The truth is that, without writing, it is
difficult for most people to go into their thought. By writing you slow thought down, find its emotional context in experience, and give yourself the chance to feel its meaning. As E.M. Forster famously asked, “How can I tell what I think till I see what I say?
Writing lets you project your thoughts onto a surface and interact with them. Without writing, you risk losing touch with the thinker in yourself. If you write, you can remember who you are.
– Writing the Mind Alive Metcalf & Simon
Welcome to this week’s art/life trail ride…the path is opening wide and we are now able to pick up speed and get a long view…its September. We’re looking at natural rhythms and ways to make the seasons and cycles conscious tools in our materials stockroom. Writing to slow down and picking up trail speed seems paradoxical yet here we are on the edge of our seats, chomping at the bit, anxious to be on our way… writing about the direction we envision creates the sign posts to mark the path.
September isn’t only about leaves turning, temperatures cooling, a return to school and ‘a preparation for the preparation’ of the holidays ahead.
Personal Power Comes to a Focus Point in September
September’s keyword is Love. Once upon a time a circular format and monthly keywords were assigned to the calendar by the Native American name of Sun Bear. He gave a thoughtful gift to support slowing down and savoring the part we each play in the natural world.
He considered the animals and the trees, the soil, the waters and the air. He saw that we are all fellow travelers.
I agree with this way of walking through the world and I have practiced applying the twelve keywords and all of their expansive gifts to each of my walks round the wheel of the art/life since 1989. Here on the Art/Life blog we weave these qualities into the trail ride so that together we might form a community of ‘slow flow and hush to the rush’ creative minds. Whether in the studio (which is wherever our heart sings its song) or out in the world beyond, each of us can hold the qualities of grace and ease within the context of the keyword banner.
September offers us the chance to consider what Love is. Not the emotion of love which can be interpreted in countless ways; rather we make space for a bigger Self-Love.
How about a LOVE for your Compelling Vision?
How about LOVE for your North Star?
How about LOVE for your Destiny Path?
How about LOVE for that which is yours and yours alone to bring into the world….now there’s a place to get some traction and watch miracles occur.
This is the month each year to begin noticing new ways to consider making haste slowly and putting grace to your pace. No rush. No hurry.
2015 offers a full year for investing in Authentic Self Care. We either invest in what calls to us from a point of highest awareness or else we crash into confusion. The energy of this year has been asking for each of us to be about the creative work of aligning with integrity and authenticity. The month brings a laser beam of Love/Self-Love to support our efforts. We have a perfect blend this month for what Barbara Marx Hubbard calls ‘vocational arousal’. I LOVE her term…it amps up the life force of my creative commitment. I begin to see something coming into focus even if I have no idea where it will lead.
Ask yourself:
What will I create from this alchemical blend? What will I experience and express? What will I contribute?
I enjoy going into the studio with an empty mind yet somewhere in the recesses of my supply storehouse those intriguing questions come along to help direct each next step. For me the inquiry clears the trail.
When an issue arises and the road becomes bumpy think to say:
I’ll Handle That
I Will BE the Responsible One
The Buck Stops Here
I am the Shape-shifter
I STAND WITH AND FOR MY AUTHENTIC POWER
‘Earth Dance II’, Drozda, 2013, Mixed media/canvas, Private Collection
The Natural and most Real aspect of the year will align each of us with magnetism. Magnetic
attraction fostered in each situation, circumstance and relationship provides a powerful ground in a world that is essentially groundless.
In each and every one of our art/life experiences there’s been the chance this year to be The Alchemist and Shape-shifter; to take the leaden parts of life and turn them into gold.
How has that been going for you?
Here are some sign-posts on the way to being your most Authentic Alchemical Self…
Show Up
Don’t Be Shy
Walk Your Talk
BE Willing
Take Responsibility
Identify the inner lead that you will turn into gold
From the 2015 Lifecycle Forecast published in January:
The twelve months/thirteen moons before us are about courage, confidence, balance and stability. By September 2015 you will recognize your Shamanic Self, identified primarily by your capacity to shape-shift your experience as needed. There’s a good deal of stepping up and stepping out to be embraced during this walk around the wheel. Eighth level energy aligns with our resources and the critical need to set healthy boundaries. With this combination we naturally hunger to reconfigure our experience so that it aligns with the best possibility.
It’s September…look over your shoulder to last spring and reconnect to what you were passionate about and willing to make a commitment to. Something was eager to start at that time…it’s natural. It happens every year. Now we’re approaching the half way round the circle point and something wonderful is helping us go deeper. Something wants to be given its due.
Homework: sit quietly and take a few deep breaths…then take up pen and paper…real paper/real pen. Write a Love letter to yourself. In it celebrate and review what you’ve been doing and who you have been being for the past six months. Then if you feel like it expand that inquiry to encompass that past seven years.
