By Jayita Bhattacharjee
Art has come into existence for survival reasons. Art takes diverse forms like painting, fiction, non-fiction, poetry, prose. Each one becomes a journey of exploration as through art, and we explore ourselves, our head, mind, heart, and soul. We play with a plethora of feelings, those we never thought existed. Each form of art acts as a stimulus.
Through art, we make sense of what we go through, and in the process, we begin to understand ourselves. When life throws sudden surprises and humans grapple, it’s then that we find difficulty in feeling the ground beneath our feet. But through the creation of diverse artistic activities, our emotions get transformed into intelligence and depression gets transformed into contentment. It’s then that art becomes a pathway to explore in-depth psychology. We navigate the deeper terrains of mind through the painting brush, the pen, the verses, the rhythm, the plot, and the weaving. As we make the art, we make ourselves. From this perspective, the creation of art becomes a whole new creation of ourselves. It reveals the psyche, and therefore the art-making process becomes revelatory. From the conflicting, confusing stage of mind, we gradually proceed towards emotional intelligence, aka psychological knowledge. The entire process is spontaneously transformative. As it transforms us, every step unfolds with surprise.
We are stuck with a new light, the light of transformation. What remained previously unseen now becomes visible. From guilt and self- blame, we arise to self -appreciation. We dig the hidden depths and travel to the unnoticed areas inside us. The unobtrusive areas of our minds now become prominent and pronounced. How do we achieve this in-depth revelation?
We refrain from using an analogy. Rather, we learn to focus on the immediate things right here, symbolized by the present moment. Art takes us away from the past and future and leads us gently to the moment we have now. Doing so, we gradually shift our focus from what happened in the past to what we have in the present. It instructs us to fixate our minds to reality with awareness, spontaneity, and imagination.
Through art, we experience an expansion of our imagination as there is an integration that occurs. We integrate the seen and unseen, the happenings of inside and outside of conscious thinking. There is a binding of the two extremities, and naturally, a coherence is formed between the visible and invisible, the surface, and the depth. They are rolled into one integrated whole. Arts become a communication platform between the conscious and illusory, seen and unseen. Through creative activities, we access to the deep-seated wisdom and complexity. In the process, the more we go through the complexity of emotions, their conflicting nature, things get clarified in a new light, the light of art. This is where artistry begins. We become expressive, and through continual expression, intelligence finds its words. As we travel deep inside, we find many conflicting emotions interact with one another. Some are subjective, and some are objective, biased, and unbiased. But as the brush continues to paint the portrait, the hand continues to hold the pen, the exquisite artistry begins. The conflicting interaction finds a pathway to serenity as there is communication between the extremities. A correspondence develops. We break through biased personal thinking, and the unbiased takes its place. We escape through art the biased opinions and step into the unbiased.
Art becomes the vehicle for our most profound expressions, our agonizing needs. As we transition from agony to ecstasy through art, a calmness descends upon the minds. The grip of subjectivity loses its hold as we proceed towards objectivity. The veil is lifted, and we see the light of freedom, slowly but steadily. As we are propelled to express ourselves through art, subconsciously, we are allowing ourselves to be cleansed, or else we would be confined to the prison walls. We would be prisoners of mind. Art sets us free, allowing ourselves to indulge in freedom again, to taste this life the way it comes. The suffering soul is no longer an enchained prisoner, rather a living, breathing man in the true sense of the word. We etch our pain into art. We paint our brokenness into a painting, poetry, a story of all times. Wrapped with emotions incomprehensible to us, the process of creativity enlightens us. We rise as enlightened beings. Art becomes the vehicle of alchemy.
Art resolves the conflict between our thinking and feeling. We grow skyward as we get anchored downward, deep inside the soil. As our roots travel further and further deep down, we branch and expand skyward. The development happens, the more we are anchored. As the weight of pain, loss, betrayal is taken off our chests, we feel weightless. This transformation comes through art-making. Beautiful is the process, as it brings beauty to every step. Art then becomes a journey of exploration. Whom do we explore in the process? Ourselves. The enigmatic beauty of us, the mystery that fascinates us, the perplexity of psychological build-up, gradually begins to break. The fog clears as the brush paints our passions, the pen writes our needs, the poem talks about our afflictions, and the verses narrate our grief. Who do we become in the process? We become the carriers of light. The energy is transformed from challenging situations to creativity. We become resilient, instead of being fixated on our problems. The artistry contributes to the build-up of resilience. We become psychologically, intelligent people. Artistry induces emotional intelligence deep inside us.
