Archive for the ‘creative imagination’ Category

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Trump as the Shakespearean Fool

Friday, February 26th, 2016

Shakespeare loved inserting the character of a fool into his theatre, as a way of being entertaining and pointing out bluntly certain truths that other characters of higher standing wouldn’t reveal. His fool was usually a clever peasant who used his wits and spoke outside the codes of morality. Not believers in the supernatural, Shakespearean fools had no idealogy or regard for appearances, or for law, order or justice.

Doesn’t it sound like Donald Trump?

Since the function of the Shakespearean fool was to wake people up, I keep hoping that Trump is among us simply for that. The way that he presents himself and the things he says are so utterly grotesque that one advantage is he makes it clear what we don’t want.

Contrast seems to be a necessary force on this human plane. We seem to need to know what we do not want in order to know what we really desire. And so maybe Trump plays an important role, in that he reminds us how much we do not want a country ruled by prejudice, mysogeny, brute force and disregard for the tenderness of the human heart.

If the great playwright in the sky placed him here for the sake of contrast, then time is growing short for us to stop snoring in our theatre seats. We need to wake up to the real dangers this particular jester poses.

First, the Shakespearean fool does not see how ridiculous he is. Unlike a comic who is doing a routine, he is serious. In this case, that is scary.

Secondly, people are falling for this stuff. Everyone loves to watch a clown, but who wants one for President of the United States? I hope both Republicans and Democrats think about this.

Thirdly, the man is using his wits. So far, he is able to live up to his name. He has trumped the pundits and kept on gathering steam, even while chalking up more and more hideous statements. In our culture, we may have reached a new low where entertainment actually trumps the dreams of our forefathers. Where is liberty, freedom and justice? “Winning” seems to trump these.

Before she died, my mother said through her morphine fog that “It’s all a play, and we are just playing our parts.” Let’s remember what part Donald Trump is playing and take a look at what we want to happen in the last act. Please.

My friend Richard Kimball, founder of Project Vote Smart (http://www.votesmart.org) recently wrote a letter in which he cited some depressing studies showing that candidates who lie most outrageously capture headlines and get the highest poll numbers.

To make it worse, other studies showed that people rarely change their minds when confronted by facts, and that they’d rather listen to a politician who will tell them whom to hate than one who tells them the truth.

Now that is not funny.

If you were in the audience watching a play about this, what would you hope the most powerful characters would do? Will they wake up? Will they act in behalf of the greater good? Or will they be trumped by the fool, who will end up with a crown on his head?

 

This post has also been sent to Huffington Post and can be seen at http://www.huffingtonpost.com/pamela-hale/.

 

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Posted in authenticity, caring for the earth, consciousness, creative imagination, heart-centered leadership, The Sacred Masculine | 5 Comments »

What Kids Taught Me about the Active Imagination

Thursday, May 16th, 2013

 

Since I was in love with photography, I wanted everyone else to be as well (nothing like the fervor of the converted.) So,I decided to teach small group photography classes in my living room.

Right away, it was clear to me that I raced through the part about f-stops and dove into explorations about light, the energetic nature of matter, and the spiritual elements of photography. After listening to me for one lesson, an adult student approached me and said she thought her son should study with me.

Billy was learning disabled, though in those days there was no label for that. Frustrated by school and in need of a success experience, Billy would “get’ the right-brained way I taught photography. Would I give him lessons?

I had another close friend with a daughter Mary, who was also having learning problems. So for $5 an hour, I worked with the two of them every week for 1 ½ years.  As a former classroom teacher, I had already formed a strong curiosity about why certain kids weren’t learning. Now I was studying all I could find about the new discoveries about the right and left brain. I felt I was being led on a treasure hunt.

The exercises I designed for Billy and Mary became the basis of curricula I would design and teach in both public and private schools. As an artist-in-residence for the South Pasadena, CA school district, I had the privilege of doing a photography project with 60 5th graders. It was called “Seen one Rock, Seen ‘Em All,”( a brazen slam at Ronald Reagan, who had made that comment about national parks.)

