Week #3: Flow Week
In Week Three, I get into the flow of systems
Color: Blue
Element: Water
I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man's. I will not reason and compare: my business is to create.
- William Blake
The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun, William Blake
I think of water as a medium to show us SYSTEMS.
Water flows wherever there is a way. It follows gravity and tides, both powerful systems that rule our cycles and daily lives.
This Blake image isn’t blue, or of water, but for me it shows the different levels of the systems of how Blake’s mind works, from his view of the slavery of the mind (dragon), down to the creative soul fighting for its freedom through inspiration (fire and lightning) down to the real real of earth.
This week I’ve been trying to … not control systems, not create systems out of whole cloth … but notice the ones that already work in nature (like gravity and tides), and see if I can learn from them.
The more I can notice and become aware of systems in myself and the world, the more ease I find in my life and work.
If I am resisting every system that comes my way, there lies suffering.
Suffering is the gap between the way the world is, and the way we want it or expect it to be.
S.ystems
M.elt
A.nxiety &
R.eveal
T.ruth
Emotions are a system.
I’ve noticed something in the past few years, that it takes about 36 hours for an emotion and its accompaying chemicals to flow through my brain and body.
For instance, two years ago, after my first-year review here in graduate school at SIU, I was very triggered by some things my professors said about my work.
At first, I resisted their comments with thoughts like: “They don’t get me,” “Why do they want me to explain everything,” or the opposite: “Why can’t my work be as complicated as I want it to be? Why do they need it to be so SIMPLE??” GAH!
This is just one example of my (very human) emotional system at work.
This is what I noticed (you may have your own version of this):
I put my work up on the wall.
Professors say words.
Those words go into my brain and find OTHER words, other emotions from my past (remember, the three human fears are: Fear of Separation, Fear of the Unknown, and Fear of Past Painful Experiences):
My brain FINDS other past painful experiences when it told me - “No one gets you” (Fear of Separation); Why do they want me to explain everything? (Fear of the Unknown); or pulling up emotions from the past about not feeling competent, as “good” an artist as I want to be, Impostor Syndrome (Fear of Past Painful Experiences).
HOWEVER! …
This time, I just sat back and noticed this system at work in my brain and body. (I’m 60, I’m a slow learner - and this is a lesson I have to learn over and over again.)
I chose the thoughts: “I know what is happening. I have a system for this. I can process this and learn from it.”
So, even though I had all these painful emotions running through my system, I sat down with my journal the next morning and wrote EVERYTHING out - what happened, what people said, how I reacted, how I felt. I felt and processed the emotions fully.
It didn’t really work right away. I still felt defensive (one of my go-to angry emotions), misunderstood (one of my whiniest emotions), and incapable (one of my saddest emotions). (What are your top 3, go-to emotions?)
But over the next few days (about 36 hours), I noticed my emotions lessening, my brain integrating what I had felt.
And I asked myself: “How is this perfect?” - meaning - how can I learn from this system, or thought/emotion combination?
And truly (“I am a slow learner” - that is a thought I could change into: “Wow, that happened so FAST! and either one would be “true”), it took a few months, but eventually I got to the place of acceptance, understanding, even excitement about that experience and what it taught me:
Notice systems
& let them work!
The color wheel is a fascinating system that holds much more than just color. Psychology, history, poetry, physics, optics, philosophy, religion and of course, art, are all to be more deeply understood through color.
What I Learned
from noticing my own internal systems at work:
(or, put into practice from what I know from Thought Work):
NOTICE:
I learned to notice systems in my brain and body at work: thoughts, strong emotions, name them, write them out.PROCESS:
I learned to process thoughts and emotions in a neutral way - just watch myself, care for myself through it, meaning: breathe, write, talk to friends, paint, read, walk, all while noticing and feeling what was happening in my body and letting it happen.SELF-COMPASSION:
To look back with calm compassion for that earlier version of myself (just weeks before!) that was so triggered, defensive, insecure, and know I’m human living fully in the human experience. And to have compassion for my mentors who have their own emotional systems at work with their own past painful experiences, fears, etc.EXPAND:
To take what I culled from that experience and create a “high-quality problem” from it - to really understand my own work from someone else’s viewpoint, to feel strong in my own approach and convictions and still be open to input and ‘coachable.’ To choose the thought: “My mentors have my best interest at heart - what can I learn from them?”REFRAME:
To rejoice in any input, with the thoughts: “Wow, what a gift to have conversations about art! My art is a free, open space to encounter new ideas, to process emotion, and excite deep insight in others and myself. This is why I do this!” “Say anything to me so I can experience new emotions and process them, release them and learn from them! I’m an emotion-processing machine!” And that is the point - I’m not a machine, but my body does have its systems that work pretty darn well.
