Written by: Helen Kagan, Executive Contributor
Executive Contributors at Brainz Magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise.
In my new Series “Choices & Us” of 12 Episodes published once a month which I’m creating especially for Brainz, I am going to bring to the surface and address various deep seeded issues, beliefs, patterns, questions – all those bottoms of the “tip of the iceberg” stuff that we’re usually dealing with on a daily basis often having no idea where they come from, how they affect us, or what to do with them. You can read the 1st article from this Series published on Oct. 4th, 2022.
1. Life happens To us or Life happens For us. Can you see/feel the difference?
I personally believe that life is not happening to us, it is happening for us. I believe that our experiences (both ‒ good and bad, positive and negative) are given to us to learn, improve, enhance, and ultimately evolve. I believe that these “lessons” are intentionally provided for us to help us shift from our “old stories” and to create new ones. What do you think is the ultimate Lesson in Life? Is it different for everyone, or is it pretty much the same for all of us, Spiritual Beings on a Human Journey? (this is just my understanding of who we are). What is the grandest Lesson a person can discover on their Journey called Life? I believe that it is when we realize – i.e. become conscious, become aware, discover, un-cover, have a life-changing experience, have an epiphany (any and all of these are valid!) ‒ that we are Souls in a Body with the Mind, and not the other way around. That we ARE Spiritual Beings on a Human Journey, and not the other way around.
"Be the light at the end of the tunnel for someone who only sees darkness." ‒ (Author unknown)
I believe that it is critically important to do everything we do ‒ with love vs. hate. As an Empath I feel and experience that unfortunately, there’s too much hate on our planet Earth. I think that it’s very important to believe that we all are Love, that “love is all we need”, that we were created from Love and to be Love, and just because Love & Gratitude have the highest vibrational frequency, when we begin to live from the place of Love, we become it. We embody it. And then ‒ we can bring it to the World to share. My HealingArts™ does just that. This is exactly what I communicate in my art while using embedded spiritual messages, energetically balanced composition, sacred geometry, high frequencies of constellations of colors, and some other secret ingredients… :) And yes, I constantly remind myself too… ‒ remember to do everything with Love and Gratitude.
What I am constantly learning in my “lessons” is that for many of us, creatives, art – is a spiritual path, a transformational process, a way of being. I also believe that art is a catalyst for healing individuals, society and the environment. I do believe and practice the inter-connectedness of mind, body and spirit. And I believe that now, more than ever, our World needs the positive energy and spiritually-based intentions, beliefs and values. My “HealingArts” can be an answer to many. You can just look at my art, take a deep breathe, inhale the bright healing colors and positively charged high-dimensional frequencies of Love & Light. Then relax, let go, become grateful for this moment of “here and now”, and just enjoy the feeling… Then repeat. You are also welcome to browse www.HelenKagan.com.
2. Gratitude. We can’t achieve success without help along the way. Who are you grateful for who helped you get where you are?
I totally believe there’s always help available to us. It can come in very different ways, shapes, and forms, but it is definitely there for us. However, I also believe it is our own responsibility to reach out, ask for help, even if we feel quite self-sufficient and independent and don’t think we need that helping hand, or feel deserving… Remember ‒ “ask and it’s given”? It took me many years to realize that! But now, after multiple “lessons” (which are not “mistakes”!) I am grateful to God, Universe, Higher Power, Angels, Archangels, all spiritual beings, my family, my friends, and everyone else who’s been helping me (both, intentionally and unintentionally, directly, indirectly or adversely) to stay strong, to keep going, to never give up, to continue creating and bring my soulful services, my heart, and my art to those in need, regardless any difficulties, challenges, upheavals, illnesses, and all other complexities of my own Life.
I am grateful to all my big Teachers, to my colleagues, my Team members, my business partners, coaches, speakers, and all other professionals who keep providing great services in our challenging unprecedent times, bloody protests, wars, political, economic & ideological upheavals, broken dreams, lost jobs, closed businesses, and just many crushed lives…
I am grateful to all publishers, Magazines, Catalogs publishing articles about my HealingArts™, Galleries for exhibiting my art, collectors for buying my art, all my wonderful friends in all realities (physical, virtual, and others) who support me in many different ways in many difficult times, for loving my unique art, and appreciating my Vision, Mission and Purpose.
