Episode 26: The Shift

Oct 11, 2016

In this episode, Stewart Cubley shares recent workshop experiences that illustrate the powerful shift that can occur when we let go of our planning mind and allow a deeper creative force to guide our hand.

An excerpt from The Shift . . .

The shift that can occur in the painting process takes many different forms, but it’s often going to announce itself through blockage, through a sense of wanting to quit, of wanting to abandon what we’re doing or feeling that we’re doing something wrong. Once you recognize this, you begin to be suspicious of the voices that want you to give up. You say, “Ah! Wait a minute. Here’s the meeting. What’s really being asked of me is to be vulnerable here. What’s really being asked of me is to be undefended, not to use my habitual strategies of avoidance — to be willing to be present with this deep quality of not knowing and being a little lost.” Isn’t this what’s required of the creative act itself? That we be that vulnerable, that we be that fresh, that we don’t have some sort of rote technique to get over this difficult moment?

It’s not like we’re going to get over the need to have this meeting. Sometimes people say to me, “You know, I’ve been process painting for a long time. How come I still get to this place? How come I still get stuck?” Thank God you still get stuck; thank God you are still challenged. That this process still has the teeth to challenge you and bring you to a place of openness and availability where you don’t have the ability to manage your experience any longer. We still have to let go and we have to let go in a new way each time. We have to reach deeply into our own being and find a fresh way to respond to the situation. Then there’s a moment of recognizing how much we need that. There’s a deep thirst for that awakening in us and there’s a deep thirst for that awakening in the world as well.

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