I gave each student a rock, and led them through a guided imagery exercise where they allowed their active imagination to play with the inner picture of that rock, allowing it to become part of a larger scene and story. I had them draw the scene and write the story.

Now the fun began. Their next challenge was to figure out how to make a photograph of that drawing, using the rock and other objects. “That’s not fair!” some of them began to protest. “You didn’t tell us we’d have to make this into a photograph! I wouldn’t have thought of something this complicated if I had known!” said one.

The student, Jack, showed me a drawing of a rock that had become an island surrounded by water, topped with trees, and blown by a strong wind causing big waves. “How am I going to do this?” he said as if it were obviously impossible.

It was a class in problem-solving, so I hinted that he might think of movie sets and dioramas. I teamed the kids up and gave them a week until the day we’d set up a simple photo studio and make the photographs, which they would then print themselves later in the studio I had now rented.

The photo above is an example of the student work, which became a school exhibit. Anna “saw’ her rock (at the top of this article) ‘turn into” her ballet slipper, well-worn from all her attempts to make it into a toe shoe, successfully poised on top of the rock it resembled. The hardness of the rock matched her hard work. The beauty of the shape matched the beauty she captured in her treasured slipper. Beautiful, I thought, and a deep message about how important dance was to Anna.

As for Jack, I couldn’t wait to see how my biggest protester would solve his problem. And so I grinned proudly when, on the day of our shoot, he walked in  with his partner, holding a plastic tub he would fill with water, tiny trees he’d made of paper, and a hair dryer.

Seen one rock, seen ’em all? Sorry, Reagan. I don’t see them that way. And neither do kids, who can see more than we think, when we give them a chance to keep their imaginations alive.

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Posted in bringing out your gifts, children as teachers, creative imagination, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, Guided imagery, Imagination, nature as mirror, Photography, seeing oneself, shifting paradigms | 9 Comments »

The creative wellspring

Tuesday, April 23rd, 2013

 

When I was about 30, I entered therapy, thinking that what I wanted was a better marriage, but unconsciously beginning a long journey into becoming more of my real self. I wanted wholeness, the real meaning of the word “healing.”

During that same period, I bought my first 35mm camera and began taking pictures of my two adorable daughters. And then, photographing in a much more serious way. A symbolic way.

One of my photos was of a cutting from a houseplant  The photo was of slender roots emerging into the water contained in a Mason jar.

 I made a print of my photo and gave it to my therapist, explaining that it was a self-portrait. I was like that cutting now—severed from my past and growing my own tentative versions of new roots. When I finished therapy years later, I gave my therapist a tree! I had grown, and now identified as not just the tree, but also a bird whose nest was in the tree. I could fly and also had a safe home. (And, I later wrote Flying Lessons!)

All of this was expressed best by my creative self, who also took up the guitar, filled numerous journals with bad poetry, and played the piano and sang sad old standards. She (that creative self) had come out of the closet, and the observer in me wondered why the explosion of self-expression.

Along with that creativity came a flood of sexuality (I’ve always been a late bloomer) and a deep dive into spirituality. I began to ask myself, “Do creativity, sexuality and spirituality all emerge from the same wellspring?”  And, “What is their connection to my healing journey?”

I’ve had plenty of opportunities to pursue those questions as a writer, photographer and two-time breast cancer survivor. And, I’ve watched many clients now over the years. And here’s what I think:

1.     Creativity, sexuality and spirituality are all forms of the Life Force, and so they do all emerge from a deep wellspring within us, and within the Universe as a whole.

2.     Healing happens from a deeper place than the mind, which understands little of the Creation and its miracles.

3.     When we begin to heal, Life Force is released, and we can’t help wanting to express the joys and sorrows we experience when that happens.

 

4.     When we express ourselves in any creative form, the life force has a place to be seen, appreciated and anchored in our system.

5.     And so, creativity begets more healing. It’s a positive cycle

So here’s the takeaway for you:

1.     What form of creativity is YOU, right now? Remember, it doesn’t have to be art. Cooking, gardening, decorating, creating something beautiful…these are creative acts.