Not bad, huh?
This can also help with processing politics and other painful things happening in the world right now. We all need to learn these skills for better mental health, understanding, contentment.
Some Art That Shows Nature’s Systems at Work
Create Your Own Systems - what are yours?
I’ve created my own ways of looking at the color wheel that helps me create my own systems for work, art-making, and self-development.
In fact, it has helped me create my new coaching program for 2026 called Threshold. This will be a 4-month group and 1:1 coaching container that will help you dive deeper into your creative work - AND into what is holding you back. Find out more here.
I sometimes do feel like a unicorn.
But then, I realize that is the human condition, to feel alone and different.
I’ve always been really focused on meaning, purpose, psychology and metaphor - and I wonder if others are, too, and often feel isolated. But I have come to cherish my internal, creative, intellectual life that I have created for myself, in my own brain, that spills out into the world on the canvas, and now in ceramics and sculpture. Even if the forms they take aren’t exactly what I envision, I choose the thought: “I am living my life fully, with all my capacities. I choose this powerfully.” (Whatever painful or difficult situation it is.) I feel like this is my superpower, to know the creative life.
And I want to teach others to tap into their own powers to inspire and be inspired, to create art and change in the world, to have impact and love life fully. Wait - I do that. This is the coaching life I’ve chosen - and it is truly amazing.
Just this week:
Helped a client process feelings of loss from a family health crisis.
Helped two clients build websites - and shift thoughts around technology from being ‘hard and annoying,’ to being a sort of magical way to reach people on the other side of the planet.'
What about you?
What systems do you notice in your world, whether it is nature’s systems of life, growth, death, or the brain and body’s systems of thinking and feeling, or human-made systems of architecture, travel, media, business. I’m SO curious how other people think about these things.
And I used to think - DO people even think about these things - but that just comes from me isolating myself. When I read out into the world and talk and read, I see it: humans engaging in fascinating processes everywhere!
I’d love to hear from you about your own systems - what you notice, what you do in your life to keep you creative and moving forward. Or what you feel you want to do but have resistance or suffering around.
Flow Week Inspiration:
Choose a thought to guide your week (this can change, and you can borrow mine!)
Mine for Flow Week was: “Relax into the flow of life.”
Spend Deep Time with yourself to notice your own systems: Read, write down your thoughts, process emotions through your art.
Go Inward: Explore an idea you are fascinated with - take it further.
Surround yourself with mellow music with no words: I love Ludwig Cimbralius, a young Swedish/Turkish composer.
Do some Automatic Writing, and Automatic Drawing of your project. Notice this worked for Week Zero - and Spark Week and Think Week (and ALL the weeks!).
AGAIN: Envision your project, this time with thoughfulness: How can I see it a new way? What can I add or rearrange - what new idea from my reading can I incorporate?
What would Remedios Varo do? (WWRVD): Be inspired by smart historic art mentors.
Take a coffee break and sit quietly, find calmness. Center and ground yourself. We NEED that during Flow Week!
Episode #7: Fear & Flow
[00:00:22] ROBERT CRUMB: “If I don't draw for a while, I get crazy depressed and suicidal. If I don't get to draw. I don't work in terms of conscious messages. I can't do that. It has to be something that I'm revealing to myself while I'm doing it. It's hard to explain, like, Which means that while I'm doing it, I don't know exactly what's about, you just have to have the. The courage to take that chance. You know what? What's going to come out. What's coming out of this. “
[00:00:57] That's Robert Crumb talking about his process, in the 1994 documentary Crumb.
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