Articles about seeing aura and chakra colors in Leiah Bowden's Eneregy Portraits Energy Portraits

The Colors in Lightspeak Energy Portraits – the living and non-living

.....About five years ago I opened a door of perception and found myself painting Energy Portraits. All it took was trusting, allowing and surrendering to the process, to quote my friend Gary, the impressively clear and effective stress management facilitator who had been doing work in my energy body for years before that.

In the beginning, I’d open the door and find the patterns glowing as an overlay of colors and intricate patterns on my clients’ physical bodies. Soon, a little information would come, and as the years have progressed, my clients are telling me that the guidance, singing and chanting that accompany the Energy Portraits on tape are as helpful and transforming as the Energy Portraits themselves – sometimes more so.

As I move through each person’s flow, I feel and see the emotional and spiritual substance of the person. There is always something beautiful, sometimes something poignant, and occasionally something so awe-inspiring that I must stop the painting and give homage to the great soul seated before me.

Recently, at the request of her granddaughter I did an Energy Portrait of a woman who had passed on many years ago. I was most intrigued to learn what the spirit had to say about the significance of the colors of a few of the chakras. Those of you who do chakra or energy healing work may be interested in this, and if you have anything you’d like to tell me, I’ll look forward to your information. Here’s what the spirit of Marian, long since transmuted into unity, had to say that I found worth noting:

“If you look at the bottom of the portrait which is in your hands, you will see the streaming colors. These are the memories that exist in my supra-consciousness as those identities I appeared as – roles I played – the memories are what you would call lives. They are no more than echoes of a mission, a moment’s flash of sunlight through the trees, and filled with all the emotions that defined the passage of time in the body.

This being that “I” am now is part of, a molecule in, and a pathway through, the Order of the Golden Dawn. As I was Marian in the life in which you knew me, I am now conscious of Self as The Order of the Golden Dawn as my identity, my mission, the core of intelligence which anchors the activity and consciousness of this infinitely small piece of creation that I am.

The yellow in the crown chakra illustrates the nature of divine intelligence from which the name of the group comes. The turquoise stakes with bifurcated ends indicate the creative nature of intelligence that typifies the echo/memory of myself as Marian, extending from the crown chakra and divine self into the heart. The heart as it is shown here is very large, enveloping the entire upper body, as love – the nature of this heart – is the operant emotion and message in this stage of existence. The solar plexus here is shown as lavender, the opposite of the animal body’s solar plexus. In the non-physical realm, the solar plexus resonates to the vibration of surrender, not individuation which is the necessary animal goal. So in the stage of being in which the soul is immersed in unity with the whole Soul of Creation, the center of safety – the solar plexus – is in its healthiest state, passive, surrendering to the unified field, and this surrender is shown here as light purple. Directly below it is the field of creative energy, in human bodies generally purple and fuchsia. In this realm the well of creativity is the divine, unmitigated by animal needs, and so it is color-less, and pure white, indicating its nature as divine being.

Below it, where the rot chakra would be, are the memories of other levels of being, each a rainbow of colors indicating emotion.

My messages to all of you are to trust your soul’s messages in whatever form they come. You will know them without a doubt. Do not doubt them or your ability to make the best of what they whisper or shout to you. Do not linger one moment in a space in which you do not feel nourished and appreciated, for this is the way to illness and decay. The energies around the earth at this time are such that the slightest inclination is given great power. Use this power to heal and lift, as you do anyway. But know now that you are far, far more powerful than you believe.

So suspend your belief in limitation and “pretend” that you are God. “Pretend” that you are in the successful business of organizing your structures for maximum joy, and this will lead to maximum efficiency for all creation. And when all creation is functioning properly, than transmutation on the physical level occurs and the great shift will lock into place. You cannot do this yourselves for the whole of creation all at once, but each one can and does heave mightily and successfully with every breath. Every breath you take and release creates a world.

I love you to the end of time,

Mother”

The Healing Process:accepting the role of healer

Be careful of what you want: you might get it. (Anonymous)

Your thinking small doesn’t serve the world. (Marianne Williamson)

These two adages have been part of the gaseous mix in my tires as I’ve rolled along for certainly as many years as it’s been since Nelson Mandela quoted the latter. They’ve kept me buoyant and on the road with no major accidents.