2.     What does it feel like in your body when the life force is moving through you? Call on that feeling and trust that it is healing you in every way.

3.  What if you trusted that just giving yourself time to create might heal all that does not feel well or whole or right within you?

Even if you’re in a period of your life where you feel cut off from your self or your past, you may be growing the roots of a great tree. See if you can trust the life force within you to show you the way.

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Posted in bringing out your gifts, creative imagination, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, healing, nourishing ourselves, Photography, self-healing, shifting how we see, Tools for seeing ourselves | 1 Comment »

Out of the Dark Room

Wednesday, March 20th, 2013

The first photo I ever printed in a darkroom was at summer camp in the 7th grade. The photo was of a girl  pouring a bucket of water over another girl’s head. Hilarious, right? (Remember 7th grade humor?)

My career as a comedienne ceased abruptly, but I would return to photography as my passion and art form. In college I studied in France and returned with eight boxes of slides. Remember slides? Eight rolls doesn’t seem like much for six months nowadays, but they were enough to hook me for life.

In my ‘20’s when I had children, I knew I wanted to take good pictures of them. Serendipity struck when my husband bought a used Nikkormat (another historical reference) from a friend. Just at the time when I needed to learn what an f-stop was, I won a raffle at a local arts center. The prize was a photography course.

I was in love. The teacher held class at her house, which was full of pillows and padded sculptures covered in fabric that had been silk screened with black and white photos. It had never occurred to me that photography was an art.

I took every course my community college offered. I learned how to lock myself in my closet at home so I could take exposed film out of the camera and load it into a developing tank. I studied the masters, determined to become one.

I had a darkroom in each house. When the kids were little, I set an enlarger up in the garage or the laundry room at night. When we moved to a house with a basement, I could leave everything in place. The family got used to my disappearing down the stairs to do magic with only an amber light on.

Maybe what finally drove me to rent a studio was my habit of leaving bottles of developing solution on the kitchen counter next to the olive oil. It became evident that I needed some separation between my growing profession and my personal life.

In this blog I’m going to share some of the things that developed in my darkrooms and in others I set up in schools, in my studio, and in my head, where I processed images from my active imagination. Images, I found, had power. And I had power to create them. Which meant I had power to see things…through a different lens.

That was the adventure. And it still is. I want to share with you what seeing differently has meant to me and to those I’ve worked with—and how photography led me into healing work and eventually on to the shamanic path. It’s really about creativity, and how that part of us is hooked up to the Exit sign in those dark rooms we inhabit sometimes. Creativity can get us out—into the light.

Stay tuned.

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Posted in creative imagination, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, Imagination, Photography, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves | 8 Comments »

What does my wild heart desire? #1

Wednesday, January 30th, 2013

This is the first of a series of blogs where I’m going to share some techniques I’ve developed for looking deeply within, using the lens of our creative inner eye. I’ll pose a question that I want to explore and share with you, and then present that question using several different processes.

The first question is, what does my wild heart desire?  By my wild heart, I mean the part of my heart that has not been domesticated or tamed by others, by my own traumas and wounds or by the wounds and expectations of the culture. This heart has not been conquered; it is indigenous, in close relationship with the earth and nature and the heavens. It is wild.

The first process is to use the core concept developed by The Painting Experience (processarts.com) to make a painting by feel. That is, I pose the question before a blank paper and my palette, which only has the primary colors, for simplicity. I clear my mind of thoughts as much as possible.

What color wants to go onto the paper? First, it is blue. So I paint blue wherever it wants to go on the paper until that feels finished. Next, I want to make a green of different strengths, so I mix my blue with some yellow and paint until the energy for expressing green quiets. Now I want a bit of red, and then a lot of yellow. And then I feel finished. This painting only takes me minutes, though I have done many that become more complex.

Now I leave the Painting Experience behind, because they do not analyze or name part of the painting. I will involve my left brain and my right to see what message or information I can get from my painting.

What does the blue feel like? And how does the feeling relate to a part of me?

Blue feels like my beloved ocean, like waves, like the part of me that is fluid, flexible, deep, clear and free.

