I M Perfect lady

Tag: Julia

  • Living on the Blocks.

    Week 9, The Artist Way…Julia Cameron writes,

    “We’re more comfortable being a victim of artist’s block than risking having to consistently be productive and healthy.

    “An artistic U-Turn arrives on a sudden wave of indifference. We greet our newly minted product or our delightful process with “Aw, what does it matter anyhow?  It’s just a start.  Everybody else is so much further ahead…”

    “Yes, and they will stay that way if we stop working. The point is we have traveled light-years from where we were when we were blocked. We are now on the road, and the road is scary.  We begin to be distracted by roadside attractions or detoured by the bumps.”

    And here are a few sentences from the exercises at the end of the chapter.

    “Your choice to block is a creative U-Turn – we turn back on ourselves.  Like water forced to stand still, we turn stagnant.”   Julia

    These blocks are in Life and in Art. And we use them as an excuse as to why we can’t live a better life or create art. 

    And it is only ourselves that turn us around and heads us back to our old vices and excuses or fears.  We keep turning our backs on our truths, our desires, what we love, what brings us peace, our joy…in the good energy flow. 

    I see my life as a river where others lives are rocks cropping up or interests that are not crucial to my pathway, and instead of floating on by, I stop.  I stop my own flow in life.

    We each have specific rocks that stop us and then there are bends in the river, opportunities that float by, but we are too afraid to slip into the flow…or we are so busy doing things that are not important and they go by unnoticed. 

    It is just so interesting that Artist Blocks or Blocks of Addictions keep us from creativity…and they are all our choices.

    It is up to us to stop clinging to things that don’t serve us, that keeps us from living. 

    One big boulder in my life is ‘Responsibility’ and getting my work done first. 

    I focus on cleaning up my space instead of using that time to create.  I put so many rocks ahead of my flow, that my life seems heavy and hard. 

    I never looked at it this way…even though I lived it more often than not.  In fact slipping into the flow of life and playing in the currents and relaxing and letting the river take me, without saying no…is not very common in my life. 

    Most of my life has been spent on heavy rocks and in other people’s responsibility.  Getting used to flowing in my life will take some effort and will mean turning my back on ‘work’.  Who knew that work is a blockage in your life.

    Today, my one day off, and again I am working on cleaning up our house, the sewing machine sits…however, I did make a date with my husband for later on.

    In time, I will be able to discern how much free flowing time I have had and how much I have spent on the rocks, for I will feel its heaviness and know I got lost again living on the blocks.

    "Saying No can be the ultimate self-care."  Claudia Black

     

     

  • With me.

    In Chapter 8, Recovering a Sense of Strength (in The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron), she writes.

     

    “One of the most difficult tasks an artist must face is the primal one; Artistic Survival. All artist must learn the art of surviving loss; loss of hope, loss of face, loss of money, loss of self- belief.  In addition to our many gains, we inevitably suffer these losses in an artistic career.  They are the hazards of the road and, in many ways, its signposts.  Artistic losses can be turned into artistic gains and strengths – but not in the isolation of the beleaguered artist’s brain.”

     

    “ As mental-health experts are quick to point out, in order to move through loss and beyond it, we must acknowledge it and share it.  Because artistic losses are seldom openly acknowledged or mourned, they become artistic scar tissue that blocks artistic growth.  Deemed too painful, too silly, too humiliating, to share and so to heal, they become , instead, secret losses.”

     

    “If artistic creations are our brainchild, artistic losses are our miscarriages. Women often suffer terribly, and privately from losing a child who doesn’t come to full term. And as artist we suffer terrible losses when the book doesn’t sell, the film doesn’t get picked up, the juried show doesn’t take our paintings, the best pot shatters, the poems are not accepted, the ankle injury sidelines us for an entire dance season.”

     

    “We must remember that our artist is a child and that what we can handle intellectually far outstrips what we can handle emotionally.  We must be alert to flag and mourn our losses.”    Julia Cameron

     

    What I love about this first page of the chapter is how we have to learn how to survive loss.

