and lived as soon as I could.

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I moved to Sunny Arizona, Northern California, New York, la and really

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tried to find my way home in the sun and.

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I couldn't find my way home to the sun, only because my home was here and I

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ended up coming back here about 17 years ago or so, and I just, I've lived here

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ever since in the Pacific Northwest.

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With this deep disdain for the gray, cold, rainy, wet weather.

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That is a lot of the year , and I've been learning how to reckon with that.

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So I decided that I really wanted to transform the way I feel about the dark.

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And the weather.

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And I wanna invite you to think about this in as a metaphor because

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the weather is just a metaphor for anything that we don't like, right?

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Anything that we have resistance to.

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And in the poem I was talking about, how the window out is the

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window in, and what we see in our outer world is always a reflection.

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Of what's going on in our inner world.

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And so I, I found an opportunity in there, um, in that discomfort and to really

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explore how can I create more acceptance?

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How can I find the beauty?

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How can I cultivate a nourishing relationship with the dark

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and the cold and the dre?

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And I have a million tools that I use to combat that, and yet it still has been

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a thing that I have to work hard with.

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Right.

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So that's a gift.

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I've, I've been gifted this opportunity and all of our challenges, um, hold

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gifts for us to work through, right.

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To learn and grow from.

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And, and this one is for.

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, I decided that I wanted to use this particular challenge as

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the theme of this art series.

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So everything that I painted, um, was coming from that place of how

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can I find the love for the dreary?

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And I gave myself a limited color palette to explore these abstract

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paintings through, and I taught myself an entirely new way of painting.

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And this was also, A form of ritual action that I was taking, and I'm gonna

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be talking a little bit about that.

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Because taking ritual action through a creative project like this is a

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really profoundly cool way to shift and change your energy and your

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perception of things in your life.

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So that's what this, this painting series was also about for me, not just.

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Transforming my relationship to the weather, but also other patterns that

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I was experiencing in myself that I could find places where there was

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limitation or old ruts that were not flowing as well as they could, and I

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wanted to feel more expressed, more free.

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Everything really fundamentally comes down to how is our energy flowing and

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our energy wants to flow in patterns and we get into these ruts or these

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specific patterns that are familiar.

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This is part of human nature.

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It's even part of nature.

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Nature itself is cyclical.

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It's patterned and it sometimes, you know, in a neutral.

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Without charge, without judgment, we could say that's just the way it goes.

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Patterns are efficient and our energy is always looking for efficiency

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or the path of least resistance.

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Sometimes the path of least resistance ends up not really being that efficient.

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It's compensating because.

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Trauma or experiences that um, or we have wounds, right?

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Whether they're physical, mental, emotion.

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Whatever that cause obstructions and our energy's looking for the path of least

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resistance and sometimes it, it has to compensate to get around these old wounds.

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And so we get into these ruts, these patterns of compensation

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and maybe that works for a while.

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It gets us out of danger, it gets us to the next place we need to go.

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But then we are.

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Find ourselves repeating things that we don't wanna be repeating,

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and we do the work to become aware of what those things are to try and

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heal and, and move through them.

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And sometimes we're successful and sometimes we're not.

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And we, we revisit those old patterns.

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So energy does this, How do we shift that?

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How do we create new flow, new patterns?

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How do we rewire our old stuck places and heal the, from that,

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that the trauma obstructions, right?

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How do we do that?

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And.

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In polarity therapy, we do that through, um, looking at the energy body

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through the chakra system, elementally, and, and we can kind of apply these

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symbolic, uh, prescribed remedies of movement, nutrition, sound, body.

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So there's all these different ways that we can treat our energy physically

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and symbolically to heal and rewire those stuck patterns, um, that are

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just, that we come with, that we.

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Inherit that we're genetically responsible for or that

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we pick up along the way.

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And that's part of our comic journey.

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It's part of our healers journey, our heroes journey, and it's what

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makes us unique and it's what makes our lives so profoundly awesome, is

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having these challenges, having these opportunities to grow and heal and evolve.

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So we can look at them through the negative pole lens of, Oh, I

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have these stuck places, or these resistances or these patterns.

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I don't like them.

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They're not serving me anymore.

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and, and we can say, That's great.

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I have this opportunity to learn and grow and heal.

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So how do I wanna approach that?

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And so for me, in this creative journey that I'm sharing with

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you in this episode, my approach was to paint my way through it.

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And this was, there's two.

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Ways, or two different ways to look at how I was doing this or what it

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was I was painting my way through.

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One is, as I said earlier, the weather my relationship to place and

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to the grief of being in the dark.

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And two, the, the ways that darkness inspires, um,

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challenge and grief in general.

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how can I relate to those places in myself and in the weather and in the

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town that I live in, in a new way?

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How could I create new patterns around those, those perceptions.

