I M Perfect lady

Tag: expanding

  • A More Artful Life.

    Here is an interesting view of creativity from The Artist Way, by Julia Cameron.

    “Spiritual Electricity – The Basic Principles.”

    “For most of us, the idea that the creator encourages creativity is a radical thought. We tend to think, or at least fear, that creative dreams are egotistical, something that God wouldn’t approve of for us. After all, our creative artist is an inner youngster and prone to childish thinking. If our mom or dad expressed doubt or disapproval for our creative dreams, we may project that same attitude onto a parental god. This thinking must be undone.”

    “What we are talking about is an induced – or invited spiritual experience. I refer to this process as spiritual chiropractic. We undertake certain spiritual exercises to achieve alignment with the creative energy of the Universe.”

    “If you think of the Universe as a vast electrical sea in which you are immersed and from which you are formed, opening to your creative changes you from something bobbing in that sea to a more fully functioning, more conscious, more cooperative part of that ecosystem.”

    As a teacher, I often sense the presence of something transcendent – a spiritual electricity, if you will – and I have come to rely on it in transcending my own limitations. I take the phrase inspired teacher to be a quite literal compliment. A higher hand than just my own engages us. Christ said, “Where ever two or more are gathered together, there I am in your midst.” The god of creativity seems to feel the same way.”

    “The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity. Those who speak in spiritual terms routinely refer to God as the creator but seldom see creator as the literal term for artist. I am suggesting you take the term creator quite literally. You are seeking to forge a creative alliance, artist-to-artist with the Great Creator. Accepting this concept can greatly expand your creative possibilities.”

    “As you work with the tools in this book, as you undertake the weekly tasks, many changes will be set in motion. Chief among these changes will be the triggering of synchronicity: we change and the Universe furthers and expands that change. I have irreverent shorthand for this that I keep taped to my writing desk: “Leap and the net will appear.”

    “It is my experience both as an artist and as a teacher that when we move out on faith into the act of creation, the universe is able to advance. It is a little like opening the gate at the top of a field irrigation system. Once we remove the blocks the flow moves in.”

    “Again, I do not ask you to believe this. In order for this creative emergence to happen, you don’t have to believe in God. I simply ask you to observe and note this process as it unfolds. In effect, you will be midwiving and witnessing your own creative progression.”

    “Creativity is an experience – to my eye, a spiritual experience. It does not matter which way you think of it: creativity leading to spirituality or spirituality leading to creativity. In fact, I do not make the distinction between the two. In the face of such an experience, the whole question of belief is rendered obsolete. As Carl Jung answered the question of belief late in his life, “I don’t believe; I know.”
    Julia Cameron

    What I love the most is that being creative is being your spiritual self…And being your creative self you are dancing with your spirit and dancing with your spirit, your partner is the Universe.

    Julia at one point suggests that we don’t all have to be artists, but we can have a more artful life.

  • The Artist Way.

    December 1, 2004, I began writing Morning Pages, a tool in the book, “The Artist Way,” A Course in Discovering and Recovering your Creative Self, by Julia Cameron.

    Here Julia explains the Morning Pages.

    “There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages. These daily meanderings are not meant to be Art. Or even writing. I stress that point to reassure the nonwriters working with this book. Writing is simply one of the tools. Pages are meant to be, simply, the act of moving the hand across the page and writing whatever comes to mind. Nothing is too petty, too silly, too stupid, or too weird to be included.”

    “The Morning Pages are not supposed to sound smart – although sometimes they might. Most times they won’t and nobody will ever know except you. Nobody is allowed to read your morning pages except you. And you shouldn’t even read them yourself for the first eight weeks or so. Just write three pages, and stick them into an envelope. Or write three pages in a spiral notebook and don’t leaf back through. Just write three pages and three more the next day.”

    “Although occasionally colorful, the morning pages are often negative, frequently fragmented, often self-pitying, repetitive, stilted or babyish, angry or bland – even silly sounding. Good!”

    “All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down stands between you and your creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the car, the weird look in your lover’s eye – this stuff eddies through your consciousness and muddies our days. Get it on the page.”
    Julia Cameron

    Six and a half years later I read my first Morning Pages, and she is absolutely correct, they are rambling, fragmented, petty and all over the board, but I recall enjoying them.

    Sitting down with a notepad, a bunch of well sharpened pencils and writing three pages worth. Let me tell you, you do have to scratch and sift to find three pages worth.

