I Wanted To Be A Nun As A Kid. But Became An Intuitive Painting Facilitator Instead.

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After I was 8 years outdated and within the third grade we got the project to put in writing our autobiography.

I don’t keep in mind a lot about what I wrote. In my reminiscence, I don’t see phrases, solely the skinny, lined composition pocket book with the black and white speckled cowl and my massive, looping childs script nestled comfortably throughout the gentle blue traces of the pocket book paper.

On the finish of the pocket book we had been instructed to put in writing a paragraph about what we wished to be once we grew up.

Once more, I don’t keep in mind a lot about what I truly wrote. However what I CAN see so extremely vividly in nice element is a picture that I minimize out of a e-book or journal after which pasted on that web page. And the picture was that of a nun. The picture I selected was a drawing, not {a photograph}, and it portrayed a younger lady carrying a protracted, black behavior with a white wimple framing her peaceable, smiling face and a black veil falling down her again.

What I keep in mind saying in regards to the image was that I wished to be a faculty trainer. And since I used to be raised Catholic and all of my academics had been nuns, it made sense that I’d select this drawing of a nun to painting my want to show.

However given what I find out about how the unconscious works, and the truth that this picture has stayed with me so powerfully for near 60 years, I believe that the nun illustration symbolized a want a lot deeper and extra advanced than educating youngsters their ABC’s.

I feel even at that early age I had a reasonably sturdy connection to spirit. Though I’d by no means have articulated it that method. I simply knew that I used to be drawn to one thing magical that simply occurred to be the ways in which non secular vitality was expressed within the tradition I grew up in.

One place that this non secular vitality was powerfully expressed was contained in the partitions of The Immaculate Coronary heart Of Mary Church, which was the center and soul of the Polish Catholic group and neighborhood that I grew up in. I cherished that church and its unwavering devotion to the Holy Mom. I additionally cherished all of the ceremonial pomp and dazzling grandeur that had been a part of the Catholic liturgical expertise.

And make no mistake. NOBODY does ritual just like the Catholics.

There’s the excessive, extremely dramatic organ music, celestial choir singing, multi layered, lavishly embroidered clergymen robes, splendidly ornate altars and the generally eye watering clouds of fragrant incense. Every part is dripping with symbolism and intense feeling and I commonly discovered myself having altered state experiences throughout Mass when the entire manufacturing was going at a full tilt fever pitch of sound and light-weight and scent and colour and emotion.

Once more, I didn’t title what I felt as non secular at that younger age… I simply knew that I felt issues very powerfully throughout many of those ritualized experiences. Wanting again on it I feel I used to be periodically going right into a sort of ecstatic trance state. And naturally, it was completely authorized as a result of it was occurring in church. So I feel I related being a nun with a few of these heightened, direct experiences of the divine.

I used to be additionally actually drawn to the devotional and repair points of being a nun. I wished to give up myself to one thing bigger than me… to be of service to some imaginative and prescient of larger goodness. I wished to be near the sacred and being a nun seemed like a good way to get there.

After I found the artistic course of, I used to be completely shocked to seek out one other method again into that ecstatic expertise. Which is what saved bringing me again to creating artwork, again and again. I used to be by no means actually all that fascinated with creating work or different artwork kinds as one thing I’d preserve, or show or promote.

What completely compelled me was that the expertise of making allowed me entrance into the holy of holies of divine vitality flooding my physique, coronary heart and spirit with pleasure and bliss and aliveness and a way of transcendent enlargement into one thing a lot larger than myself.

And that was value a lot extra to me than even essentially the most stunning completed product.

Creating areas the place I might information others into that very same heightened state of reverent devotion fulfilled that have to be of service. It was like creating my very own church each time I constructed an artwork studio. Every studio grew to become a portal and an altar into this potent expertise of communing with the cosmic energies of creation. And I’ve devoted myself wholeheartedly to the predictable miracle of the artistic course of as my faith for many of my grownup life.

So in that method you could possibly say that I’ve been initiated into the Order Of Liberated Inventive Expression and have fulfilled my dream of changing into each a nun and a trainer. Every circle I facilitate is a gathering of artistic souls and every portray is a prayer. I even burn incense earlier than my workshops.

And though I’ve nice respect for nuns, I wouldn’t be caught lifeless carrying a wimple. It will intrude an excessive amount of with my have to adorn myself with my turquoise jewellery assortment.

However I can by no means get an excessive amount of of that have of communing with the divine through the numinous act of placing colour, form and picture on paper. And main folks by that mystic portal to regain reference to their very own sacred artistic supply.

So in case you are able to reclaim your mystical artist self and feed your artistic soul, this class simply could be for you.