Artist’s Way Creative Affirmations
03 Jun 2012 Leave a Comment
in affirmations, art, creativity, way Tags: affirmations, Artist's Way, creative
I’ve been painting and writing all weekend and am reminded of the powerful work of The Artist’s Way for letting my inner artist have permission to emerge years and years ago. Enjoy!
- I am a channel for creativity, and my work comes to good.
- My dreams come from an unlimited source and its from this source that I can accomplish them.
- As I create and listen, I will be led.
- My creativity heals myself and others.
- I am allowed to nurture my artist.
- Through the use of a few simple tools, my creativity will flourish.
- My creativity always leads me to truth and love.
- My creativity leads me to forgiveness and self-forgiveness.
- There is a greater plan of goodness for me.
- There is a greater plan of goodness for my work.
- As I listen to the unlimited source within me, I am led.
- As I listen to my creativity I am led to this unlimited source.
- I am willing to create.
- I am willing to learn to let myself create.
- I am willing to let this unlimited source create through me.
- I am willing to be of service through my creativity.
- I am willing to experience my creative energy.
- I am willing to use my creative talents.
Copyright The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, 2012
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Visioning exercise for your ideal future
02 Jun 2012 Leave a Comment
in future, meditation, road, vision Tags: future, guided meditation, road, Vision
The following guided visualization is a tool for giving attention to your own vision for an ideal future. Read it over to get a sense of the imaginary adventure. Decide how far into the future you would like to vision. (It is a good idea to fit this to where you are on the circle of change-some people will do best to look a month, six months or a year ahead; others are ready to dream five years or more.) Find a quiet place to begin and set aside about 20 minutes.
Relax: Begin by taking a couple deep breaths, relaxing and getting quiet. Focus your attention on the “screen of your mind”-where the imagination comes to life.
The Setting: With your imagination, create an outdoor setting; place yourself in the middle of it-feel the sun on your skin, touch the grass and see how the sun lights it up. Smell the air and feel the warm breeze. There is a path nearby that leads off toward the horizon.
Walk into Life: Step onto the path and begin to walk. While you cannot be sure what is ahead, you walk forward into life with an openness to meet the challenges and a willingness to give something of yourself to the journey.
Living Water: Around a bend the trail dips down a slight hill to an arching bridge that crosses a stream. When you reach the bridge stop for a moment at the apex and listen to the sounds of the water below. As you listen you find that something deep in you relaxes and you have the sensation of an “inner river” flowing through you. Along with this feeling you have a sense of this flow as a limitless resource of life flowing through you and supporting you in this journey
Obstacle: Continuing on the path you come across an obstacle blocking your way. With some effort and creativity you find the way to master this obstacle and continue forward on your path.
Mountain Cave: The path begins to wind up a mountain and takes more effort to walk. In time you come to the mouth of a tunnel that goes into the hill. (At this point you may find a wise guardian who offers to guide you through the next part of your journey).
Into the Future: Before you’ve walked far into the tunnel you see a faint point of light ahead. The light grows very bright as you get closer to what you see is the end of the tunnel. Once you step out of the tunnel and your eyes adjust to this new world you find that you are in your own ideal future. It is morning and the day is about to begin; you are surprised to find that everything is in place just perfectly-even better than you had dreamed. Take your time and walk through the details of the day. What is different in your life, how do you feel, what are the qualities of your work, relationship and other areas of life? Linger on the parts that are especially welcome to find. (Be silent for several minutes)
Return: When you are ready take a final look around at this world, then step back into the mouth of the tunnel and trace your path back through the mountain, across the bridge and back to the beginning point. Close your ‘inner eyes’ and move your awareness back into the room where you began this exercise.
Jot some notes or write out the story of what you created and found on your journey. If you had trouble imagining a future try it again later or just write out a story of what you might find if you were to walk through an ideal future day. Remember this is not a prophecy or practical plan-it is the future your heart has room to imagine.
Copyright 1992 Centerpoint Institute for Life and Career Renewal, Seattle, WA. All rights reserved.
45th Anniversary of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
01 Jun 2012 Leave a Comment
in Beatles, Sgt. Pepper Tags: Beatles, Sgt. Pepper
45 years ago today, The Beatles album, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, was released, and for the entire summer was #1 on the charts (1967).
In honor of that here’s a little tribute to one of my favorite albums of all time, Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds from the animated movie Yellow Submarine:
Happy Friday!
