Creative Madness

 My creative collage for the activity this week is titled "A Strange Path to Revelation" and I want to follow the creation of it using Golibersuch's  five stages of integrating spiritual emergency outlined on page 7 of the Visionary Art Therapy paper by Gupta. 

    For the first step, Stabilization, I began to look at my materials and see what I could craft out of them. I ended up creating a collage that depicted a fire divided in half with a bed of water in the center. Floating in the water were various frames with eyes inside of them. I only ended up making one because it took so much time to make it. I had trouble finding inspiration at first. The second stage, Understanding, had me take a step back to analyze what I had made to see what came up. And surprisingly, nothing did. I didn't feel proud of what I made and I had no pride in it. In fact, I was actually really dissatisfied with it. But why? This led me to stage three, Finding Voice. This had me asking "What did I mean by this?" but the question was in vain because I had already known what I meant by it before I put it together. It was supposed to symbolize that you can find peace in chaos depending how you frame the way you look at things. But that felt wrong. I felt almost disgusted with it. It felt phony and performative. Why was that?

      This transistioned into stage four, Communication. I sat and looked at my collage for awhile with this empty and negative feeling to try to understand why I felt this way. I did some automatic writing and asked myself some questions about why I didn't like it. What I realized was that I didn't like it because it wasn't genuine or authentic. I found out I only made it because I felt like that it was expected and required of me. I made something with the knowledge that I would be presenting it to my classmates and I thought it would be in line with what they wanted to hear. It was phony. It was performative. I only made it to "get them off my back" so that I could be left alone and I could continue on with my day. I didn't realize I felt this way, that this is how I was approaching class. As I thought more about, I realized I have been doing this a lot, for a long time. I've just been saying and doing what I thought was expected of me just to get through the day. Been stitching buzzwords together in such a combination so that people won't ask me too many questions or look to deeply into whats been going on with me lately. Because the truth is, things have been hard lately. But I've been too busy to do anything real about it so I've been stuffing it down and ignoring it. And the consequence of that is that my work and my interactions have superficial. Which is unfortunate because I am so lucky to be here in Melson with great people and wonderful classes I've always wanted to take and it feels like I've been taking my short time here for granted.

Stage five, Actualization. I am not sure whats next for me but I do know its worth reflecting on and figuring out. I am going to try to connect with something real. Be more honest. More genuine. Even if its not conveinent with what I am trying to accomplish at the moment. I owe it to myself to be honest about who I am and what I am going through. I want to be oriented towards "love, service, and connection with everyone and everything." (p. 7)

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