And the green?

Like rolling hills, a beautifully carpeted, lush surface on Mother Earth that supports all life here. The part of me that is both solid, grounded, earthy, and graceful.

The red is like drops of blood, like the life blood that is both from wounds and passion that punctuates and sustains life here on earth.

The yellow is sunlight, the energy of warmth that sustains life and moves through every part of it. My wild heart wants a warm, lively connection with me and with my journey.

Feeling into the painting, is there more I want to add?

I want to finish with some blue dots in the upper left hand corner that feel like stars, a portal into the unknown Universe of which I am a part.

And so I ask the painting as a whole: What does my wild heart desire?

My wild heart wants freedom, flow, beauty, pulsating life, a connection to the sun and stars and to water and ground—to All That Is. Including a warm, lively connection with me and my journey!

And so what if I made those qualities of experience the benchmarks for success? What if success in my life were to mean pleasing my one wild heart?  Hmmm.

And what would that mean for you? I look forward to your comments!

 

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Posted in bringing out your gifts, creative imagination, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, Guided imagery, healing, Imagination, inner landscape, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized | No Comments »

Re-defining Power

Monday, November 19th, 2012

flower power

What is your relationship to power?

Last time I sat in sacred circle with my Advanced Flying Lessons group, I marveled at the experience we had when we asked the spirits of the universe to help us step into authentic power.

World events continue to teach us all–regardless of political persuasion– about some types of power we just can’t afford any more. For instance, exerting power to manipulate or force or restrict another unjustly is an old form that just doesn’t work well any more. Being conscious of what we don’t want to do opens a space for us to re-define power.

Our group agreed that the old forms of power in the outer world are mostly based on fear. And we all were ready to let go of those in favor of the kind of inner power that is sourced in love, truth and joy.

And so, we journeyed together and experienced the natural power that resides in us all. Like a seed, this power that is borne within us can grow and flower and create new life. It can produce fruit and blossoms that nourish others. It can heal old wounds. It can change the world. It can fuel lives that are more meaningful than any generation’s lives have been.

This is the moment, and we are the ones.

And so, we want to nourish this seed within us. What will be our fuel? What is the premium fuel that works for you? Flying Lesson #2–Bring Enough Fuel for the Journey–is all about this exploration.

I invite you to put your hand over your second chakra on your abdomen. Imagine a seed of power there that is alive, dynamic and growing already. When you contact the life force, the power of love and purpose within you, you bring it alive. It wants to be seen. Feel the energy of it–that is a way of “seeing” it. Whenever you do this, it becomes more visible and practical in your life.

If you can trust that you already have all the power you need within you, and if you can trust that your power is not only sufficient but good, then you can let go of fear.

“Allelulia!” as one participant in our group said. Time for Thanksgiving.

May you feel the gratitude and power within you at this holiday time.

with Love and Light,

Pam

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Posted in bringing out your gifts, coaching, conscious evolution, consciousness, creative imagination, creativity and empowerment, divine feminine, Flying, Guided imagery, healing, Imagination, nourishing ourselves, returning to essence, seeing oneself, self image, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, Tools for seeing ourselves | 3 Comments »

All Saints and All Souls Day: Making Friends with Death

Wednesday, October 31st, 2012

First, a bit of history about Halloween, All Saints Day and All Souls Day.

This time of year was known as Samhain by the Celts, meaning “summer’s end,” and named for the lord of death who allowed souls who had died to return to earth on Nov. 1. Some who had been harmed during their lives returned as ghosts, witches, goblins and elves and haunted their living persecutors. Cats were considered sacred because they had been humans and were changed into cats as a punishment for misdeeds. To protect against these scary spirits, on the eve of Samhain, people put out their hearth fires and the Druids (priests) built a huge bonfire of sacred oak, offering sacrifices of crops, animals and some say even humans, telling fortunes of coming year by divining the ashes and remains. People wore costumes of animal heads and skins. They took fire from bonfire to light their hearths again.

