I Walk The Spiral

I have been here before, writing freely about my quest to find all the pieces of myself and bring them back together into one complete and wholly perfect sense of me.

What I find is that I walk in circles, going out and coming in again. Perhaps a spiral would be a better definition here. Walking in and round. Round, round. Walking out, and round, and out.

Life offers up it’s choices along the way, and I’m the sort of gal that likes to try them all. Else, how will I know what I want to include, what I want to refuse, from my paradise, when it is complete?

This is a new page for me, a new beginning. I will take the spiral in and see what I find at the centre of the labyrinth. Myself, I hope. My true, authentic self, in all her beauty and her power.

As a new page in my writing journey, I can’t tell you what you’ll find here yet, but I want to make this a home for my art.

I began painting as a way to talk with my inner self, about three and a half years ago. Simple little things, with lots of colour that I could really lose myself in for a while. My painting evenings, shared with friends, were little oases of bliss and calm.

After a while, the friends moved on to other things, but painting was still the thing for me that took me to that place deep within myself. It was both the map, and the vehicle to get me there. I now understand that state of being to be Flow:

To be caught in the ennui of depression or the agitation of anxiety is to be barred from flow. The hallmark of flow is a feeling of spontaneous joy, even rapture, while performing a task.

To be honest, if I could live in Flow all the time, I’d give up everything else I ever had to do, just to be there every day – it’s that powerful. It’s intoxicating, addictive. It’s life heroin.

Finding a way to achieve Flow in your life is like the ultimate secret of happiness. Like Leo says, flow is about losing yourself in your work, and when this happens you get more quality stuff done and you experience less stress. Simple.

It should be simple. It should have been simple for me. Just paint. But, typically flawed human that I am, I had to start complicating the matter. I couldn’t just paint and sink deep into Flow. I had to seek to add meaning and purpose to the thing that I loved, because it simply wasn’t enough to just do the thing and enjoy.

So I’m turning a corner now, as I walk the spiral that I’m on. Determined to keep the sanctity of my flow state and my creative expression pure. Trying to shake off criticism (largely internal) and judgement, and just do the thing. Finding the other pieces of myself that I lost along the way.

Tagged as: Art, Authenticity, Bliss, Flow, Spiral, The Journey, Wholeness, Writing