     

    In life it seems we are so focused on other things, no one teaches us how to mourn the little things, so when the huge ones arrive, we too can use the same techniques.

     

    And I love how what we don’t mourn becomes our scar tissue, the bumps and bruises we did not sit with and honor their presence in our lives….don’t really disappear, but ride along gathering a thick skin…scar tissue.

     

    It will literally feel like we are tearing off the scab to now deal with loss from long past. To even sit with a self that was robbed of being so…all the little ways I failed to hold on to me.

     

    I now am gathering to me all the parts that I gave away, and bringing them back to my center, my attention and my awareness.

     

    I love that loss must be acknowledged and shared…for that is how we can not only see our wound but let other see it, so we all can acknowledge it, honor it…and it will then fade away.

     

    Who knew that it was the ‘hiding’ and keeping our hurts secret that we suffer the most?  It seems airing our loss is where our strengths will be found.

     

    I know that this blog has been a great show and tell for me and I am grateful and humbled by those who read and witness it with me.  This sacred place is more healing where two or more are gathered in truth. Thanks for being here with me.

     

  • To be me…perfectly.

    There seems to be a time in life, where you get off the karmic wheel of your childhood, where you finally come to the end of the road where old beliefs, thoughts and ideas run dry, where you have uncovered, discovered, and recovered all parts of your self.

     

    And you have decided what stays, what goes, what has value or no value, what is something I will use in my future and what is best left in the past.

     

    As each old thought and belief came to surface, I had to replace it with a new one, one more suited for my self and was often less comfortable for the ‘other’.

     

    Most of my replacement ideas, thoughts and beliefs are much more flexible and fit my spirit. They are filled with potential growth and expansion, unlimited space for creation.

     

    The purging of my old self was difficult and painful at times and extremely liberating as well, the dying and rebuilding co-existing, the undoing and the re-doing.  Each loss I mourned came with a new birth.

     

    Just as they flip houses, I flipped myself, changing me from a worn out pattern into a more creative one.

     

    I can’t imagine getting left in the old mind patterns and beliefs, stuck and unable to step out line, locked by fear and unable to shake off the chains of conditioning.

     

    I feel at times I have forgotten from whence I came, and have a hard time remembering the darkness with so much Light, forgetting what it is like to live under the shadows of others, never finding your own spot in the sun…

     

    My thanks all go to the Universe whose wisdom I seen in every lesson, gift and miracle, and who synchronized it all.

     

    As I continue forth with my awareness my artist’s prayer is;

    to remain faithful to the wisdom of my body,

    to always pay attention to the gut feelings,

    to stand with the truth no matter the cost,

    to have faith and follow my own feelings,

    to reach towards new experiences fearlessly,

    to be a student of the Universe,

    to accept all lessons with grace,

    to never lose sight of what is,

    to find my purpose,

    to know who I am,

    to be me…perfectly! 

  • From the Cocoon!

    The Artist’s Way, while it is inspiring for Art, it is also bringing forth an artful self.  It is finding the dark spots where we lost the art of living, the art of being, the art of individuality, where we conformed into roles that are in direct competition to being a creation from self.

     

    A self that lives behind the roles.

     

    A self we set aside years ago for a variety of reasons.

     

    This is the self we will find if we continue on The Artist’s Way…the path leads to self.

     

    I have been disrobing from roles that made up most of who I was, and underneath was a girl who I didn’t know.  It is this girl who has been struggling to come alive, against the adverse conditioned mind.

     

    This conditioned mind puts fear, guilt and shame along my pathway, sprinkled with false claims of a gloomy future, IF I dare make a new choice, explore and discover a new way of living.

     

    I have been jousting with this mind for 6 ½ years now, seeing which one of us will win at each turn.  Even having the fight is a great improvement to the capitulations of the past, where I didn’t even to fight.

     

    Now I have two separated ideals/beliefs/thoughts and desires vying for the chance to live as me.

