Your art feels dead because you're not actually feeling, or, all art is erotic

Body Scan | The Flow

Your physical body is a channel of creative life energy. It is also saturated — composed of — consciousness — the intelligence of life, often personified as Shiva.

Wherever you are open, you are also flowing with this life energy, which is exactly the same as erotic energy, Shakti, or eros.

Eros is also permeated with consciousness that, if you so allow, will pour through you into art.

This is the basic structure of the idea of co-creation we often see.

You, a channel, a being of divine intelligence (not just a vessel the divine is flowing through, but divine in yourself), dancing with the invisible; with eros that is disembodied — without visible form — until you use your creative powers to work with it and create something new (which could be a new you!)

Creative powers. What, actually, are they?

Mainly: awareness, focus, and feeling. Of course there are the questions of skill, craft, knowing the principles, etc — but these are a result of awareness, focus and feeling.

What is awareness? A state of nonjudgemental observation, and the nature of the Self (also: Shiva/consciousness)

What is focus? The ability to concentrate awareness in a particular direction, like shining a spotlight on a particular thoughtform, or pouring a particular feeling through a straw and into paint.

What is feeling? Awareness of sensation.

What is sensation? A movement of creative energy (eros/shakti) that manifests as an emergence of change in consciousness. Eros operates as a flowing wave, rising and falling in different shapes, textures, densities, patterns, like actual waves in the ocean. However, when don’t let sensations roll through us (which often happens when we associate them with emotions we perceive as undesirable), they tend to first spiral into our heads (you know, when you just can’t stop thinking about how fucking angry you are with that person) and eventually burrow into our nervous systems, fascia, bones, and tissues, where they remain until we process and release them, which is the main purposs of today’s practice.

So what does all this mean about making art?

Glad you asked.

Eros works in a flow, so when we have built up, unfelt eros we in our systems, it eventually calcifies and constricts the channel, often presenting as pain or numbness. Eventually the would-be the gushing river slows to a dripping faucet. In other words, you become unable to access infinitudes of creative magic wanting to hum their way through you.

The way to dislodge what’s stuck is to first create awareness of it through focused attention, then feel your way into it through breathing, moving, and sounding; this simple process opens the body and allows that energy to move through, clearing the way for eros to flow once again!

This week’s practice is a simple body scan that you can return to whenever you notice the river has halted to a trickle, but also a good practice to keep in your regular rotation, you know, so you don’t get to the point where you feel like a thousand pound sack of bricks.

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