While creating a piece of art, we are facing a transpersonal state of consciousness. While engaged in this, we transcend our personal identities and rise from an individual to collective consciousness. In an integratingmanner, we arise as transformed beings, the transformation being gently induced in so many ways. Our conflicting emotions completely dissolve in the light. Being immersed in art helps us in reaching normalcy when we are struggling deep inside.
Art has a plethora of roles. There is a relationship between analytical psychology and art, the ability of art to help in focusing on the present moment, on the here and now. While we are engaged in art-making, we can identify emotional responses while immersed in its making. We recognize the connections between those responses and awareness. We gain a perception of where we are and who we are, as we are centralized in the art-making. With the perceptions, we give recognition and validation to our emotions. This very act of recognition becomes central to the journey of healing. Healing is a long walk, but the first step to this walk is the allowance and acceptance of these emotions. The detection of those emotional responses leads to an understanding and recognizance. In the process, a self- perception develops.
While we create art, through the process of art-making, we develop personal integration. Through expressive art, we express our experiences, trauma, loss, betrayal, agony, and we develop our own identity and a self- image. What was in a haze, now gets the clarity. The investigation of feelings and thoughts brings emotions into visibility. Besides, conflicting emotions are combined. They are brought together incoherence, which cannot be achieved with words alone. So again, we give the recognition of confliction emotions to exist side by side inside us. Therefore, we learn to balance those emotions as we regulate them. Thus, we achieve freedom from emotions that build up negative energy. So, art creation offers a room where we observe and play with responses arising from difficult emotions. We identify, analyze, and finally regulate them in a space offered by the art. We are not confined or restricted. Rather we have the freedom to be observant. In the process, from non-verbal experiences, we become verbose. While holding the brush, we engage in a dialogue with us, within us and through this inner dialoguing, our challenges, struggles find their vocabulary. We learn to become expressive. An artist in pain develops insight and comprehends himself/herself. This provides a better comprehension of experiences.
What does art have to do with the broken heart? Here comes the mind-body physiology. As the hands grab a pen or hold a brush, the very art brings a change in a person’s physiology and attitude and unknowingly, before even they know it—this change becomes so heavenly that it brings the art of healing. And the body’s physiology changes from stress to deep relaxation, where fear leaves and creativity makes its way. Grabbing hands of a brush, we bring the sculpted beauty, as we learn how to sculpt from the soul and not through the warbling of our minds—the inspiration springs from the joy flowing in our hearts again. Art brings a very different brain wave pattern and instills a profound effect on a persons’ autonomic nervous system, their hormonal balance, and the brain neurotransmitters. Every cell in the body gets affected instantaneously to create a healing physiology that, in turn, affects the immune system and blood flow to the organs. They immediately change a person’s perspective of life and the surrounding world.
Art brings such a profound change in the pain perception and emotional well being of the suffering person. Art brings hope and positivity in the life of a person who already feels so hopeless in many aspects of life. They bring a deep transformation in a person’s outlook and perspective, so in general, the person rises from brokenness to wholeness, holding the hands of the healing art. Art, prayer, and healing are deeply connected in feeling and meaning. We go to an inner world, to world imagery and emotions, to vision and feelings. The journey inwards and into the soul is deeply healing, so rich and transformative, that we rise from stress to relaxation, a place of vastness where no thoughts dwell, only joy in pureness and bliss. And our healing energies are freed. Through art, we create a creative spiral that rises upwards as healing. Those who use art in souls can understand its true value as a therapeutic tool in the process of healing. It has a profound effect on the physical, emotional, and mental well- being of people. The creative process of art-making is tremendously healing and life-enhancing. Art becomes a powerful way of communication, a very potent tool in giving life its rising flow again through its gentle whispers that arise to create some of the best beauties in life. The life that was clouded becomes clearer again in the light of art.
