I recently wrote about having dysthymia, a mild form of depression and InterPlay as medicinal in that regard. I’ve felt unexplainably crappy and needed to evaluate where I needed support. Two specific  ideas popped up

• Move Your Muscles
• Paint

I hate to exercise but enjoy moving. On the weekend I moved living room furniture and cleaned my deck. Monday I danced with Wint It! That helped!

Then, I dropped in at Chris Zydell’s Wild Heart Painting studio, where I’d gone last winter in the midst of a big pruning of attachments to mom, safety, and income. Four sessions of “process painting” offered insights, emotional connections, and a ritualized container to update my view of who I am. As a visual thinker this was powerful.

In the studio this week after a brief check in with Chris and the other painters, I selected a palette of black and gold and green and began painting images of my guiding metaphors. As I painted a black hole arose in the corner, a dark moody fish diving among life’s darker truths. I honestly feel fond of this ability.

At bedtime I reached for The Biology of Transcendence by Joseph Chilton Pearce, a master teacher and proponent of play, nurture, transcendence, and evolution, stuff I root for. I forgot how much I underlined in his book.

In the AM I picked it up again and read that fear and anxiety necessarily prune our brain back toward basic survival thinking when the times are too difficult to allow us to evolve. On the other hand did I, by painting, allow my brain  to evolve rather than stay back in the survival mode.

I fear the shame of failing at my dreams and yet I dream big, ridiculously counter cultural dreams, like “lets get dance and the protestant work ethic together” and lets put the body back in wisdom.

I deny shame. I must have an inner Atilla the Hun against anything that impedes my relationship with the divine, creativity or nurture. It’s outright refusal. But this refusal has become a problem. I expend psychic energy that I need to create. What if I could loosen my grip on refusing shame?

I tried it out. My legs, achey from climbing steep hills of effort, felt a tingling flow of energy. Wow. Have I been fighting shame for eons?

Fear of Shame

i have refused
your cold wand, hot pyre, wax heart
your giant loppers and wet blankets smothering dreams
i have refused
your roadside spit, office glare, juried sentencing heart turned sideways, arms crossed.
But today shame is no bastard,
she’s a birthchild along with fatigue, frustration, hate,
mine to care for and hold lightly.
I relax and feel free.