Once complete place the pen in your opposite hand…let the other side of your brain speak…write a second Love letter using your non-dominate hand.
This homework will energize and activate both sides of your brain while also opening your heart to parts of you that may have been waiting to be embraced. Through this exercise meet the Alchemist within. Your Inner Alchemist creates greater expression. Celebrate!
WE CAN’T GET HERE FROM THERE
Being the Shape-shifter means that we have a sense of where the energy for the art/life comes from. There is that part that is bigger than the little ‘how can I do this?’, ‘who will help me?’ parts that needs to be acknowledged and a commitment must be made…otherwise it feels over whelming and heavy. What we’re looking to allow this month is opening and lightness…balance and play…serious play … spontaneous, instinctive and intuitive. Doors open now.
The way THERE is from HERE. Here is the center of the circle the place from which all of our inspiration emanates…like a still point pond deep in the center/central point of the creative well.
The four directions and the Central return, Drozda, Journal page, 2012
It’s September…look over your shoulder to last spring and reconnect to what you were passionate about and willing to make a commitment to.
What is My Current Vision?, Drozda, Spring 2015, Mixed media, Journal Page
Something was eager to start at that time…it’s natural. It happens every year. Now we’re approaching the half-way-round-the-circle point and something wonderful is helping us go deeper.
Something needs to be given its due
Studio Homework: sit quietly and take a few deep breaths…then take up pen and paper…real paper/real pen. Write a Self-Love letter to yourself. In your writing celebrate and review what you’ve been doing and who you have been being for the past six months. Then if you feel like it expand that inquiry to encompass the past seven years.
Once complete place the pen in your opposite hand…let the other side of your brain speak…write a second Self-Love letter using your non-dominate hand.
This studio homework will energize and activate both sides of your brain while also opening your heart to parts of you that may have been waiting to be embraced. Through this exercise meet the Alchemist within. Your Inner Alchemist creates greater expression. Celebrate!
Join the conversation…leave your comment or respond to a fellow rider…what inspires your desire to create the next step in your best art/life? For me it’s being open to being here week after week…spurring us on…get it? See you next week…with, truth be told, a gentle nudge and an ease in clearly the path so we can travel naturally rather than using painful spurs.
Reflection Wheel, Drozda, 2009
I am a working Heartist with more than thirty years of practice in supporting the creative best in each of us to come forth and shine. Join the movement: make joy the vocation of your mind.
Connect with the uplift of ‘Luna See’ and Lifecycle; time management tools for aligning with natural creative rhythms. Discover and uncover the ecstatic thrill of ‘making life the master peace’.
Let’s travel together into realms of calm and renewed heart-centered emphasis.
Through our shared journey with ‘Luna See’ our monthly newsletter and the creative consult service ‘Lifecycle’ you will discover and expand your ability to experience, express, create and contribute your deepest and wisest most authentic gifts to this unspeakably beautiful world.
Ohmygosh Iona, I have so much to say:-)
Your blog and the opening quote evokes and invokes so many memories, emotions, and images. This is good, real good as I am reminded again and again of that which matters. Following my experience at Arrowmont and my commitment to my own art/life, I discovered the writings of Natalie Goldberg (life changer). I followed her suggestions of morning writings and combined them with paper collage as I had committed to making one everyday.
Each day I would create a small postcard size collage and I would free write on the back. It was eye opening as I learned more about myself. I hoped to create 365 slices of my life but didn’t quite make it. The small collages started growing into larger pieces and the writings grew beyond the limited size.
While in Taos at another “slo-flow” art experience, I purchased her book, Living Color. I have to tell you, I was stymied! My shallow self was like, how can you be a painter, you are a writer. I was mad, I was offended, I was also very young in my developing artlife and did not understand , could not comprehend. I was also jealous, so clueless. Yet I always encouraged my art students of all ages to write…duh. I was obviously not making the connect in my own life.
As you go on to talk about love, I recalled something Natalie said…”I painted for that terrible overused word that a writer should never utter: love.
I write now and sometimes more often than other times. My problem is that I will sit out on my little deck, my sacred space, surrounded by the natural world and I write profusely albeit in my head. I am amazed at the thoughts I have and write about the metaphors evident in this organic space and my life and my artlife and it all becomes so clear. I begin to understand where I am presently, where I have come from and hopefully where I am headed. But then I go inside and am moving on to something else. Perhaps entering this west gate will slow me down and allow my ramblings to make it to the page.
