December Sky at my retreat farm, Drozda

You knock at the door of reality. You shake your wings, loosen your shoulders, and open.
Rumi

Welcome to our weekly art/life trail ride…Like many of us I stepped back from routine last week to be with family.

I’m deeply grateful to have a wonderful and funny clan to hang out with. We have sassy fun and are thankful to be in one another’s company.

Cultivating an attitude of gratitude is a smart pack-a-long for the art/life trail…all year long.

Take a moment and name ten things that you are grateful for.

Many of us have kept gratitude journals or gratitude lists from time to time. There is a potent power to keeping a specific documentation; a place to deposit evidence of ways in which your art/life works. I call it a Grace Account and when you have it at the ready you can make withdrawals when you come upon obstacles and obstructions on your art/life path.

Let’s gaze at the grace of the art/life trail. Let’s make an X marks the spot. You know…like an old treasure map.

 

We need to have tools to get us through the narrow passes and danger zones. It helps to have a support network so together we might gaze upon all that is actually good and true and beautiful about living the most rich and flourishing art/life.

This week I place my X to mark my grace filled/treasured spot by sharing Gary Snyder’s poem:

Journal Page, Drozda, 2013

Gratitude to Mother Earth (After a Mohawk Prayer)

Gratitude to Mother Earth, sailing through night and day
and to her soil, rich, rare, and sweet
In our minds so be it.

Gratitude to Plants, the sun-facing light-changing leaf and fine root hairs,
standing still through wind and rain, their dance is in the flowing spiral grain
In our minds so be it

Gratitude to Air, bearing the soaring Swift and the silent Owl at dawn,
breath of our song clear spirit breeze
in our minds so be it

Gratitude to Wild Beings, our brothers and sisters teaching secrets, freedoms, and ways self-complete, brave, and aware
In our minds so be it

Gratitude to Water, clouds, lake, rivers, glaciers holding or releasing , streaming through all our bodies salty seas
In our minds so be it

Gratitude to the Sun, blinding pulsing light through trunks of trees, through mists, warming caves where bears and snakes sleep—he who wakes us—
In our minds so be it

Gratitude to the Great Sky who holds billions of stars—and goes yet beyond that— beyond all powers and thoughts and yet is within us—

Grandfather space The Mind is his Wife
So be it

Dream Boat #1, Drozda, Acrylic/board, 30 x 30″, 1997

We’re at the place in the moon/month when gratitude is natural…this takes place each month one week before the new moon. Mark your calendar…get to know this last week before the new moon as a culminating time period. In Buddhist practice this would be when we are ‘grateful to everyone.’

The Introspective/Death & Rebirth moon cycle closes on December 11.  At that point we’ll cross over into the Strength Moon. Begin now to call in your Strength…be willing to be the one who stands for what is good and true and beautiful.

Consider the Strength that has accrued for you throughout the 3 quadrants that we’ve moved through thus far: spring, summer, fall. It makes sense to note what you’ve grown and to be willing to go out to your tree and pick it.

X-ercise:

As the push and pull of the season cranks up it’s a beneficial time to note the polarity and the duality of the 12 keywords that carry us month by month around the natural calendar.

The 12 keywords give us 12 focus points that ferry us around the ‘medicine wheel of the art/life’ year by year.

January Clear Seeing is balanced by July Growth

February Renewal is balanced by August Trust

March Refine is balanced by September Love

April Clarity is balanced by October Experience

May Wisdom is balanced by November Introspection/Death & Rebirth

June Illumination is balanced by December Strength

The keyword for your birth month represents your birth gift on the natural calendar. Pay attention to how much this quality has helped nurture you…or not. Perhaps you’ve been unaware of the potential that it offers as a creative focus point. During this next year you might find that paying it mind causes it to expand.

See what sits as your opposite keyword. We view this as your birth challenge. Again, the sense of connection to the energy of this quality may or may not be on your radar…consciously open up the space.

Use the tension between these two points as a creative tool on your art/life trail ride. Notice the way that these two qualities provide you a focus for the times when stress comes to visit. Like positive and negative battery poles these two points can fuel the momentum that carries you forward.

X-ample: I’m born in February. My birth gift is the ability to Renew. It comes to me easily to start something and to see the possibility. On the other side of the wheel sits my challenge point: Trust. This is an area where I have been mightily tested.

Time and again, in my formative years I got tripped up, injured, betrayed and even violated. Slowly and surely I have learned to navigate the terrain in my art/life staying on the most open path knowing that can be trusted. I continue to develop the capacity to see that it is safe for me to trust the art/life and to flourish during my trail ride.

What do you discover when you sit and contemplate the relationship between your pair of opposites?       

Opposites dissolve
within Nature’s Oneness where
Silence is golden

Bright words lose their sheen
in the pure, perfect Presence
of a morning mist

              Elizabeth Urabe

Since this is a creative X-perience…have a bit of fun and consult your thesaurus; look up your two keywords, use them in conversation and include them in your journal entries…begin to notice the way that these partnering energies push and pull your creative reins. Creative tension is a necessary tool in your art/life saddle bags.
Tension and stress… when used in service to breaking new trails… enhances the ride. A good rider holds the reins with gentle authority knowing that too much pressure in one hand or the other will create stress and confusion for our steed.

We can break new inner creative trails during the winter months. This is the time to move through the inner landscape noticing the visible clues as to where the next path fits into the scheme of the art/life. Distractions can be pushed back. We can take a long view and look ahead toward spring.

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 our monthly newsletter  ‘Luna See’ 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.