As we see life through a lens of creativity, the pain transforms into a beauty, and grief finds its transformative art. It fosters growth, self- expression, and emotional reparation. It is stress-reducing and life-enhancing. The colors in art create the art that fills the brokenness, mends what needs to be mended, and makes us travel from stress to healing, so effortlessly. And the gentle breeze begins to blow. It becomes the piece of artwork that expresses our feelings, which we were not capable of giving an outlet. And releasing them lets us live from the deeper place again, a place where we can speak from the soul.
Scientific evidence proves that art enhances brain function. The profound impact that it brings on brain wave patterns and emotions and the nervous system can actually raise the serotonin levels. It brings social and emotional development. Research proves that art develops the neural systems, which in turn creates a wide range of benefits, a broad spectrum of positive emotions that raises creativity and improved emotional balance.
The art becomes invaluable for our healthy functioning so that we can uplift our individuality and roles in society. Expressive art becomes the key portal, through which we express the inexpressible. The emotions that found no words now find a way to the rising words, and the pathway is no longer constricted. Rather the doorway opens, and the deluge of emotions finds its healing flow.
The cognitive and emotional parts– they get integrated and well blended in awe, beauty, and wonder. Art serves as a healing modality for facing many challenges and dealing with the rising struggles in life. Art opens the locked gateways, and wonderfully evokes the sense of beauty. It takes away the pervasive pain and breaks them so effortlessly. And from ruin, we walk to riches. From pain, we walk to beauty. Nothing holds us back anymore. There is only a wide opening as far as the eyes take us out. We travel with the eyes of our hearts and not the warbling of our minds. And how beautiful is this vision that sees with life as rich and prolific, and not scarce in any way? What we viewed as scant now shifts to abundance, and life comes in an abundant harvest.
Creativity has its own way of working in the brain. The communication through art transcends barriers, breaks all the chains, and makes the pathway so chain free and relaxed. We travel from fear to love, from hopelessness to hope, and faith sees its light again in the sky of our souls. Colors come to fill the canvas again, which remained so blank. We find the music of life. Such is the way art can be used to express stress, so it goes downhill, and up comes the healing expressions. No stress can be released, keeping it locked and isolated. Every stress that comes out in the light gets a chance to heal, and we get restored from woundedness to wholeness, given that portals for its healthy release. Our self-awareness and self-esteem rise, so we no longer lean on the approval or validation from others, rather we can rise in the light beaming from our souls. And it becomes a far-reaching light in a sense, that what goes out to light others, eventually lights us too, at the deepest of our depths. And we know no bounds, as we walk by this light.
How art alleviates the grief. Grief and loss through unwelcome, while they come and knock on the doorsteps of us, we need to find a way to navigate through the blinding darkness. And as we travel through all this sadness, the intensity of the pain makes us shake and break. But no matter how much pain we are in, there is something in us, there is something in life, whose call is greater than this pain. The call that rises from the sacred space of the universe awakens us to a new mission that will be untouched by pain. No agony can kill it, and no pain can devour it. And you become a survivor of the worst tragedy and live to tell your story and paint it through the art of your heart. As you sketch your life-changing narrative, that becomes the sketch that inspires so many other lives, who are silently struggling from an intense heart-break or a life-changing loss. What threatened you with pain, finally inspired you to rise and challenge the very pain. You do not surrender. Rather the pain surrenders to your rising spirit. You are undefeatable, who knows how to turn a tragedy into a triumph.
How you choose to reshape yourself becomes your first battle, a battle between you and your loss. As voices rise from the grave, you are flooded with the recollections of the past, and you are gasping and breathing. It becomes a fight for your breath. The past holds the key to two things—to learn from and to breathe in the beauty of yesteryears. While spending too much time wandering around in the past is not a healthy choice, but at times, it might be the only thing left to do, to get a complete closure of what happened, while often, we roam around in the thoughts of could-haves and should-haves. Guilt, shame, regret, and sorrow are too many unfinished things that we need to look at. The unnoticed thing is—your pain is a gift. Art conveys that message that you have missed something in this pathway of life.