I apologize this is such a long comment but…:-)
Then you talk about SunBear as you often refer to. Backstory…I returned from my second year volunteering at the Unity Concert in South Dakota, supporting the Lakota and all Indigenous culture in regaining their sacred lands. After a trip like this I usually retreat to process and reflect and gain knowledge, reading again about the Native American culture, their ceremonies, values and ways of life. Contemplating these ways of being and applying them to my own life. One of the books I ordered arrived later, after I’d absorbed four other ones. At first I was disappointed thinking, this isn’t what I thought I was getting. Nonetheless I opened it randomly and started reading and could not stop. The book? Sun Bear and others, Walking In Balance:-) W-O-W!!! I’ve been doing so much “work” and I think this book is helping me to finally understand my own “block” the leaden part of my life that has kept me moving forward into action…time to put the pedal to the metal, well maybe at the Spring gate. Haha, no rush. It is going to take some time to process and shape shift this lead into gold.
Thank you Iona. Happy Trails
Hi Cindy…I really appreciate that you have taken the time to ‘backtrack’ your trail ride so that you could pick up the impressions made in the soul earth that you’re exploring. This is a powerful testimonial to resistance and some of the many ways that the ‘inner marauders’ can attempt to block the path.
Yuppers…we are now moving through the West Gate and the time is perfect for sinking down into the rich loam of what has been making up the path to this point. Sit a spell. Reflect. Recollect. BE.
You’ve mapped it out here in a way that shows how consciously you’re riding the trail. Nothin’ wrong with looping back as necessary to pick up the scent once again.
Happy Trails indeed.
Well it’s been a long time since I took the class with you at MOCA and i’ll be honest, I haven’t read all your emails, but tonight I did. It never ceases to amaze me, and yet I know it shouldn’t, that the universe sends me messages just exactly when I need them. I’ve just made a major decision and I’m moving more into something that I’ve been pursuing since spring. I remember when I read my artist statement at the conclusion of the course and a few people said I should write …… well I heard today I’m going to be doing a little more of just that. Thank you for taking the time to send me your thoughts and knowledge ……. it matters, really matters. Thank you!
Howdy Amanda!! Your message feels like confetti falling from the sky!
I recall the feedback that you received and I am thrilled to hear your declaration of intent. THAT’S where the power lies…YES!!!
Nobody has to read my words/emails/notes/musings for me to realize that they matter. The first note I ever wrote into a notebook (a year after the sky fell with a violence in my sweet little art/life) stated, “Communication is the most important thing.” I was 20 years old and I have known since then that communicating to the self IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING!
Reading the quote at the opening of this weeks blog is like gold to me. I am so very excited to stand with you and for you…just as we all did back in the studio at MOCA.
Know that your voice is music to our ears. Write and then take the leap, when the time is right, and share…someone may be listening…someone may be encouraged, someone may pick up their pen and paper…you will open someone’s heart and mind. It’s why we are here. It’s what makes the art/life rich in meaning.
AH HO!!
Thanks so much Marianne…your message is so appreciated…I admit to having a bit of resistance to a weekly blog entry. I know we are all so very busy and I don’t want my falling into anyone’s email box as being ‘just one more thing to have to think about’ so thanks for your feedback…keep it coming!
I love that what we’re sharing here are creative ideas connecting and committing to the slow flow of natural time.
‘Inspiration sandwich’ is great!! That can be the name of the folder where you collect the entries that speak to you…or we could run a contest and have a vote…right now…I’m simply glad that we are here together learning to bring grace to the race….breathe space into the fast outer pace.
You have no idea how your “slow flow of time”……….your slow the flow, hush the rush words soothe me time after time! Keep it up! I think we all, in this crazy Western society of ours, need to hear that repeatedly to counteract the push and rush of invisible forces here. ………and thanks!…….think I WILL use that “Inspiration Sandwich” as a name for my folder of your blog posts!
Here’s to your Inspiration Sandwich’ 😉
I feel the same way…time and again I remind myself to slow er’ down…this ain’t no race. Taking those ten deep breaths several times a day…makes room for more of the art/life. Keeping note on what we value magically makes space to be with our work. I remember reading about a woman who wanted to write a book. She worked full time and had three young children. She made a commitment to her writing self. She cleaned out a closet/pantry in her kitchen and put in a small desk and two file boxes. She started getting up 1/2 hour earlier than the family and writing for 15 minutes every day. Two years later she had her sanity and a book. 15 minutes a day.
Love it when you toss a life preserver our way at just the right time, Donna!!! Deep breaths, baby steps, commitment to self, snippets of time in the direction of our dreams…………AHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! Bless your pea-pickin’ heart!!
Breaking our vision into manageable steps is a good and proven recipe for accomplishing whatever our heart desires…one step atta time.
Ok, that DOES it, Donna!!! Your posts/blogs are always so worthy of re-reading as the wonderful teaching tool, food-for-thought gift that they are, that I have resolved to begin copying them and putting them into a notebook for instant access and safekeeping! Even the illustrations help bring your message home ……. I think you should rename them, “Inspiration Sandwiches” or something! : ) They are just chock full of all kinds of nutritious goodies for the mind, heart, and soul!