And the other day, it seems, I arrived at a destination for which, like the old Burma Shave signs, I’d been seeing hints of immanence, but thought I had a way to go yet, because apparently my mouse brain had been at the wheel.

Here’s what happened: my client, Fran, for whom I had just done an Energy Portrait, got up out of her chair and walked to the door. This wouldn’t have been unusual, but Fran has MS. in order for her to get to the chair at the beginning of the session, she had to lean on furniture every hesitant step of the way from her wheelchair to the chair I’d placed twenty feet away.

My jaw dropped and I stopped in my forward movement to help her. “I can walk every time I have energy work done,” she smiled and said matter-of-factly.

“Energy work”. When I created my first Energy Portraits ten years ago, I thought they were art. At the time, I was also offering an intuitive, Reiki-like form of hands-on energy work (I still do), and my clients were generous in their praise of the effectiveness of my work. One said, after her first session, “Oh, Leiah, you were born to do this.”

But I wasn’t ready to accept the three conditions of this role: 1. that I could get out of my own way on a regular basis enough to help another person’s being find healing and release of pain, 2. that I would from that point on need to live to the full extent of my own wakefulness, in as much love as I could open myself to, without hesitation, and 3. that I could trust myself to do no harm.

And so I put the healing work to the side, so I thought, and concentrated on the radiant explosions of color that were the Energy Portraits. I knew the Energy Portrait process imparted healing and an improved energy flow to my clients, but I thought it was incidental and not central to the work. I was trying very hard to hide. My sabotaging detour didn’t work, thank goodness, and I find myself now looking at Fran and others like her, who tell me with their words and show me with their bodies that the work I do is at its core, powerfully healing, no matter what I think about it.

And why am I writing about it here? Not because I expect anyone to do handstands of joy on my behalf, but to put myself on display as Exhibit A. What I can do, others can and do as well.

We have more power than we may feel comfortable with. The time has come that many have written about and dreamed: we can heal, make whole, and improve the life we live and the lives that others live in many ways, including the most personal. We begin by opening our hearts and allowing the love that floods our own beings to flow out to others with our intention to cause benefit through that flow.

Please join me, and please tell me about your own journey as wounded healer. You can reach me at yes@lightspeak.com or (518) 374-4388 (that’s upstate New York, if you’re interested.)

About Art

I’ve painted pictures all my life – the first time I remember making art and knowing it was art was when I was five years old, and I had just made a colored chalk painting on the little black bulletin board in my bedroom. I think it is very interesting that after a full 56 years, the art I am doing now is primarily done in soft pastels on black paper!

Yes, I am an artist. I’ve painted pictures all my life – the first time I remember making art and knowing it was art was when I was five years old, and I had just made a colored chalk painting on the little black bulletin board in my bedroom. I think it is very interesting that after a full 56 years, the art I am doing now is primarily done in soft pastels on black paper!

I am often puzzled by the objectification of art as a product that so many believe only “artists” can do. I have to create what people call “art” because it is central to my processing ideas and emotions. It took me a long time to think of myself as an artist because I didn’t go to art school. And it wasn’t until I started doing the Energy Portraits that I soared, taking great pleasure in showing my work to anyone who would give my two minutes. Before that I’d sort of mumble something about my paintings, and leave it at that. My other paintings are sometimes very lovely, very uplifting visually, people tell me, but it’s the Energy Portraits that bring ME into heaven as I do them.

Does the Creator draw a line distinguishing between the various life forms as “art” and “not art?”

I believe that what we are created in the image of is that creator aspect of the divine. We create. Creators must value everything they create in order to value themselves. When we don’t value ourselves, we value something outside ourselves, and then we must have those external things. When someone says “Oh, I can’t draw to save my life,” what they’re saying is, “I don’t count as a creator.”

I have a struggle when I set myself to depict a tree … but I know I am an artist. Art is a way that people have of saying, “I am.” Art nourishes the soul, prompts tears, rage, awe, love, inspires aspirations and creativity itself. Art brings us out of the mundane into the larger view, broadens our idea of the possible.

