HeArt Circle: Free Association
ServiceSpace
--Trupti Pandya
4 minute read
Sep 18, 2019

 

Last Sunday, many amazing HeArtist came together, trusting the invitation, which led to a magical circle. The theme for this month was Free association via Art, where each one had to pick a card with a word written on it and reflect. A few chose to journal beautiful poetry; the rest chose to sculpt, paint, and craft, which led to colorful and creative canvases. With a big smile, Lokesh shared how happy he was feeling in this space, and he gave credit to the power of the collective. He added, “If I were sitting all alone in my room, it wouldn’t have been possible for me to sit and process inpite of having access to all the material here.”

Reflecting on the word ‘UNIVERSE’ which came to him, he shared how he was taken back to his teenage days where except for the rainy days, he used to sleep on the terrace and look at the sky and the stars. That memory of that home has been very close to his heart. That age where he did not have to worry about “becoming” anything and rather enjoyed the simple joys of life. His happiness quotient was overflowing with the flow of memories. The insight here was that despite an individual journey of sitting and reflecting in silence, what mattered was the presence of each one.

Manali wrote beautiful poetry on the toil that she goes through in the ‘NOW’ while the mind constantly tries to oscillate between the past and the future. Below is what she wrote.

“Dearest ‘NOW’ I don’t understand to achieve you ‘HOW.’
Sometimes I feel you at the moment; sometimes, you beam for hours.
It Is difficult to know whether it is about time or you are yourself ‘TIME.’
Are you here right now; YES. Then why do the wrong past and future keep hanging on!
Life is you, and you are with me; then why is this unknown fear!
I think you are too small to feel; maybe that’s why we fail to experience you.
But in this failure, too, you are there noticing us.
NOW NOW NOW We don’t understand this is HOW!!!”


Dwani, who was a first-timer, got the word YOU. Another Heartist, Radhika, got the word ‘MAGIC’ who chose to share her experience in silence and allowed us to witness the magic that she created with her clay work. She wanted to draw a mirror and a lot of other things that were coming to her mind. It was inter then eared it all.

Shruti, our youngest artist, shared how excited she is to use all the art material in front of her. The word she got was ‘NATURE,’ which she beautifully depicted with a tree on a windy night with a moon silently withstanding it.


Jaimit correlated various shades of a leaf with the JOURNEY of one’s life and how various experiences at various stages of our lives shape us. While coloring, he realized that once the empty spaces are filled with colors, you cannot ‘undo’ them, which is how it is in real life. What is gone is what we can embrace gracefully and what will come; we can be aware of colors we want to fill in.

Siddharth shared how grateful he was for the word he chose or maybe the word who chose him. His reflection on TIME-TIMELESSNESS came in the form of beautiful poetry:

"As I close my eyes, I dive into emptiness
Beyond the mundane world of name and form
There lies within me a seed, waiting to be born
When the time is right, it blossoms into timelessness.

This beauty that surrounds me, how ephemeral it is.
For a moment, it exists, the next to be gone.
I remain bewildered by the mystery of time.
It is linear, or is it circular?

But the answer hides within the question.
Because the worlds are seen as a play of duality.
And time is just a happening in timelessness,
Beginning and ending, no beginning, no end.

When I open my eyes, nothing has changed.
And yet, everything has never been more alive.
As I gaze from this vastness, time flies.
Now I am free as a bird dancing in the sky.

Thanks to impermanence that everything is possible.
This grace that I have fallen into.
And tears of ecstasy washing away, ruins of time.
I dissolve in timelessness, not in time."


In conclusion to what all emerged in the circle, especially regarding the impermanence that life brings, Lokesh shared a beautiful quote that said, “Death is inevitable but die like a ripened fruit.” I hope we all die like a ripened fruit, and may the seeds of our soul blossom into much love and compassion in the world.

 

Posted by Trupti Pandya on Sep 18, 2019


2 Past Reflections