     

    I feel a huge percentage of me is now onboard with the self and just fragments and pieces of me are still tangled up with the mental mind. 

     

    The Artist’s Way is working to unhinge those parts as well as strengthen and ignite the ones already free!

     

    I feel a huge part of me is flowing with the energy from the field of Art and pure potential, unlocked from the constraints of the mind.

     

    Like a butterfly almost cleared from the cocoon!

  • It just is.

    This week in The Artist’s Way, we are looking at money, how we spend it and what we think of it, and she is challenging us to seek being frivolous. 

     

    As I wrote about Money in the morning pages, it came to me that in my childhood, money was definitely an issue or the lack thereof, but we blamed the money, when in fact the culprit was my parent’s beliefs.

     

    We may have danced around the fact that there were too many children, but we never forced the issue as to why so many children when you can’t afford them?  Money took the blame, when in fact they lost control of themselves within the churches rules.

     

    When you have no control, you tend to blame things or people who make your life miserable, when in fact if you pulled yourself back into control, money and things would lose their power.

     

    They are only powerful when you are not.

     

    As I also wrote, it came to me, that there was no space to be frivolous, for there was barely money for the basics, and it was drilled into me, that if you were frivolous, your basic needs would go unmet.  And it feels like life and death, for it was very close.  Being the second oldest, I lived through the harshest years of way too many children and not enough cash flow…and within me now, being selfishly frivolous means someone will go hungry.

     

    The flow of power is not up to the money, but it lies wholly in our beliefs.  We put our experiences into money, money doesn’t have an agenda, it just is.

     

     

  • Cultivate the Art of Play

    In reading chapter 5 in The Artist’s Way, Recovering A Sense of Possibility, she speaks of being self-destructive, and yet she isn’t talking about what we usually think of self-destructive behavior.

     

    We usually think of drugs, alcohol, abusive type behaviors, but never just being nice or being good.

     

    That is the self-destructive behavior that I struggle against. 

     

    Julia Cameron writes.

     

    “A young father with a serious interest in photography, years for a place in the home to pursue his interest. The installation of a modest darkroom would require dipping into savings and deferring the purchase of a new couch. The darkroom doesn’t get set up but the new couch does.”

     

    “Many recovering creatives sabotage themselves most frequently by being nice. There is a tremendous cost to such ersatz virtue.”

     

    “Many of us have made a virtue out of deprivation. We have embraced a long-suffering artistic anorexia as a martyr’s cross.  We have used it to feed a false sense of spirituality grounded in being good, meaning superior.”

     

    “ I call this seductive, faux spirituality the Virtue Trap. Spirituality has often been misused as a route to an unloving solitude, a stance where we proclaim ourselves above our human nature.  This spiritual superiority is really only one more form of denial. For an artist, virtue can be deadly. The urge toward respectability and maturity can be stultifying, even fatal.”

     

    “ We strive to be good, to be nice, to be helpful, to be unselfish. We want to be generous, of service, of the world. But what we really want is to be left alone.  When we can’t get others to leave us alone, we eventually abandon ourselves. To others, we may look like we’re here. We may act like we’re there. But our true self has gone to ground.”

     

    “What’s left is the shell of our whole self. It stays because it is caught.  Like a listless circus animal prodded into performing, it does tricks. It goes through the routine.  It earns its applause.  But all of the hoopla falls on deaf ears. We are dead to it. Our artist is not merely out of sorts.  Our artist has checked out. Our life is now an out of body experience. We’ve gone. A clinician might call it disassociating. I call it leaving the scene of the crime.”

     

    “Come out, come out, wherever you are,” we wheedle, but our creative self no longer trusts us. Why should it?  We sold it out.”

     

    “Afraid to appear selfish, we lose our self. We become self-destructive.  Because this self-murder is something we seek passively rather than consciously act out, we are often blind to its poisonous grip on us.”

