Tian Yoon Teh Arala

Tian Yoon Teh Arala bio photo

Tian Yoon Teh Arala's Soul Art

What Inspired you to do a Soul Art journey?

When I realized that a Soul Art journey helps me visually see who I am, who I be, who I want to be on a case to case basis, it became a supplement to my creative processes. Given a brush, even the parts of me that I wished to deny can be seen, felt, heard and voiced. The best part about visual art as a medium of realistic expression is its documentation in time and space that gets solidified as form. I can acknowledge myself, expand the parts of me that wishes to bloom, and leave the parts of me that wants to shed behind. If there is something I wish to let go, it can live on the canvas, fully acknowledged, neither denied nor carried. I hang my desires and leave it burning where I see them everyday. I cradle and hold the darkness until peace emerges out of it, and let the canvas transform into peace. I hold my hand in my own light, I feel like I am spending so much quality time with the part of me that I am drawing, holding it, caressing it as I blend and sketch, often I sleep with it when some part of me feels like it is seen and acknowledged again, integrated. This process is a great tool for soul listening in that manner. I love it. I like it. I use it.

How would you describe your creative process?

Deep listening. From surfing the streams of inspiration, short rapid colorful ideas, to diving deep into enthusiasm of sand and sediments at the bottom of the stream.What is beneath may often seem distorted from the top, different from what I set out to do, but whole and complete when felt and held in true conviction. Deeper still, still, is the darkness of a womb, where nothing exists and light emerges. potential. That light tells me about my desires in emergence. It becomes a burning desire, an urgency, my spiritual nag, and it must be given time, space, resources and all the conditions to bloom. It will take form in whatever i can offer it and offer me what it wants. It is my job to visualize it, actualize it, bring it back to reality. This work is largely dependent on the vessel, and the training I/my collaborators have embodied becomes an available resource for channeled use. If I don’t have the words to say “there is a magnetic field that surrounds the earth, it may one day switch sides”, this field will tell me “there’s a tortoise in the heart of earth which will one day flip its back”

Aligning my journey with the expression my soul, this time, this age, is the task I came to be: to acquire the expressions of earth, today. It’s a two-way process that way. I intuit. I train. I read. I write. It is something I do.

What insight did you receive from your Soul Art?

When I download, it takes form from input straight into expression. When the form has birthed, I can look at it, name it, love it. Let the work inform the form and desires. Who am I? I asked; I remember my lineage and from where I become. I feel, that the word and work of a scribe is about to take new form. I nourish, I want to fly, I soar, I blossom, I felt bounded, I destroy, I walk the path of new growth, and I water it as I go. I love the cape of a waterfall of wisdom that flows from my heart. i love the love that grows through my hands. I am held in the violet flame, i am cradled in the heart of earth and fire, mother earth bounds me, fuels me. In turn, I water her crops with consciousness. Light.

Nourish/Voice/Love

What is the most important thing you would like to share about your Soul Art experience?

Love

When you say I and “I” say “I”, we both lift our cheeks. Hold this vowel long enough, and we both start feeling something along the lines of happy feelings, or the grief of the happiness we might miss.

“Ài, 爱” is love in Mandarin. Show me how to say I, another way, and I might start to feel a different feeling. That is why mantra works, in any language. It conjures a feeling. A feeling that becomes prayer. A prayer that becomes blessing. And so, my soul asked me this:

“Will you receive I as a letter of love?”