Steel Tongue Sundays, round 2!

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What's up, Steem family! Today I'm sharing a bit of my heart with you
Isn't this what we aim to do every day, anyway?

But this song in particular is my medicine song. Taken while I was in Lake Atitlan, Guatemala, it's the piece I always seem to play when I'm in pain, when I can feel there's something inside of me that needs to be released and healed.

I've recently been pondering my use of creative outlets to aid the healing process.

In my experience, the moment anything gets triggered, I've always dodged the pain and turned to distractions, unhealthy addictions. Once upon a time this was hard drugs. I pushed my body and mind until neither could take anymore and covered up the problem with a pretty, ganja shaped plaster. Mary Jane was less threatening, less invasive. She made me laugh and dance, gifting me with special "quickpass" access to the heights of creative and spiritual connection. What I didn't know was this quickpass ticket came with a price, the ups of her rollercoaster matched the downs and she'd abuse me just as much as I abused her. Nonetheless, I spent around 5 years riding it every day. Dipping in and out... Focusing on curing my addiction as opposed to focusing on what was causing it.

So here I am now at 25 and I finally kicked my every day green habit maybe 3 months ago now.

Okay, in the spirit of total heart opening honesty, I can't write that and not tell you I smoked a joint last night. For the first time in around 2 weeks.

But this is my point. I got rid of my habit, but that doesn't mean I got rid of the underlying cause.

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Let's say some dude dressed as a chicken turns up at your fancy dress party. He trashes the place and you ban him because he's an arsehole. Next, a power ranger turns up, steals a bunch of your stuff and of course you ban that guy because he's an arsehole too. Then a guy dressed as a taco turns up and smashes in all of your windows. You kick him out, totally confused as to why people keep turning up and messing up your party. When it was just the same arsehole turning up in different masks all along.

We're always so intent of overcoming our addictions that we never focus on healing the cause. The same issue keeps surfacing with a different face and we never catch the arsehole parading around in different masks.

Which begs the question, how do we heal the underlying cause?

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I can't answer that for you, we can only discover it for ourselves. But I do know that our feelings, the things we're running away from, are the key. Because our emotions are so intelligent! That's actually what they're here for, it's a perfect system that indicates to us what needs to be healed, what needs to be released. But we're so wrapped up in how it feels that, instead of listening, we distract ourselves with something else. It would literally be like NASA finding the best possible expert to keep track of their space shuttle and putting their fingers in their ears, going "LA LA LA" every time he reported back to them with a problem!

So I began questioning the "escape" I have in art, in music or in any other creative outlet

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Especially because it feels so good. Was this just another escape? Another temporary plaster to put on my problem while shutting out messages from my intelligent emotion system?

I started to observe my process and observed how giving the pain a creative outlet gave space for the words and solutions from my heart to come through. It was like the resistance around my pain, the thing that caused "suffering", was removed and by doing so dissolved the mental block that stopped information from coming through. I'd go into a painting feeling sad and frustrated and leave with self delusions lifted, sometimes even with revelations and always with better understanding. But most importantly, I'd receive the invaluable messages from my pain and my heart.

It's funny because writing in itself is a creative outlet and, through writing this article, the answer to the question I came with has come through...

What is the difference between "distracting" yourself with creative outlets or the other things that feel good?

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When something's surfacing and I smoke a joint, watch Netflix or even come on Steemit to distract myself with things that make me feel good, I'm looking for something outside of myself to do it and by doing so, I cut off the connection to myself.

When I hop on my drum or pick up a paintbrush, the expression that follows, the thing that makes me feel good, comes from inside of me. I express from my heart and I strengthen the connection to myself. When we turn to these outlets, we're connecting with the deep and loving force of creativity, the thing that streams from the depths of our hearts and by doing so, we create a safe space for our pain to express itself. We dissolve the block, form a connection to our hearts and open up the lines to our souls.

Wishing you all a blissful Sunday, friends!

With love,
Faye

http://www.steemit.com/@fayehalliday