     

    “The question “are you self-destructive?” is asked so frequently that we seldom hear it accurately.  What it means is Are you destructive of your self? And what that really ask us is Are you destructive of your true nature?”     Julia

     

    What I had known was that I left myself behind to take care of and be responsible for others, leaving my needs alone on an island far far from my awareness and I called this being a good girl.

     

    I would not have called this behavior as being self destructive, but I had the experience of waking up at 46 shocked that I was no where to be found.

     

    Now, 6 years later I am much more conscious of a self, my self, and in the past few years begun taking care of her in ways that I had never done before.

     

    I am learning to let go of the responsibility and care for others or at least balance it out between self care and other care.

     

    I am not completely there, but now have an eye on me.

     

    The Artist’s Way is to bring more attention to this self, to bring her right up in front and out in the open, to display her and showcase her in your life and be the main Feature and not the sideshow.

     

    It is wildly exciting and intimidating and it feels strange to dive into thoughts, ideas, dreams and experiences that have been long forgotten…and a part of me wonders and doubts, while another part feels the forbidden fruits I am reaching for.

     

    Dare I reach and grab onto things that only I want?

    Dare I consider only my self?

     

    I can feel the long forgotten parts of me ready to awaken, but unsure if they should trust? 

     

    Like a see saw between coming alive and staying comfortably dead…my spirit hangs in the balance.

     

    What seems to be shocking even to me is that I was able to stand by my self through out the revelation of my father’s abuse and the aftermath, that I was able to find a strong voice and a steady stance… but doing frivolously artful living seems like a luxury.

     

    Finding a self in the sea of abuse and taking care of my self as I unraveled seems like an honorable thing, but to just do fun things, artful things, things that make me come alive and tickle me, seems so careless or playful.

     

    And sadly being care less or play full is not what I know how to do.

     

    I don’t know how to play.

     

    I don’t know how to do frivolous things.

     

    Imagine I need to learn how to play.

     

    My self doesn’t know play.

     

    My self isn’t a natural player.

     

    I will have to cultivate the Art of Play.

     

  • The soul that lies beneath.

    Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way…

     

    ”Conditioned as we are to accept other people’s definition of us, this emerging individuality can seem to us like a self-will run riot.  It is not. The snowflake pattern of your soul is emerging. Each of us is a unique, creative individual. But we often blur that uniqueness with sugar, alcohol, drugs, overwork, underplay, bad relations, toxic sex, underexercise, over-TV, undersleep – many and varied forms of junk food for the soul…”

     

    I have never thought of overeating or any of the above as being junk food for the soul. That most of the things that are bad for the body is also bad for our souls.

     

    They blur our uniqueness, keep us living in with a fuzzy image of who we are, what we want, what we feel and where we heading, and above all, make it hard for the soul to shine through.

     

    In fact all the bad habits keep the soul from shining through and yet we believe we need these habits, we literally crave them, and what they are is a black out curtain for the soul.

     

    It is odd to me that we crave what keeps us from being our whole soulful self, and that we want the stuff that darkens who we are.

     

    Perhaps we want to darken our reality.

     

    We want to shut the shades on what is in order to survive…instead of taking actions to remove ourselves from situations in real life, we drape a curtain so we don’t have to see.

     

    It is amazing to me that we become so accustomed to living a life with a darkened drape, that we have no idea how to live a life without them.

     

    Julia Cameron is gently telling us what stands in the way from being you. What items we do to not be alive, aware and unique.

     

    By removing the junk food from our lives we can see what they were covering up.  The more we crave and hold on to things that are not good for our souls, the more chances there is big stuff we are not wanting to see, feel or respond to.

     

    For me, my big mess was revealed first.  I saw a whole life that I had no clue was going on underneath my dark curtain of denial, of self-numbing or fuzzy blurring of reality, and I then had to start eliminating things that contributed to the blanket of dysfunction.

     

    This blanket of dysfunction lived my life for 46 years, a thick layer of stuff that my soul was unable to shine forth through.

     

    It is surprising the difference between living as the dark curtain or the soul that lies beneath. 