Local traditions developed from there. The Irish held a parade, following a leader dressed in a robe with a mask head of an animal, and begged for food. And, they started the jack-o’lantern. Someone named Jack couldn’t enter heaven because he was a miser, and couldn’t enter hell because he had played practical jokes on the devil; so he had to walk the earth with his lantern until Judgment Day.

Later, after the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43, an autumn festival honored Pomona, the goddess of fruits and trees, connecting the apple with the celebrations, which were combined with Samhain.Christianity brought in All Saints Day on Nov. 1, honoring those who had entered heaven. Some of the pagan celebrations for All Hallows Eve remained, and took new forms.

During the Middle Ages the belief arose that it was the souls in purgatory who appeared on All Souls Day as witches, toads, goblins, etc. to people who had wronged them. This began the custom of feeding, honoring and appeasing the spirits. In addition, celebrations for the Feast of All Souls began in the early days of the church, for those departed who were in purgatory, hoping for entry into heaven. These celebrations have evolved in Mexico where graves are decorated on the morning of All Souls, Nov. 2. In Louisiana, relatives whitewash and clean tombstones and decorate them with garlands, wreaths, crosses and flowers.

If one of these traditions is part of your custom, then you have your own meaning associated with this time of year when the veils between worlds is thin. If not, what can we make of all this?

Well, I see it as an opportunity to make friends with death. First, we can remember our loved ones who have passed by creating our own ceremonies: telling stories, making altars, visiting their graves, or just by lighting a candle. We’re not only honoring them, we’re bringing the seen and unseen worlds closer together—not just for the spirits, but for ourselves.

Death is such a taboo subject in our American culture. Other cultures have fun with this time of year, and take it seriously at the same time. In Mexico, lots of cooking and preparations are happening right now, to honor those who live on in our hearts. Humor, whimsy, music and creativity are all part of the recognition of the part death plays in all of our lives.

In Tibet, it’s customary to begin preparing in midlife for one’s death. In yoga, we end our asana practice with savasana, the “corpse pose,” where we let go and allow our thoughts and our illusions of control to “die.”  When we sleep we let our day “die,” and hopefully our troubles too. We enter the land of the dark, closing our eyes to the seen world, and entering another world we only partly see in dreams.

In the morning, we don’t remember all of where we’ve been, just as we don’t consciously remember being in the spirit world while we’re on earth. Day and night, dark and light, life and death are the yin and yang of our reality.

In the shamanic tradition, we say that we don’t want death “stalking” us, which happens when we live in fear of it. So we make friends with it, knowing that we are, at our essence, eternal. Though we may have fears of dying, we live “beyond” our fear, because we know that our spirit will journey on when it leaves the body. This time of year is an opportunity to imagine that journey and to celebrate those who are on it.

May you find that the thinness of the veil brings you blessings this year.

 

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Posted in All Saints and All Souls Day, creative imagination, Creativity, death and new life, Dreams, Imagination, inner landscape, Making friends with death, shifting how we see | 23 Comments »

Creating Beauty as a Safe Landing Space

Tuesday, October 9th, 2012

It’s so easy and delicious for me to sink onto a place of beauty in nature and feel safe in that “All Is One” feeling. Next to ocean, or stream, or wind through the pines I am reminded of the life force that courses through all things. I am in my safe landing space at those times.

And then we know there are other moments. Moments that suck. Moments that are almost intolerable. Moments when we don’t want to be here. Moments when we feel like life must be against us. These moments do not feel like safe landing spaces.

So what to do? Especially since those ‘other moments” are when we need a safe landing space the very most.

Well, I say we create beauty. We must.

I love to talk about Victor Frankl, because he is the most extreme example I can come up with of a human who could create beauty out of the most meager ingredients. A concentration camp survivor whose whole family was exterminated, he credited his survival to his decision to find meaning in every day.

If he could do that in those circumstances, surely I can do it in mine.

But how, in those moments of despair, frustration, fear, or anger do we create beauty? There is a lot of ugliness in the world, after all.

I think it’s a choice. About how to see.  Without being a Polyanna, without denying, we can choose to see beauty.