To be fair, though, using a more conventional lens, I will admit that the words, “And they call that art?” have passed my lips. But I’ll also admit that it’s not a criticism of what I am seeing that prompts that comment, but rather the fact that someone else is drawing attention when I’m not. It’s called envy, and it rises in direct proportion to whether or not I have made any real efforts to show my work. I’ll bet that’s what most people mean, as well. Especially for someone whose artistic attempts have been thwarted by others – or her or his own sense of unworthiness – (which gets back to the same thing) – to see a pile of clothespins on a stand for sale for $500 or more must be extremely frustrated. “I could do that!” is a common response to art that looks simple or crude. Sure, I’ll bet they could. But it doesn’t mean that the pile of clothespins is not art.

Lightspeak Energy Portraits: a gateway for recognizing, welcoming, and celebrating our multidimensional aspects.

In this time of rapid and intense planetary and galactic realignment, it’s very easy to be overwhelmed, succumbing to the various responses of dis-ease to which we may individually be prone.

Here’s the good news: we don’t have to rely on prescriptions limited by a definition of ourselves as merely three-dimensional. We can activate and engage our multidimensional selves, thereby expanding the perimeter of our energy field and becoming more sensitive to shifts in our balance.

We are moving more and more frequently and rapidly into other dimensions and other realities, as our mind/spirit keeps abreast of the shifts – some not so subtle – in the other dimensions which claim our attention. When this happens, we may experience frustration and disorientation, the feeling that we’re being invaded by other consciousness, a sense of strangeness in our own bodies. No one told us when we were growing up that being an individual might not always apply to the interior reality. Talk about weekend guests – sometimes they come for a visit, sometimes they come to stay. There are some that have been with us since before we squeezed through the narrow opening into the harsh light of the delivery room, others that pop in when we need some help or have – without remembering during some dream in another reality – invited them.

It’s no wonder that more and more people are finding that energy work in one form or another is crucial to our sanity and physical health. Energy work bypasses the rationalizing mind and gets right to work on the bodies we inhabit in more than the one dimension into which we wake in normal consciousness each morning.

Energy Portraits are as yet a little-known tool for recognizing, welcoming, and celebrating our multidimensional aspects. Energy Portraits enact energy work disguised as art.

So how do Energy Portraits help us activate and engage our multidimensional selves?

Energy Portraits draw them out and articulate them. They give form and voice to the previously invisible you as shining a light on “invisible ink” reveals the words written there in lemon juice. They offer an audio-visual translation of the many phases, rhythms, scenarios, missions, and personalities you have woven into the eternal moment of your life. We may call these imaginings, past lives, or dreams. It doesn’t matter what words we use; they are real, and have left their imprint in our being and affect how we make our choices and the way we move in our world. The Energy Portrait process includes the articulation through chanting, singing, spoken guidance, and the creation, in the course of about an hour, of a brilliantly colorful pastel painting of the multi-level being you are. People use them for healing, as tools for transformation, and as diagnostic acupuncture indicators.

Like me when I was younger, you may have swallowed the lie that you were – or are -- “too much!” You take this personally and try to become less – less obtrusive, less outgoing, less expressive, less authentic. You once harbored – perhaps still do - a self-defeating belief that you were was small, unworthy of fabulous joy, and lacking.

And if this is so, you may have been as thrilled as I was when Nelson Mandela made it very clear just how bad an idea that was. He emerged radiant from solitary confinement and quoted Marianne Williamson’s powerful words: “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?

Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you."

Have you felt the truth of that turn-around yet?

Energy Portraits are for many people an active reflection that they have been waiting for all their lives. They are an external, tangible validation of our inherent worthiness, majesty, and purity, the great truth of our being that we too often bury early in our childhood. Energy Portraits offer a unique opportunity to see our most beloved selves translated into pigment and line.

Some people use them as beautiful art to hang on a wall, and as something they can talk to and hear guidance from. Energy Portraits are a tuning fork to the path of the soul, to the trajectory of the soul’s intention. When people see their Energy Portraits, their eyes usually light up as they feel the stirring of an old recognition, and they recognize the beauty and brilliance that is their true nature.

The Energy Portrait frequently holds images and stories of your childhood dreams and joys. The Energy Portrait may include an audio component, and you may receive from the artist what I sometimes call “notes from home” – reminders and echoes of your multidimensional eternal being across time and space in song, imagery, color and line.

People are sometimes hesitant to have their Energy Portraits done because they are feeling low, depressed, or scattered. This is an understandable: we usually think of a a portrait as revealing our emotions and thoughts through the lines in our faces, the shadows under our eyes, the look we feel we may not be able to hide of despair, frustration, or loneliness: our sins of imperfection. But Energy Portraits are focused toward the level of the dimensional weave where the magnificent achievement of your soul parades its colors and vast array of eons’ worth of skills, understandings learned all over the galaxy.