    Smug mug pics 1003 
    This is one of my first quilts after the revealation of my big mess….and you can see the sliver of gold, which is the soul trying to emerge.  I called this the Soul Lost.  I now have a better understanding of this quilt 6 years or more later!

  • When I am 80.

    My writing assignment was to write a letter from my eight-year-old self to my adult self, and I sat there blank.  I could not figure out what the little girl needed to tell me.

     

    So, I went and did my morning yoga session. And it came to me that if I look at her sitting within a family of dysfunction and her seeing her older self having escaped, that perhaps then there would be lots to say.

     

    My little self would look upon this adult woman and admire the strength it took for her to walk the walk needed to walk the walk to get her out of the situation of her childhood and to now be working on becoming more artful self.

     

    She at 8 could look upon me where I stand today and be so grateful that I was able to circle back and regain the ownership and awareness of her soul. 

     

    That I was able to traverse the wild churning waters of abuse and arrive seemingly unscathed and actually prospering as an adult woman, she would be amazed at my ability to withstand the truth and then to make new choices based upon it.

     

    She would be so grateful that I am no longer in abusive relationships or that I am still being victimized, that I have learned how to do self care, to speak for my self and have the strength to follow through.

     

    She would breath a sigh of relief to know that we survived and are now heading into an even brighter future, where I am honing my self-awareness with yoga and The Artist’s Way, that we are on the pathway of self-loving.

    At times I too find it hard to see the distance I traveled and the depth and breath of change that my life has withstood…I stand with my little girl in awe of where we have been and sit in gratitude we not only survived but also are thriving.

     

    What brings me the most peace is that I can look straight into my little girl’s eyes and feel proud and wise and strong, and not have to look away in shame and guilt.

     

    I feel so strongly confident that we are on the right path, and that when I am 80; I will look upon this 52-year-old self the same way.

     

    And in fact there is a writing assignment to write a letter from your 80-year-old self to your 50-year-old self.

     

    I found that much easier, for I was telling me what the Artist’s Way is teaching me, to be more artful, more daring, more wild in learning new things and experimenting, to go out and grasp all the delights the world has to offer, to change your routine, to add some spice and thrill, to toss in colorful experiences…

     

    I want to be at 80, what I am today, but more of it. 

     

    I want to look backwards at the next 30 years and be breathless at what I did!

     

    Each Artist’s date is adding to the list of things that will blow my mind as I look back when I am 80.

     

     

     

     

  • Wanting me to disappear.

    I found it interesting that my mother’s voice still echoes in my head, that it rings out loud and clear each and every time I veer off her well-beaten path, my fear of disappointing her screams louder than the thrill of doing what I love to do.

     

    These echoes have traveled with me a long long time, and they are laced with fear that freezes me in my tracks if I even begin to ponder doing things differently.

     

    This underlying system was created when I was very small, and the definition of self was built upon this very odd system, where my ‘goodness’ was mirrored when she was happy and my ‘badness’ when she wasn’t.

     

    It had nothing to do with what I wanted to do, but had everything to do with her.

     

    This track was laid down within me by how my mother reacted to life, and making her happy was my only goal, for her happiness meant her loving me. 

     

    It had nothing to do with the actual things I was doing, but the withdrawing of love dare I venture into a place that made her frown.

     

    I wonder if this is how all children learn about life, that we simply follow the smiles and steer away from all the frowns, that we never learn to steer by our own smiles, we learn to navigate through life by others happiness.

     

    Living in this backward system for 46 years, the last 6 have been spent learning how to live from my inner smiles and standing strong against their frowns.

     

    Learning that I am not responsible for other people’s faces, that it is not my job, has been a full time job, undoing the tracks from childhood, taking them down one piece at a time.

     

    I can see how people lose themselves while living with themselves, how they get pulled into the lives of others simply for happiness and love.

     

    What is so debilitating is that your life disappears while theirs seems to thrive.  And how is that love if you disappear?

     

    In order to be loved by my parents, I had to disappear.