I can choose to find the beauty in an ordinary task like peeling a vegetable that God made, or even cleaning a toilet I’m lucky to have. I can choose to find beauty in weeding a garden where I’m making room for new life. I can choose to seek out the beauty that accompanies some of the worst tragedies, where in the midst of great loss there is some moment of exquisite love. I can choose to not be blind, but just to see “through a different lens.”

Maybe this is part of our work on earth. At least it makes our journey here more lovely.

Do it for you. Create beauty just to make your day better.

Do it for someone else. See if that doesn’t make your day better too.

See if when you create beauty, it doesn’t make you feel safe somehow. Safe in the fact that you are a creator. Safe in the fact that there is beauty in the first place. Safe in the fact that creating beauty is a well-worn path. A sacred one. One which has eternity in it.

Ah, now you have landed. In a beautiful place. On solid ground.

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Posted in aviation, coaching, conscious evolution, consciousness, creative imagination, creativity and empowerment, Flying, happiness, healing, Imagination, nature as mirror, Photography, seeing oneself, shifting how we see, spiritual practices, The Beauty Path, Tools for seeing ourselves | 5 Comments »

The soul bird

Sunday, February 26th, 2012

“The soul-bird is waiting inside. Even if you have locked it in a cage, it is waiting to fly.”
from Flying Lesson #4

Lesson #4 contains a key moment, when you as a participant in the story, or the coaching or the retreat process, realize that there is indeed a soul-bird inside you who is longing to fly, and who was born to fly and knows how.

Next you realize that as a normal human, you have protected this soul-bird by building a cage around it, and have spent a lot of life strengthening and polishing the cage. At some point you may have forgotten that you actually ARE the soul-bird. You may have forgotten to the degree that you thought you were the cage.

But, no blame. This was just a mistake, not anything unchangeable. You’re right on time. It was just part of your development to concentrate on the cage. Now you are called to do and be something different.

Here’s the good news: Since you constructed the cage, you are the one who can open the door.

Now is the moment of choice.

Can you trust that little soul-bird to do what it came here to do? What adventure will it embark on when it spreads its wings?

This is what you’ve longed to do and be.

Open the door.

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Posted in aviation, Being, bringing out your gifts, coaching, conscious evolution, consciousness, creative imagination, creativity and empowerment, Flying, Guided imagery, loving ourselves, new life, nourishing ourselves, Photography, returning to essence, seeing oneself, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, Tools for seeing ourselves, Uncategorized | No Comments »

The Story of the Sand Spirits

Wednesday, October 5th, 2011

I walk along the Pacific coast of the Baja peninsula. The stones at my feet are thrown across the sand like a random galaxy, and I connect their dots, picking out constellations. As the tide encroaches, waves wash up stones and other objects. Suddenly, I have company—a mystical sand woman! Her head is a glowing coral stone that seems to contain her facial features. Streaks of iron filings paint an aura around her head and give her a clear neck, shoulders and gown. She silently declares to me that she is a sand spirit, a form here for a fleeting moment.

I photograph these forms for four days, not touching anything. Back at home, I am delighted with the images, but still have no idea what I’m going to do with them. Two weeks later, I go in for a routine mammogram and am diagnosed with breast cancer. The rest of the story is about how the Sand Spirits become part of my healing journey and eventually part of others’ journeys as well.

I invite you to explore using the Sand Spirits in your own personal life, to activate the ocean of wisdom inside you! They will help you find your purpose and passion, help solve practical problems, facilitate deeper communication and bring out the healer within.

On Saturday, October 8, you can set aside 6 hours just for you and give yourself the gift of working with a tool that will show you how to move ahead in any area of your life and evolution. For information and to register, copy and paste this link into your browser:  http://tinyurl.com/sandspirits.

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Posted in authenticity, bringing out your gifts, consciousness, creative imagination, Creativity, creativity and empowerment, Guided imagery, happiness, healing, health, Imagination, inner landscape, nature as mirror, nourishing ourselves, Photography, Sand Spirit Insight Cards, seeing oneself, self image, self-healing, shifting how we see, shifting paradigms, spiritual practices, Tools for seeing ourselves | No Comments »

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