Welcome to the art/life trail ride!  Week by week our opportunity, from now until spring equinox, is to turn toward Inner Treasure. In order to accomplish this worthy and inspired goal we line up with

s l o w f l o w

Several weeks ago we shape-shifted. We became like a healthy youth, got super creative and, inspired by the modeling offered by Jasper Lotus Hawkins, we embarked on the joyful concept of being horse.

We made space to play. We imagined running free. We took on the power and grace of Horse Medicine. We made room to expand into a more natural relationship with our Experience.

Slowing our relationship with time is part of that natural way of being. Week by week throughout fall and winter we honor the Inner Turn.

Moving inward and Being Horse are both ideal tools for becoming fluent and influential in our creative flow. Fall turns us toward inner strengths and provides the opportunity to tune-in and and tune-up the connection and the commitment that we have with our dreams, visions and goals.

Here’s a recent capture, so fitting for this part of our journey, from Jasper’s Face Book page:

“To access the spirit requires imagination and curiosity, a form of not knowing and not requiring an answer. As Henry Poincare, a colleague of Einstein wrote, “It is by logic that we prove, but by intuition that we discover.” The native imagination begins in the realm of feeling and sensory awareness and emerges into consciousness through an ability to suspend certainty.

It is in this precise way that horses can become our teachers, offering us a whole new world of sensory awareness where new insight and new interpretations can form.”

Horse Sense for the Leader Within by Ariana Strozzi

These three months are for going deeper, mining an art/life increasingly rich in meaning and contribution…increasing our personal horse power.

 

The Gate, Drozda, Acrylic/panel, 48 x 36”

There is a sparkling brilliance and a cell deep radiance, like gold, within each of us. To connect with this wealth we’re practicing being deeply rooted. We’re leaning in and trusting that our golden creative finds, like magic seeds buried in the fertile earth, will sprout come the spring.

“You have to be burning with an idea, or a problem, or a wrong that you want to right. If you’re not passionate enough from the start, you’ll never stick it out.”

 Steve Jobs

Thanks to friend Kathleen Stefancin on whose Face Book page I saw this quote.

Imagine the gifts that you will discover during this six months of seeking your deep Inner Treasure.

Entering November on the Natural Calendar we become aware that no matter what our treasure may BE it is…indeed… meant to be shared!

No hoarding permitted!

November reminds us of the natural order and the natural end of things. Leaves turn, seeds drop to the earth and in its own time each and everything dies. November reminds us to spend more time in the stable and to be always open to and preparing to learn new ways for letting go. Letting go is liberating. Letting go brings freedom. We can let go of the clutter in our minds and in our spaces. We can become a bit more spacious within.

Our keyword for the November module of the art/life trail ride is:

Introspection/Death and Rebirth

In the Field of Dewachen, Drozda, Acrylic/canvas

WHEN DEATH COMES

When death comes
like the hungry bear in autumn;
when death comes and takes all the bright coins from his purse
to buy me, and snaps the purse shut;
when death comes
like the measle-pox
when death comes
like an iceberg between the shoulder blades,
I want to step through the door full of curiosity, wondering:
what is it going to be like, that cottage of darkness?

And therefore I look upon everything
as a brotherhood and a sisterhood,
and I look upon time as no more than an idea,
and I consider eternity as another possibility,
and I think of each life as a flower, as common
as a field daisy, and as singular,
and each name a comfortable music in the mouth,
tending, as all music does, toward silence,
and each body a lion of courage, and something
precious to the earth.

When it’s over, I want to say all my life
I was a bride married to amazement.
I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.
When it’s over, I don’t want to wonder
if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don’t want to find myself sighing and frightened,
or full of argument.

I don’t want to end up simply having visited this world

 Mary Oliver

Death is advancing naturally like a shadow on the cave wall. This is just one reason why it is so meaningful to enter the deep quiet Underworld space and carefully extract the gifts, talents and the horse power that is truly yours. You want to uncover them and brush them loose from the interior of your cave.