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And then the other thing, the other level that I was working with here was

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just how I approach art in general.

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And I really wanted to, Come up with a new way to approach my art.

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I had some old patterns of perfectionism that were keeping me stuck and I

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was ready to move through that.

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So perhaps in your life you have something that you are

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experiencing, something that you are.

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Carrying, maybe it's an illness or a relationship or a job that you

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don't like that isn't really working for you anymore that you wish you

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could change your relationship to.

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And I just wanna invite you as you listen and observe this episode,

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to really try that on for yourself.

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Like how, how could this apply to you, This idea that on a fundamental, energetic

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level, you could take some form of ritual action and you could find a new way.

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It's really kind of amazing how much you can shift and change when you bring

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that awareness through ritual action and through especially creativity, which

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taps into your subconscious and your, your right brain intuition and you know,

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there's all kinds of ways that you're.

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Can then move through without your conscious, logical mind really

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understanding and, and it gets to be expressed and new patterns arise

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and it's like, wow, it's so, wow.

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So I've always painted in a very realistic style that was surrealism, but

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it was very much about capturing this dream, this vision, this idea, this.

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Feeling and the story of the dream, perhaps through the visual painting.

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And I was really focused on detail and, you know, getting the details

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and the colors and the, the emotions to translate through the painting.

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And this definitely was detail oriented, uh, small strokes, you

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know, really I give, I would spend months and months on one painting.

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Years and years, and it was, it was a little painstaking at times.

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, the amount of detail and effort and perfectionism that would show up.

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And this is not, uh, unique to my art that those same traits, those

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same ways of approaching things we're showing up in my life as well.

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I wanted to feel more flow in my life.

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And so I decided to really do that through my art and I go on a journey with the art

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to see, you know, how I could approach it differently and how could I meet my.

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Creative process, uh, with this awareness of these stuck points and move through

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them differently as a way to reorganize my own energy and the patterns that

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my energy had gotten into these rut.

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Of perfectionism and kind of spinning out before creating and

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not bringing things to completion.

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I decided to approach art in a completely different way and I taught myself

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how to, uh, paint in an abstract way as opposed to in a realistic way.

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And I had never done abstract paintings before.

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I was terrified and kind of thought that painting abstract.

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And easier, and it would help me get outta my head and more in my

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body and it would feel, you know, freeing and I would feel this abandon.

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And I, that's what I really wanted.

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, not the perfectionistic thing.

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I wanted to feel wild and free.

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But when I tried doing it, I realized that it was really hard.

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It didn't look good, the paintings weren't looking the way I was feeling,

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and I wanted to learn how to translate that and how to have a cohesive.

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Where the creation was really a reflection of what I was experiencing

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and of the consciousness.

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So I wanted to feel that freedom and I wanted to, and I decided

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to focus for the series on.

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The weather and my relationship to the weather, cuz that gave me a subject right?

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An emotional, um, quality to paint from

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And so that helped, right?

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And then I also gave myself a limited color palette so that I could create

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a cohesive series because that felt better than seeing all this chaos.

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And I was looking for, you know, these specific creative co.

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That would help create a, a solid container so that I could feel more

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free and playful within it, because that's something I've learned about

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myself, is that the more options and unlimited possibilities that exist, the

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more paralyzed I can become, and it's, it's not good for my perfectionism.

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If you ever suffer from this, I invite you to try creating limitations

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because it's very powerful.

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And it's, um, it's, it's a really cool thing that you might not

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think of it that way, that creating limitations will create more freedom.

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That old pattern of just sort of dancing around the blank canvas and having

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difficulty actually getting started.

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Totally blown out of the water.

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With this new method of painting.

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I just started pouring paint.

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I wouldn't know what I was gonna do.

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I would just start pouring.

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I would make smaller studies so I could have an idea before I

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got to the large canvas, but,

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Um, but I, I was really working with paint that was out of my control,

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splattering, dripping pouring, um, learning how to work with, with different

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consistencies and different tools.

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I got rid of my.

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Tiny little brushes that I used to do all this detail work with and I started

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using giant brushes and um, pallet knives and you know, any tools that I could

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find lying around, some that weren't even painting tools, my fingers right.

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I really.

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It was just playing.

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And that's what I wanted to feel.

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Really.

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I wanted to feel playful.

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I wanted to feel free, and I also wanted the compositions to work.

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I wanted, um, the end result to convey something, some kind of feeling or thought

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or emotion or experience, and it didn't.

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If it was the same as the one I was having while painting it, but I was

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very conscious of the tuning in and really embodying the emotional quality

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or the thought or essence of what I was painting before I painted and

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while I was painting and getting my body involved in the painting process.

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So that was.

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Oh my goodness.

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I used to sit at the, uh, easel and just get so stiff from doing this

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really detailed work, and I would completely disconnect from my body.

