The Story of Art

The task awaits, has been waiting for some time now, sitting in the corners of her awareness, as she walks in places of uncertainty and hazy vision. Doubt and confusion have clouded her mind, as she has searched in vain for something unknown to her. Feelings and shapes, moods and events have plucked at her awareness, each of them telling their story, and yet the final amalgamation still evades her, slipping away like a dream, remembered fleetingly in all its beauty, and then forgotten, as the wakefulness of day breaks, like an ice cold wave.

And so she is returning, to search once more, to try to find this place, this sense of being, where fire and water become one, where the Eagle and the Lion unite, where they dissolve in the cauldron  death and become one, in their beauty and strength.

Ascending the stairs, she pauses for a moment before the doorway; nothing has changed, and yet everything has changed, and she steps into a world of darkened colours, unable to see very much, but enough to tell that far away, below her, shining and golden she can see a valley that she longs for, amongst the dark mountains. The sun shines there, blessing the fields and the few houses with the magical colours of an old master painting; an idyllic place of rainbows and dew, where all things are possible and life exists outside of time. It seems to her that the valley is a million miles away from her, but at the same time she knows that it is within her reach, for in truth it lays within her very own heart. Looking around, she tries to see if there is anything closer to her, catching two shadowy figures emerging from the periphery of her vision, one dark and uncertain, the other light and golden. Both are rather indistinct in their form, more of an energetic representation than actual figures that she can see, and as they draw closer to her, they give the impression that they are herding her towards something. By the time she is standing at the base of a large cauldron type vessel, it seems clear as to the next step, so climbing over the edge, she lowers herself slowly into it, allowing the warm and slightly viscous liquid to flow over her. Relaxing into the welcome warmth of the mysterious vessel, she begins to feel as if parts of her are starting to disappear, and sure enough, one by one, the threads of her life unravel like the windings of a silk moth chrysalis. The sensation of being stretched and unravelled continues, unfurling her into thin wisps of energy, which flutter on the waiting zephyrs to be offered up to the four corners of the earth.

As the water slowly dissolves all that is no longer of use, she feels herself becoming leaner, denser, more concentrated in some way, compressed and hardened and yet more pliable and when the process has finished, she climbs out of the cauldron to find that the two strange figures have gone. Looking down at herself, she finds that she is now made of a polished material that is slightly opaque, like a moonstone, opalescent and shining but flexible at the same time. She feels very powerful in this state, essentially elemental, full of energy and potential, and as she walks out into the landscape she finds it brimming with beauty.

Ancient trees stand in open grassland and the sun shines with a gentleness that soothes her soul; she has arrived in the valley that she saw first from the dark mountain top, the valley of possibility and perfection. Finding a suitable space, she lies down in the warm grass and looks up at the blue skies above. A prickling sensation begins in her back, and strong roots begin to push down into the ground, burrowing deeply into the dark earth, reaching persistently into the rich soil and the bounty there. As the roots make their way down, she also begins to feel a sensation in her chest, and sees that shoots are beginning to emerge from her heart. Reaching for the light, they sprout up into the sun filled, airy sky, and she recognises that the darkness of the earth is needed to support the light, and that these two places are contained within her and that each serves their own purpose.

Strongly rooted in the darkness and richness of the earth, her creative yearning reaches into the light, thrusting its branches ever upwards to balance the roots that push ever down. From Fire and Water, she has grown into Earth and Air, and she has created life; she is the sum of her parts, and not her parts, but a whole created from them. Within death, she has found new life, the building blocks that she needs in order to start again, in a new way.

You are a work in progress, where old forms are in the process of breaking down, prompting you to rebuild on an internal level. There is often a ‘spiritual awakening’ of some sort that accompanies this profound change, and from a place of purity and strength when all the dross has been stripped away, and where death and life exist simultaneously, a fresh understanding of your experiences is found.