Moving Mountains in the Grasslands: A Search for Creative and Spiritual Authenticity - Sky Story Bed & Breakfast, Retreats at Grasslands National Park

Chapter 1

It is exactly where we feel most frightened and most in pain that our greatest opportunity lies for growth.
Carl Jung

I consider myself a straightforward person with a keen eye for beauty and a big heart. I don’t normally share a lot about myself, as I don’t think my life is any more interesting than that of anyone else. This last year, however, I’ve had cause to reflect on why I choose to live as an ‘artist’ and Yoga practitioner. Perhaps there are others who share the same experience and/or might benefit from my reflections. In the coming year I will offer a series of blogs posts focused on my search for creative and spiritual authenticity.

My parents were both hardworking Type A personalities. They were conservative, practical people, my mother having also embraced a church going lifestyle. I’m certain my brother and I, both artists, were born into this controlled toughness for a reason. I’ve made it my lifelong goal to find out what that reason is.

My hypothesis? One is born into a tough environment in order to grow spiritually.

Having grown up in the early 60s in a small midwestern city in Canada, I chose in late 2012 to move to the deep, rural southwest. There are no mountains here in grasslands. Like many of us, however, I had/have many metaphorical mountains to climb, including the inner mountains of residual psychological duress, a longstanding goal to “learn the land” and the very real mountain of physical health challenges. While many vacationers complain of the lack of mountains here, I say, YAY! They would just “get in the way” as so many prairie people say. I chose to invest my psychic/creative/spiritual energies in a place of spareness and quietude.

Long before I had heard of the Truth and Reconciliation movement, my heart and ears felt and heard the whispers of the First People who walked this land, as well as those of my own colonial ancestors. Here in the grasslands, away from the city, I was finally able to perceive the subtle realm, including the colors, light and in-between elements of life; the ineffable. It’s what I’d dreamt of for years, both figuratively and literally.

At age three, I wanted to be a ‘go-go’ dancer. The television show, Go-Go ’66, was popular that year. At age nine I dearly wanted to be a nun. I had broken my spine falling off a bunk bed at our family friend’s northern cabin and within a month I was finally diagnosed and subsequently scheduled for a difficult spinal fusion, L 4/5, (also known as lower lumbar 4/5). This event, in essence, started me on my life’s journey to understand deeply the nature of physical pain, the role emotions play in our experience of that pain, and all sorts of peripheral lessons such as patience, how to accept help, the beauty of humility, and the necessity of stamina and resilience in our lives. I am certain that without that spinal break, I would be a very different person today. Perhaps less kind. At any rate, it gifted me the opportunity to discover a contemplative lifestyle, my inner world, and a rich, creative psyche.

By the age of twelve I became aware that I wanted to be a visual artist. I was grateful I had been gifted with technical talent and for several years explored the roster of possibilities: commercial artist, fashion designer, studio painter… My parents, although supportive with the provision of some materials and a few art classes along the way, had no intention of feeding what they felt was a no-win career move. The message was loud and clear: “Have a Plan B (a backup plan), before you leap into Plan A (the life of an artist)…with my father’s additional caveat to both of us: “Don’t either of you (my brother, a musician, and I a visual artist), come to us for help if you fall flat on your face.”

This was not exactly encouraging for two budding creatives. During my early teens my psycho-sexual and spiritual development was significantly shaped by my physical restrictions: a body cast for seven months after the spinal surgery, followed by three years in a Milwaukee body brace (which consisted of metal bars extending from hip to chin with molded plastic straps to correct curvatures of the spine over the course of 23 hours per day). Oh, and let’s not forget about the teeth braces worn about the same time!

It’s typical in this society for young people to want to be found attractive to others of the same age. The fact that by age thirteen I wanted to enter into a local all-girls high school should not therefore have been a surprise, but worried my parents. I was rigorously dissuaded and instead attended a large, Catholic high school, brace(s) and all. My spiritual growth was largely halted for the moment. In fact, any attempts to get me to attend religious teen camps to “sort out my emotional challenges” backfired. I rebelled against them all, allowing myself to sink further into my own anxiety and depression; a largely destructive, if not earnest, search for self-knowledge and purpose.

At the age of sixteen, in the midst of all my internal chaos, I discovered Kareen’s Yoga books and may even have watched her on TV. I somehow knew Yoga would be important to my overall survival. The deep physical, emotional and psychic pain I was feeling, exacerbated by a descent into a full blown eating disorder, culminated in at least one suicide attempt. Although I was eventually able to pull myself together enough to finish high school, enter university and hold down various jobs, this madness lasted into my late twenties.

I am grateful for my general physician who, having responded to my plea at the time of my lowest ebb, put me in touch with a Jungian/Perlian feminist therapist. That connection and subsequent years of therapy proved to be instrumental to my successful maturation at all levels, including creative. My introduction to a few people, including her friend, Art MacKay, a notable painter from the Regina Five, helped to shape me artistically and spiritually – his mandalas having a particularly profound influence on me.

Having developed an existential orientation to the world, I began researching spiritual traditions to determine which one might resonate enough to call ‘home’. I purchased and borrowed library books to explore Wicca, Baha-i, Buddhism and other cultural/philosophical practices, as well as Yoga. The latter resonated deeply. Having taken a community Hatha Yoga class, my home-based practice became robust and eventually included weight-lifting and walking.

The Gap: Paradise Lost (from Samskāra series, oil on canvas) - Artwork by Diana Chabros — The Gap: Paradise Lost (from Samskāra series, oil on canvas), Diana Chabros

At the same time, I purchased a health and Yoga book co-authored by an internationally respected Yoga philosopher and historian, Dr. Georg Feuerstein. Was it serendipity or karma which spurred an auspicious personal encounter with him and his wife, renowned author/teacher, Brenda Feuerstein, here in the southwest almost thirty years later? At any rate, I subsequently began my teacher training with them, and also began a rigorous study commitment with their root guru, the Ninth Neten Tulku Rinpoche. (Unfortunately, Georg’s book left my possession during one of my younger cleaning sprees to lighten my ‘chattel load’! )

My roller coaster relationship with my parents and my spiraling health problems spurred me to adopt the life-long goals of ‘self-sufficiency’ and wellness. It may, on the other hand, have been another instance of karma. Like many young people sorting out their familial relationships amidst marital breakdown, in this case my parents’, my affinities toggled from parent to parent trying to respond to their requests for help.

Within most Buddhist cultural philosophical traditions it is said that everyone at one time or another has been a mother to us. I began a quest to learn to mother myself and eventually stepped onto the path to honour all beings with the same care. Learning and practicing the 5,000 year old tradition of Yoga, and witnessing my mother’s recent slide into dementia, has nurtured my appreciation of my own life trajectory. From mere practice to an embodied lifestyle, I have developed a reverence for the teachings which continue to sustain and support me.