I am grateful to all people I meet on my complex multidimensional Journey. And… my biggest gratitude goes, of course, to my father – a very strong resilient powerful man, a big scientist, a huge mind, a world-known inventor, a role model, a man of honor, an extremely talented person who has always pushed me (indirectly and quite directly) to be better and smarter, whom I always had to rebel against, to prove my own gifts and talents to, to look for and find that proverbial “approval” from (after getting several graduate degrees, earning my “uneasy” PhD in science, working in a few completely different fields, developing and running clinics, and finally doing what I love most – creating my art), to whom I always compared every man I’ve been with, who’s always ready to give a hand particularly when I don’t ask for it, who still (at the age of 86) continues to work and invent some new-age revolutionary scientific and engineering concepts and devices in different fields despite his own very challenging health condition… and who is, was, and always will be a very powerful figure in my Universe.
3. Are these Mistakes or Lessons?
Let’s think about some situations in your life when you felt you made one of the biggest mistakes ever. Or, perhaps, when you thought it was the biggest mistake when you first started your business. Or your relationship. Or your job. Or… Were you just crashed or were there any important lesson(s) you have hopefully learned?
Well… I have to confess ‒ I personally don’t believe in “mistakes” :) I believe there are always “lessons” given to us to learn from. Sometimes they can be really hard, even harsh, but… I want to believe that they all appeared in our reality for one and only reason – to make us better. I can say I made a lot of mistakes, and not only when I first started my business, my relationship, my family... I can say I always trusted people and thought that everyone I met on my Journey had the exact same set of values, dignity and integrity like I do. They did not. I can say I had a lot of people who took advantage of me, used, abused and betrayed me. And all of the above will be true – but only from one perspective. Because I can choose to say (remember “Choices & Us”!) that I had a lot of “lessons” given to me to learn about people, to learn about who is right and who is wrong for me to have anything to do with, how to be/live/work with them, how to communicate to them what I need, what to expect from them in response, and even ‒ what to do when you live your life on Purpose while they are not. The last one is the toughest one for me. What about you?
I trust that my own many sad, tragic, and traumatizing “stories” ‒ are still not mistakes, but they are my “old stories” that need to be shifted because these “old stories” that constitute my “old reality” need to be changed for the new ones which will create my “new reality”. You know why? Because it will help me tremendously to start anew, to deeper connect with my True Self, to live from a place of Love & Gratitude, to embody the Light that I AM. And because I do believe that in accordance with many of our new age spiritual leaders ‒ “we create our own Reality”.
I can cite hundreds and hundreds of resources and references ‒ from scientists, neurobiologists, quantum physicists, renowned authors, and many other authorities such as Bruce Lipton, Gary Null, Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Wayne Dyer, Miguel Ruiz, Dan Millman, Gary Zukav, Neale Donald Walsch, and I can go on and on… And one of the quintessential learnings from all these amazing teachings is that “we are Creators of our own reality”. We are here, on this planet Earth, to live our Purpose, our Truth, and we all, individually and as a society, create our reality. Just think about it… It’s huge, right?
4. Pandemic and its consequences, inflation and other financial challenges, mental health, environmental changes, and many other big topics. What’s your expertise?
Mine of course, is in the fields of Mental Health, Spirituality, Art, and Energy Healing (also called Energy Psychology). My Purpose, Vision and Mission is to understand HOW I can integrate them all in and deliver through my unique HealingArts™. Why? Because I strongly believe that if we don’t heal ourselves first, we simply won’t have a healthy society, healthy environment, nor a healthy Planet.
“The primary cause of unhappiness is never the situation but your thoughts about it”. ‒ Eckhart Tolle
Since I am being invited to Brainz as an Executive Contributor and an expert in the above fields to present my unique brand HealingArts™, as an artist, healer, and first of all – a woman, I would like to remind all the readers (both men and women) that we, women, are beautiful, loving, caring, insightful, intuitive, and just simply amazing creatures :). All of us. Whether we are aware of this or not, whether we’re living our Truth or not, whether we are still living in a “survival mode” or have already made our conscious choice to journey “from surviving to “thriving”… Regardless, I want us to remember that we, women, are Beautiful. We are Lovable. And we are Enough. I am not sure that we all are necessarily from Venus, but we definitely are lovers, keepers, and caregivers ‒ by default. The vast majority of us are trying to live our lives by taking care of others, most often BEFORE we take care of our own needs. This. Is. Wrong.