     

    My needs had to disappear, my wants, my desires, my happiness, my joy, my love and my life.  I learned to disappear for love.

     

    As I walk forward learning how to love myself, her echoes come back to remind me of where else I let my self go, where I lost a part of me, where I buried myself and now where I can reclaim that piece.

     

    I didn’t know I buried her in so much responsibility. 

     

    I find now, when I feel so stuck, so angry without a choice, I am tugging on a piece of the old track, and it has nothing to do with what is going on today, but instead what I have learned a long time ago. 

     

    A voice from the past wanting me to disappear.

    1Shared Wisdom closeup 
    This quilt represents my inner wisdom and the young artist…. I am so happy that this one didn't sell!

     

  • Enter In

    Julia Cameron writes in The Artist’s Way, “I like to think of the mind as a room.  In that room, we keep all our usual ideas about life, God, what’s possible and what’s not.  The room has a door.  That door is ever so slightly ajar, and outside we can see a great deal of dazzling light.  Out there in the dazzling light are a lot of new ideas that we consider too far-out for us, and so we keep them out there. The ideas we are comfortable with are in the room with us. The other ideas are out, and we keep them out.”

     

    “In our ordinary, prerecovery life, when we would hear something weird or threatening, we’d just grab the doorknob and pull the door shut.  Fast.”

     

    “Inner work triggering outer change?  Ridiculous! (Slam the door.) God bother to help my own creative recovery? (Slam.)  Synchronicity supporting my artist with serendipitous coincidences? (Slam, slam, slam.)

     

    “Now that we are in creative recovery, there is another approach we need to try. To do this, we gently set aside our skepticism – for later us, if we need it – and when a weird idea or coincidence whizzes by, we gently nudge the door a little further open.”

     

    “Setting skepticism aside, even briefly, can make for very interesting explorations.  In creative recovery, it is not necessary that we change any of our beliefs.  It is necessary that we examine them.”

     

    “More than anything else, creative recovery is an exercise in open-mindedness.  Again, picture your mind as that room with the door slightly ajar. Nudging the door open a bit more is what makes for open-mindedness. Begin, this week, to consciously practice opening your mind.”      Julia

     

     

    Yesterday I was panicked due to my one-day weekend, and I was not open to letting the chores go and just using it as my play day as I had threatened to do.  I slammed the door on playing, staying with old habits of getting my jobs done first.

     

    I was crabby but doing the work.  Resenting that I couldn’t play.

     

    It is like being locked in a room to which you have the key, yet unable to actually use it to turn yourself free.

     

    There is an exchange I can’t see to agree with, messy house in exchange for playing!

     

    I want both.  And if I stay that course, I will continue exchanging playtime for work time, for as we all know there is always another job to be done.

     

    She is suggesting that we ‘use’ this excuse in order to keep our Artist from going to explore the wide-open world, that we have become comfortable in the cramped workspace.

     

    My grumpiness spread like a virus, or tried to, but most left me alone in my unhappiness. 

     

    My daughter took her playtime first, and later on in the fading daylight mowed the grass.  My resentment at her is that she has mastered the art of play over work time…and is doing what I can’t allow me to do. 

     

    I blame her for me being unable to exchange playing for a clean house. 

     

    As I sit with this thought, I used to get appreciation and attention for keeping my mother’s house in order…and the opposite may be true, wrath if I didn’t help.

     

    I recall many siblings not caring where I cared too much.

     

    When I thought I cared about a clean house, in fact I cared what my mother thought of me.

     

    Perhaps, this is the issue that needs to be examined. 
    ”I am better if I have a clean house, even if I am grumpy.”

     

    Who do I like better or who feels better inside?

     

    It seems my self-identity is wrapped up in what I do and how external things look. 

     

    How brave to let it all go and play…That is the challenge this week…being a child doing what she feels like, letting go of responsibilites that can wait.  The 'mother' in my head may want me to slam the door to fun, but I have to be strong enough to nudge it open and enter in.