It’s time to gather your gifts together so that they can be seen.

Will you name them?

Are you ready now to begin?

 

In Buddhist teachings the theme, over and over again, is it to turn toward the suffering and the causes of suffering. We don’t shy away. We peer into the volatility and explosive nature of those parts of ourselves that are yearning to be soothed and comforted. We are invited in many different ways and under all circumstances to acknowledge the binding and common denominator, whether bug or bird, young or old, educated or ignorant, rich or poor: life brings suffering and all beings seek happiness. 

To be open in heart and to be mindful of the difficulty of the path and then to dance with the demons and not be afraid…this requires a mastery of thought processes and emotion. It requires training. Year by year we set aside this time to turn inward to assess our growth and maturity…to access our horse power. 

Dance Life with Courage

Gabrielle Roth’s words fit the celebration of this inner turn as we compassionately engage the inward healing  journey.

In many shamanic societies, if you came to a shaman (medicine person) complaining of being disheartened, dispirited, or depressed, they ask you one of four questions.

• When did you stop dancing?

• When did you stop singing?

• When did you stop being enchanted by stories?

• When did you stop finding comfort in the sweet territory of silence?

The fall and winter seasons of the feminine are for dancing, singing, being enchanted by stories, and for finding comfort in silence where we retrieve the instinctive knowing of the soul…our instinctive and intuitive horse sense.

Dancing, singing, storytelling, and silence are the four universal healing salves. We might add feeling the wind in our mane heals too.

Earth Dancer, Drozda, Mixed media/board, 18 x 18″

Come into this season as explorer of the Underworld. Be primed to heal all the suffering and the causes of suffering simply by being open to the reality that surrounds.

Some of us suffer over health, some over wealth. Some of us become upset, worrying over what we can or cannot bring to the world through our creative acts and ideas. Some of us suffer over failure, some suffer success.

Some ache over relationships and some over loneliness. Some of us have anxiety about how it will all shake out when we reach the end of the trail. 

Pull of the Water Moon, Drozda, Acrylic/canvas, 18 x18″

Some of us are distressed about the state of the world and/or the state of things as we see them unfolding beneath our feet or over our heads or as we look at any and every direction that we face at eye level.

There are stressful situations and circumstances that will jump out of the bushes and knock us off our feet. These ailments and afflictions can be filtered through the way that we see our experience and the world view that we hold.

Take a deep breath

November is the Introspection/Death and Rebirth moon/month

Realize that we are each the Wise Woman, the Heroine and the wild horse/Crone. We are each yearning to Sage rather than age. Role models exist although they are not necessarily easy to find or to follow.

Where are your role models?

Who supports your journey?

Where do you seek solace and understanding?  

While moving into the depths of your womb cave, week by week, mine the models that uplift and support your idea of what’s possible.

This is the time for discovering and uncovering soul-knowing. When we go soul deep we find rewards.  BE a “technician of magic” who can transform her reality. With pick ax and brush in hand walk through the doors that were once closed. 

 

Cave painting, Pech Merle Cave, Cele Valley, France

Today I told a 4-year-old person that now I’m a horse on the inside.

They were okay with that.

Jasper Lotus Hawkins

November’s Introspection reminds that balance brings you to your Center, your inner gold mine, your womb cave. Whatever term you choose there is a power base that creates your root system…now is the time to go home. We are constantly reminded that even 15 minutes a day can connect us to our roots.

Home is your deep wide Center…this is where you are anchored and allow space for the coming together of linear/masculine/active and non-linear/feminine/receptive attributes.

It’s like a marriage of your inner masculine/doing and inner feminine/being and when co-mingled there is the marriage/awareness of being at home. Here you can discover the creative response, the intuitive and instinctual horse sense, rather than the stress reaction to current events.

Thanks for being on the trail…as we travel in and down…together.

To our creative joy, AH HO!!

d

P.S. Add your horse sense, share your Inner Turn…leave a comment and bring us your gifts… in all and any ways that feel instinctive and natural to you.