Mining Embodied Wisdom with Portal Painting

We recently completed a 5th Portal Painting Retreat with Dr. Katey Hauser, here at Eden. What a courageous and curious group of inner landscape explorers we had!

I'd like to share a little about the outward process and how it created an opportunity for me to fine-tune an inner process. Portal Painting is a layered process with a clear structure, and lots of room for emergent, individual, and spontaneous creative expression. We tap into our subconscious, embodied self through guided meditation between layers of paint. Each layer represents a step toward bringing our inner wisdom to the outer world through a portal created within the structured layers of the painting. The layers include, but are not limited to:

1. our intention, 2. the quantum field though which our intention moves, 3. what needs to be released to set our intention in motion, or what gifts will ferry our intention though the portal, 4. a structural grid to support the portal in spacetime, 5. an opening for the portal, 6. the organic symmetry that supports that opening (like a spider’s web creating home for the spider), 7. the vibration of color, 8. recommitment to structure (which lines will stay). 10. additional details that bring the intention to life, and 11. symbols that amplify and contain the process.

The initial layers get covered with paint, yet the intention is activated by each step. This image is my intention and field layers. The following photos are not mine.

By the end, one usually feels complete, settled, and happy with what is coming through. It holds all the vibration and wisdom of the many layers, and a fulcrum for personal growth has been offered to, and through, our inner landscape.

It’s not uncommon for participants to feel uncomfortable at some point in the process. We may feel finished, but we are being asked to add more layers. We may feel disconnected from the images or color coming through. It may not look like what we imagined. It may bring up emotion as the unconscious is unearthed into consciousness.

What I learned from my 5th portal painting:

I’ve recognized my discomfort with being wrong and the differentiation between being wrong and having to be right.  I don’t feel I have to be right.  I am usually not uncomfortable when someone offers a different point of view to consider, or one that is true for them.  I don’t feel threatened or shaken by that.  So this concept of being wrong, I realize, is something in and of itself.

 Being wrong is connected to shame, to being the fool or being fooled, to being ‘dumb, stupid,’ to being othered, disregarded, unworthy, on the outside, missing the boat.

That said, I rarely feel this way.  But it did come up in my Portal process as my frame was essentially to feel connected, cooperative, communicative with my unique voice and perspective in the bigger conversations about life, love, humanity, and healing—the conversations I crave and create.  So when I was in the chaotic discomfort part of my portal, I was able to access, to peek through to, this withdrawal or reservation of my spirit that can happen if I feel othered, outside, disregarded.  And that in defense of my sovereignty, I may unconsciously refrain from joining a conversation when this happens.

 Concurrently, I am witnessing that when I have expectations that people should ‘do the right thing,’ or exist in the middle of the bell curve of human behavior, I assume there is a right and a wrong way of being—being self, being happy, being healthy, being normal.  The myth of normal.  If I let go of normal and acknowledge that everyone has their unique prism, their unique facet of the divine to express, then I let go of ‘other’ and ‘normal.’

 And that creates more freedom for me to belong. And belonging frees my soul, my tongue, my voice. 

Putting brush to paper and observing where the organic symmetry leads you.

Some of the organic symmetry is often seen in the final painting, but not all