I’ve been learning my “tough lessons” about needing to change the way I live my life simply because there won’t be anyone to live it if I continue doing what I do expecting different results… (remember this popular “definition of insanity”?) As a holistic healer and a Mental Health practitioner I can say that this definition is quite correct. If we, wonderful loving and caring women, won’t learn how to take care of ourselves first (i.e. to put a proverbial oxygen mask on ourselves first), and continue to give yourselves away, and literally waste your energy trying to “fix, rescue or save” others, then we still continue living in our co-dependent and so habitually comfortable reality or pattern (even if it’s abusive, disrespectful or terrifying – we often continue doing it…). I do know this by fact as I’ve experienced these “lessons” many times because I didn’t learn anything the first time around… Yes, I have always been living my Life with dignity, integrity and intensity, just in my hypervigilant “superhero” mode of saving the World, often just one person at a time, always working or studying or working plus studying, doing it 25/8, and literally killing myself while helping others. I got my lessons then and there. At least I hoped that I did. But then… yes, guilty as charged ‒ I repeated the same “mistakes/lessons”, only in slightly different ways and in different areas… Then, there were new ones. And more other ones. Yep, I have had many lessons. And I do believe they are not mistakes! They are all lessons to learn from. And I still keep learning. It’s a life – long process, can’t happen overnight. But I’d never call them mistakes. Because they were lessons teaching me something critically important about me as a Human, as a Woman, as a Caregiver, Lover, Wife, Mother, Daughter, Healer, Scientist, Creative, Artist, and most importantly ‒ about what I need to change, and how I can do that. These “lessons” were and are transformational. Some were almost unbearable. The ones with “life & death scenarios”. Many of which showed me that I really had to change my Life ‒ which of course is not an easy task! And, as a result of my many “lessons”, I did completely change my life, many times, and am still doing it. Again and again. This is how I understand “evolving”.
I am wondering if NOW we are living in the right time to change our Reality by changing our limiting beliefs, our habitual patterns that no longer serve us. Why? Because we lived through a very challenging extremely difficult exhausting stressful and really scary for many, 2020. Then – through a very politically economically societally and psychologically charged, 2021. Because we were shown, literally in our face, that if we won’t change our own reality, this so-called “new normal” reality will change us, and not always in a way or direction we want. Because if we won’t shift our own reality – Life will bring to us new “lessons” to learn, and those new “lessons” could be even more challenging and/or devastating. And, because living from a place of Light, Love & Gratitude is incredibly nice, soulful, and rewarding.
We are now at the end of 2022. We all experienced 2020 as a very transformational year – good and positive for some, bad and negative for most … That was a year of many Losses. A year of many Lessons. A year to embrace and share Gratitude despite all possible challenges and difficult circumstances. 2021 was no less difficult yet even more transformational considering the losses & lessons we receive in 2020. 2021 – made us learn more about our individual and collective Journey to our Truth, Love, Gratitude, and Enlightenment. What is our “new normal” and our new “Lessons” of 2022?
Helen Kagan “Healing Arts”.
One of my own very strong (positive!) beliefs is that art heals. And this is exactly why I continue creating in many different genres, ways, and shapes! I believe that art is a catalyst for healing individuals, society, and the environment. I believe that for many of us, creatives, art is a spiritual path, a transformational process, and a way of being. I believe in the inter-connectedness of mind, body, and spirit. I believe that now, more than ever, our World needs positive energy and spiritually-based intentions, beliefs, and values. As a statement of all my beliefs, my “HealingArts” is my unique way to synergistically bring together fine art, expressive arts, and the art of healing to enhance well-being, make the right choices, bring Love & Light, and embrace humanity. My laser focused attention and intention now is dedicated to developing my newest unique venue integrating fashion, design, art, and healing ‒ WearableHealingArts™ ‒ to make healing through art more accessible to everyone. The new website www.WearableHealingArts.com will be functional very soon. Stay tuned! 😊
The next article of this Series “Choices & Us” on the creative Journey of my HealingArts™ will be published next month. It will be about Success, Failure, and Habits of highly successful people. In the meantime, please visit www.HelenKagan.com to enjoy my healing colors, and perhaps even to meditate on the above concepts… Thanks for reading!
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Helen Kagan, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine
Helen Kagan Ph.D., a scientist, psychologist, artist, a pioneer of creating art with the intention to heal, is a creator of unique HealingArts™ for 30 years. Helen believes art is a catalyst for healing individuals & society and engaging Healthcare & Hospitality to encourage healing through art. As a severe PTSD survivor who dedicated her life to helping others, she synergistically integrates Fine Art, Expressive Arts & Art of Healing. “HealingArts” shown in multiple International Galleries, States, Countries, and Catalogs, won awards, named "Collectible Artist". Her Mission now is to develop a new unique venue integrating fashion, design, art & healing ‒ WearableHealingArts™ ‒ to make healing through art accessible to everyone.