The memories of bygone times can be a place to learn from and also a place where we can refresh ourselves in the breaking beauty of it. You may think that you have accepted your past as a part of your journey and that you are okay with everything that transpired—mistakes, memories, betrayal, broken promises. But how can you, unless you sit with them, making the deepest eye contact with your past, in the most intense way possible? It is, in a way, dangerous to be held back by the unhealed feelings of the past. The choicest thing to do would be to sit down with your past, eye to eye,
to learn from those mistakes that haunt you unceasingly, and to promise to your very self, never to walk in those wrong tracks again. So your present can be of more livable moments, where you can gift your time in an unbroken stream of words, thoughts, and deeds, so this universe can rejuvenate in the beauty of it. Be a gift to others, so those sinking inside can heal being around you.
What once almost killed you inside, you can sit with it and let it be your biggest mentor. And in the remaining years ahead, the wisdom that your past gifts you can light your trail, and in turn, you can light the pathway for others. Its time, you take a look at what you do with what you have now, and what you have been given and art makes you return to the present. From where your loved one turned to ashes, you begin from there again, so you rise without a defeat, as you have heard the blessed call of life. As your eyes manage to hold on to dignity ,in the midst of adversity, you rise above your brokenness.
Through the divinity of art, you hold onto what is left from yesterday’s broken pieces, and given what is left, you promise never to let the smoke catch your eyes. Rather your promise to God to turn the loss to a victory makes you hold onto these remnants of yesterdays. This inner beauty of art unravels and pushes you to go on and keep flowing in the face of a tremendous loss. For those who once came and left, for those who taught you how to let go and love again, for those who left a light behind, for those who taught you– love goes beyond earthly dimensions– you rise in honor of them, you rise in honor of the loved and lost—so grief sees its defeat, it surrenders, and you stretch, you arise in a new beauty who can conquer grief. While the past may echo from time to time, let it not clutter our minds. So it cannot dim the clarity of our thoughts, that help us to stream in pristine purity so that we can be in our best beauty at present. While often we choose not to look back at our past mistakes. But don’t you think, its time, you sit down with it, and spend some days with your painful past, so you can learn, grow and live life to the fullest, with what you have now? You can make peace with your mistakes and take ownership of it. You may wonder, why should you do this? As that mistake is a part of you. You made all those glaring mistakes, and there streamed some painful consequences. So, instead of hiding your eyes and heart, why don’t you embrace those mistakes for a change?
It is not celebrating the mistakes, but it is about having an honest relationship with them. Returning to the retreat of art means going to a welcoming shelter, where there are no withholdings and no excuses, but taking ownership of what happened and what could have happened and what should have happened. It means making peace with your past and all your mistakes, so something beautiful can grow out of it, so it can silence your fears and calm the screaming of your present. And with that peace of mind, you can create and make something beautiful for this world to behold. Instead of clutching your past, so tightly that it makes it almost impossible for you to breathe, you can own up your past mistakes and choose never to repeat them again. And then decide if you want to close the door, that pains you or not.
However, do it with grace and gentility. Do it from a place that forgives yourself for your mistakes and embraces yourself again. Be in love with your soul again. As that is the sanctuary inside of you, a place from where you will rise and light this world. This light will walk you through your darkest nights, should they come again. If ever memories come to visit you, this light will help you to love them, nurture them yet to live a life, carrying them inside in a way, so your vision does not get dimmed.
If you get lost, it is the pull of the brush that reveals the colors of your heart, and from the light, you will be anchored. From your crumbled foundation, as you build your tidy life, gradually returning to normalcy, the brush will hold your hand to persuade you to return, just not the same way, but more strongly carrying luminosity within you. Every darkness carries a light. It only takes time to reveal and reach towards that glow. And as you reach, the light brightens your gaze, giving you the meaning of what you lost and calling you to rise above the loss. So from where your foundation burned down, another gets built on those same ashes. So the smoke that once caught your eyes, the light helps you to build the treasure of riches on those ashes again. You who knew not how to withstand the loss of dearly departed, now know how to defeat the loss and rise in air again. The questioning, the disorientation, the helplessness—everything fades as you stand to behold the treasure topping your ruins. And it is the dignified way that you can ever pay tribute to your dearly departed ones while honoring those years.
