What an experience!

I’ve always held myself to be an artist and a creative person. As a young child my parents exposed me to many opportunities to “be creative.” Up to the end of high school I always took any art classes that were offered at school. That ended with university as the intellect took over. And it’s not to say that I wasn’t creative then. I was. But there was, over the subsequent years, a growing sense inside me that a state I label “creative” was lacking in my life. WEL-Systems courses and experiences re-ignited the “creative Allister Hain” and so a weekend of getting in touch with this emerging identity made a lot of sense.

During the weekend I worked with oil pastels, something which proved to be more than I had bargained for. My choice not to change into another, possibly more user-friendly medium, offered a chance for a deeper understanding of where else in life I choose to make it difficult for me to achieve an end or outcome.

We did a series of eight drawings based on The CODE Model™, one for each chakra and an eighth centering on “connection.”

My first drawing was very sparse and light, possibly highlighting my lack of experience with the medium, but I think, reflective of a tentativeness to connect my Self with the process.

The next drawings were different. Much more flowing. Much heavier. Much easier. All were completely abstract reflecting what was brought into consciousness from each induction. I think they were also reflective of my choice to not worry about what got produced, how it looked, whether it was “good” or “bad”. Each painting, even the first one, was useful because it reflected what was going on in my universe at that very moment in time.

After each painting we all got an opportunity to sense and verbalize what our work meant. As always, in any WEL-Systems experience, the painting was a prompt to delve deeper to see where else in our lives we find instances similar to what we drew. The painting becomes secondary to the experience of inquiry.

What I take away from the weekend is increased awareness. Awareness of my personal beliefs around my creativity. Awareness of who I am and who I can be when I am creative. And underlying all this is the awareness of me as a creative being, every second of the day and night. Just think how creative a single breath is.

I’m also very aware now of how I approach creative activities. Immediately before writing this I finished an 11 by 14 inch landscape in acrylics. This was the third attempt at creating this particular scene. My first and second attempts saw me worrying about getting the perspective right, ensuring colours went down in the proper order, and spending an enormous amount of time future pacing problems (how will I get the water looking like water? Are the clouds going to look like they belong in the sky). I became aware that that was painting using the intellect and it didn’t work.

In my third attempt I just went in with the idea that I wasn’t going to be afraid about laying down a thick layer of colour, or what order they went down on canvas, or even what the outcome would be. I would just experiment. My concentration was central and focused on the work. And the painting flowed right out of my body. It was finished in about 30 minutes. In the end I created, what is, in my world, a masterpiece. And I know I can do it again and again and again.

Allister Hain

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