We are not small. We are huge, galactic in scope, and our knowing extends into the divine. It’s time we shook hands and introduced ourselves.

So who are we, when seen through the lens and experience of an Energy Portrait?

For present purposes, the Energy Portrait is a painting of a humanoid form rather than an abstract symbol or combination of symbols, which constitute a different kind of “Energy Portrait.”

We are a physical body: the three dimensional expression of a soul’s passion, the animal housing for a divine spark articulating a very specific note: what we call “me.”

We are a compilation of memories, yearnings, emotions; an overlay of transparent layers over the core impulse known as Spirit.

We are the formless, unbounded Eternal Source pulsing through every spec of being.

We are hidden fears and remorse hiding in every tissue, blocking the clear reception of the message of unconditional love.

We are dynamically radiant, unbelievably beautiful creations.

The Energy Portrait holds clues and stories of our evolution as an individual. It may describe in its visual aspects we have constructed our own survival mechanisms housed in each of our specialized centers of being, or chakras.

The specific colors of the chakras in each individual may vary from the colors many people have come to know from their studies, but there are basic vibrations in the gates of the body that tend to appear in the chakras. Variations of these colors may indicate a particular manner or level of enthusiasm – or its opposite: apathy or fear – with which the energy center plays its role.

We’ll look here at two energy centers whose rhythms and pulses we feel easily from day tot day; the solar plexus and the heart.

Usually in tones of gold to orange, the solar plexus may show itself to be woven of cords or threads of a particular, specific substance or vibration. Such threads or cords are frequently skills and strengths gained in other lifetimes or, if you prefer, waveforms or dimensions, depending on how you prefer to define the other realities in which the soul creates its journeys. Or it may show itself to be a polished drum, a copper bowl, a vortex of gorgeous, spinning flame, or in other ways present itself to the Energy Portraitist, who can help the subject of the Energy Portrait understand something about how he or she has constructed the safety net that allows her or him to move through life without crippling fear.

The heart is also a graphic demonstration of the person’s core being. The two colors that most frequently show up in that area of an Energy Portrait are jade green and shades of pink. The pink demonstrates an affectionate nature and the desire and ability to love others generously, with joy and happiness. People whose heart chakras overflow with fuchsia flurries and plump pink petals frequently stimulate feelings of love and ease in others. We say about such people, “They make me feel good.” When the heart shows itself in a strong jade green, that person is someone who, while others may not enjoy being in their presence as much as the pink-hearted person, helps others feel safe simply by being there. The green is the symbol of the drawbridge being down so that all who are in the vicinity may cross the moat and find safety in the castle. The green-hearted person is the generous soul whose heart offers sanctuary.

The Energy Portrait offers up the secrets of the soul’s mission. It plays the movie in the artist/healer’s comprehension of how you overcame the avalanche in the mountain pass; the cruel parent; the loss of a child; the endless journeying before finding rest. It contains the hidden memories, the strengths and dreams that had to be tucked away and perhaps locked away lest the bullies – whoever they were – would find that we were secretly more capable, more powerful, and more able to make up our own rules than they were willing to allow.

The Energy Portrait also includes and reveals to us our off-planet nature, our roles as emissaries from another time and place in the universe of possible galaxies, and the ways in which we express and carry forth the imprint and message of the Divine.

The Energy Portrait sings these secrets back to us through line, color, and perhaps, depending on the artist, sound: through singing, chanting, and speaking. It may also include symbols and characters from the Language of Light as it comes through the artist/healer channeling the soul housed in front of her. These symbols, as well as the fanciful shapes that may appear almost as decorations on the Energy Portrait, are manifestations of energy from other dimensions: faery, angelic, divine, and off-planet. They sometimes appear in metallic colors, which indicate the somewhat hollow timbre of a being that is not, as we are in our physical bodies, tempered by the emotions and instincts of our animal nature.

The Energy Portrait can be used as a healing tool in several ways: as a physical reflection, a mirror, of your outrageous glory. It has proven useful as an illustration of stress points in the body; and it articulates clues to your hidden caches of wisdom, brilliance, strengths as yet untested.