    It is amazing what pours out of you once you begin, “Good Morning Pages….”

    I had a problem calling them pages I kept calling them papers. Nonetheless, I wrote. I wrote mindless chitchat for three days, and then it was discovered that my father was a pedophile on Dec 4th and there shows a break of about a week and a half and then I picked up a pencil and wrote again.

    The Morning Pages became journals and the journals changed into a blog, but the writing continued, the exploration and discovery and recovery deepened…

    This tool literally saved me as I walked into deep waters of life, however, I feel I want to go back and pick up where I left off, doing The Artist Way. Reading the book and doing the Twelve Week Exercises.

    As I begin again, I have invited a bunch of Lady Friends to join me…and I am excited I do have a few takers! Anyone can join…there is room for everyone!

    I am excited to begin again, as I was back then, for I felt I was idling along in life on pause or repeat perhaps and was feeling like I needed to open myself up wider…to grow or stretch, to expand my life to include more artist like things, classes or outings etc…and I feel that again.

    I am once again stepping it up a level or kicking it up a notch, expanding my horizons, using this one life and experiencing more that it has to offer, adding to me some new and different things.

    I will go back to handwriting the three pages each morning. I can’t wait to see what happens. I have missed the sharpened pencils and the exercise of writing without a thought…and even more excited to have Lady Friends who will join me on The Artist Way.

    Smug mug pics 992

  • Growing Me.

    There is another word that has screwed up more people than being perfect, and that is being normal.

    What is normal?

    Can you spot a normal person in a lineup?

    Inside of us isn’t there a specifically designed normal for us, one that is specially made by the path that we walked?

    Normal in the dictionary says to conform to the standard.

    What is the standard?

    Who designed the standard in each situation and can the standards change?

    I had to look up standard; it says the level of quality.

    Quality of what?

    How can we know the best quality and isn’t our best the best quality?

    Do we have to measure ourselves against others standards?

    So normal is conforming to standards of quality.

    But who are the quality makers?

    Who decides whether I reached the level called normal?

    To me, this seems like perfect recipe for failing to always be looking outward to the judges of quality for the nod of approval, instead of creating a normal for you.

    It is normal for me to run, from groups that seem to enjoy brainwashing conformity, as a newly freed mind!

    It is normal for me to embrace all things free after being held captive by a mental mind for 40 years.

    Yet is this normal?

    Perhaps I did overshoot the mark and I have landed in a land beyond normal.

    Some feel ‘normal’ in abusive situations for that is all they ever have known, to them that’s normal’.

    That is the only quality or standard they know.

    Maybe it is only when you no longer like that standard or that quality that you strive for a higher level, a new normal for you.

    This new normal for you is personal, societies standards, nor your friends or parents don’t measure it, it is an inside job.

    Inside of you, something tells you that you are ready for a new normal.

    You no longer are comfortable doing that which you have done, and want to raise the standard by which you live.

    You then move to a new normal for you.

    What is normal is conforming to standards you now have.

    I feel we re-set our standards time and time again, the more we learn the more re-setting we do.

    I had previously set standards by my parents, until I saw their standards, and then I began creating my own standards.

    What was normal for me for 46 years was their standard, not mine.

    Now I have a new normal and in this new normal, I reset my standards all the time, they seem to be fluid and life changing.

    There is no mark that I will hit and say “Bingo” I am now stuck at this normal.

    My life and me are normally changing, we are not stuck unchanging like a plastic flower, we are like a real live growing me.

    I love that I am not done growing, for I think that is dead.

    I am a normal growing me.

  • In Peace I Lay Down

    As I lay in a floor pose in yoga today, I became aware of the lump in my chest, and I wondered what they would find at my sonogram today.

     

    My doctor thought that perhaps it is an infected milk duct, and I thought while on the floor, how odd that is, since I am not nursing, I wonder how that could happen.

     

    My next thought, what have I been nurturing or holding close like a baby to my chest and what energy is in this area?

     

    The energy in this area is my heart, where I feel my feelings, where I express my self.

     

    My next thought was that I have been holding close to me things that hurt me. 

     

    Holding and wanting to nurture hurtful people, allowing them close into my space, opening my heart, and then getting hurt emotionally when I am misunderstood and once again and set outside.

     

    There is not only an emotional toll, but also a physical toll this is taking on my body.

     

    Today as I lay there I knew I had to let them out of my heart, let go of hanging on and release them…and the line in a hymn came in “God will take care of you…”

     

    In tears and in peace I lay down.