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Hours would go by and I would have like knots in my shoulders and my

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wrist would be cramped, , and then I'd have to go get a massage and work.

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And so I didn't wanna do that anymore.

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I wanted to approach this in an embodied way.

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And so I would put on music, I would dance, I would, um,

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cry, I would make sound.

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And that really helped in the process of, you know, feeling

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more embodied as I was painting.

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And.

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I would take a lot of breaks too.

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I would just sit back and I would, I would do some painting, and then I would let

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that layer dry and I would observe what was happening and how it was changing.

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It was all an incredible adventure, and at the same time, I was doing

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these practices, knowing that this was a symbolic ritual action that I

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was taking to the level of my energy body and to the rest of my life.

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How can I be more embodied in my life?

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How can I.

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Be more expressed in a free way.

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How can I approach the problems, the issues, the old resistances that I

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have to things like the weather and just, you know, embrace them, find

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the beauty in them, play with them, or be with the, the full spectrum of

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grief and joy that came through and.

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The whole range of emotions and the whole range of, of experiences that would

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come up and really be present with that.

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So the painting process was really about consciously going there while also

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applying that to my life, knowing that it would be applied anyway, because that

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was the consciousness and intention I was bringing, but it was so powerful.

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Continues to inspire me in new ways and I'm seeing how my energy is changing and

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shifting and how I'm changing old patterns in other areas of my life because of this.

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A holistic experience for sure.

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And um, yeah, really, really helpful.

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So I'm going to read the poem one more time in completion and invite

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you to contemplate where in your life is the, the gray weather.

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What, what aspect of your life would you like to create a new relationship to?

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How can you.

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Accept those challenging places in yourself even more, How could you find

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some way to engage in ritual action to transform the things that are not flowing,

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that are not working for you in your life?

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In dream work, when we see the dream or incubate a.

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Oftentimes we're wanting to have some inspiration or we're

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seeding for information, or we're seeding for to become unstuck

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around a thing in our life, right?

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And often when we set those intentions, we want the dream that will reveal this.

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Positive possibility.

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And instead, we often get a nightmare or we'll get a dream that doesn't make

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any sense, but it doesn't feel good.

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And you know, our life can be like that in the way that our life is, is the dream.

Amanda Lux: 00:26:30

Right.

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Sometimes we say, Okay, I want to experience more abundance, more freedom,

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more joy, and in order to get to those experiences, we have to pass through the

Amanda Lux: 00:26:45

gauntlet of all of the things that are in the way that we have put in the way.

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The dream, the nightmare might be bringing up that subconscious fear that

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is blocking our ability to experience the joy and the same in our life, right?

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So that said, how can we love the nightmare?

Amanda Lux: 00:27:12

How can we relate differently to the pain, to the hurt, to the illness?

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To the, the stuck places that are inhibiting our ability to love

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our lives, to fall in love with ourselves and our own expression.

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How can we embrace the darkness as much as the light?

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That's really the contemplation here.

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So embracing the dark.

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Do not deny the beauty of the dark outside your window.

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For the window out is the window in Do not retreat in misery.

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Wishing for frolicking sunny days whenever the skies are weeping and

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the gale winds are moaning through the creaky trees, bending under the

Amanda Lux: 00:28:33

misty gray gloom as though you could be relieved of your own shadow.

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Do not despise those endless cold drop ceiling days.

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That may as well be nights there to savor the contrast.

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I.

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To let the dreary be, rather than seeking to extinguish the dark with light.

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Remember that you are the weather.

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Ugly and beautiful, mournful and joyful, whole and grateful,

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fluctuating and change Full take.

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In all the many seasons and gradations of gray that are you.

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Wrap, soft glistening tendrils of hope around the malnourished places

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that are hard to love about you.

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Feed the darkness with curiosity instead of brightness.

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Look beyond what you think you see, and invite the gloom to be itself complet.

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Ponder its stories, revel in its mysteries, allowing the

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dark inside, outside to unveil.

Amanda Lux: 00:29:56

Its strange beauty to feel at home in the embrace of you.

Amanda Lux: 00:30:10

Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Lone Traveler's

Amanda Lux: 00:30:14

Guide to the Divine, and watching if you are on YouTube watching this.

Amanda Lux: 00:30:21

And thank you for reviewing, liking, subscribing, follow.

Amanda Lux: 00:30:25

Sharing, commenting, all these paintings are for sale.

Amanda Lux: 00:30:30

I would love to get rid of them so I could make room to paint new ones.

Amanda Lux: 00:30:35

And I'm so excited to continue exploring this painting journey and keep

Amanda Lux: 00:30:42

listening and following and watching.

Amanda Lux: 00:30:45

And thank you so much.

Amanda Lux: 00:30:47

It's such an honor to be in sacred community with you.