Tonglen for those we love
30 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in breath, love, tonglen Tags: breath, love, tonglen
Tonglen is a Tibetan Buddhist practice of giving and receiving healing through the breath. I’d like to dedicate the distant Reiki healing group tomorrow 5/31/12 to communing with those we love both close and afar. Below is a description of how to do this practice! Let the love and light shine!
“We begin the practice by taking on the suffering of a person we know to be hurting and who we wish to help. For instance, if you know of a child who is being hurt, you breathe in the wish to take away all the pain and fear of that child. Then, as you breathe out, you send the child happiness, joy or whatever would relieve their pain. This is the core of the practice: breathing in other’s pain so they can be well and have more space to relax and open, and breathing out, sending them relaxation or whatever you feel would bring them relief and happiness. However, we often cannot do this practice because we come face to face with our own fear, our own resistance, anger, or whatever our personal pain, our personal stuckness happens to be at that moment.
At that point you can change the focus and begin to do tonglen for what you are feeling and for millions of others just like you who at that very moment of time are feeling exactly the same stuckness and misery. Maybe you are able to name your pain. You recognize it clearly as terror or revulsion or anger or wanting to get revenge. So you breathe in for all the people who are caught with that same emotion and you send out relief or whatever opens up the space for yourself and all those countless others. Maybe you can’t name what you’re feeling. But you can feel it —a tightness in the stomach, a heavy darkness or whatever. Just contact what you are feeling and breathe in, take it in —for all of us and send out relief to all of us.” For more on Tonglen..
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Taking time to smell the roses of writing
29 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in roses, writing Tags: roses, writing
The next few days I’ll be spending time devoted to my various writing projects I’ve started over the last year. My blog will have to wait, so I thank you for your patience and look forward to sharing the developments!
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National Moment of Remembrannce at 3pm
28 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in memorial day Tags: Memorial Day
While most of us have been enjoying the three day weekend, I’d encourage you give space, pause and reflection for all the soldiers who have lost their lives in the armed conflicts and war our country has been in over this last decade and the decades before. At 3pm whatever time zone you are in, we can unite in a National Moment of Remembrance.
You can send light to the departed souls, personally known to you or unknown, who have passed. Perhaps it also offers us an opportunity to envision a world where peace prevails. This can be a sacred moment to go within and unite and envision a greater consciousness so that in future decades, such sacrifices may not have to occur.
Blessings and light to those that have fallen, to their families that have suffered, and to the hope for an awakened world in the future.
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How to Increase your Happiness Footprint
27 May 2012 Leave a Comment
You’ve probably had the experience of “catching” someone’s good mood. Happiness can be contagious. Sometimes it’s passed along through simple gestures – a warm smile from a stranger; someone holds a door for you; another driver lets you in. It feels great to be on the receiving end of another person’s good spirits. These brief interchanges between one or more people are tiny portraits of a massive canvas that spans the globe. Every day, too, your life touches other species and the natural environment. These encounters leave a footprint in the world. Sometimes we’re contributing to happiness and wellbeing, and sometimes (often unwittingly) we are not.
Let’s take your morning cup of coffee or tea as an example. We know that being mindful of the experience can generate positive emotions and may even reduce stress. Paying attention to enjoying the aroma, the warmth of the cup, the sounds around us, and the company we are with is relaxing and enhances wellbeing.
The perspective that many happiness experts have overlooked, however, is that we don’t exist in isolation. Our momentary pleasure needs to be placed in a wider context. If we are drinking fair-trade coffee, that means that coffee producers have been paid fairly (just as we like to be paid fairly), and the coffee was grown with regard for the environment.
This, then, is an example of something I call “sustainable happiness”. It’s happiness that contributes to individual, community, or global wellbeing without exploiting other people, the environment or future generations.
Building on this coffee example, you can see how the web of our happiness connections is related to the conditions under which our clothes are manufactured, where our food is grown, how we travel to work or school and the manner in which we relate to one another. Each of these represents daily opportunities to contribute to, or detract from, individual, community and global wellbeing.
If you would like to expand your happiness footprint there’s a very simply thing you can do. Keep track of your activities for one day, using the chart below (download the pdf). Once you’ve filled in the chart, ask yourself if there is one thing that you want to shift so that you are contributing more to your own wellbeing, the wellbeing of others, or the natural environment.
Here’s some of the things that other people have done after completing their Happiness Footprint Chart:
- switched from using plastic water bottles to a reusable one
- turned off the TV for a week and planned a week of board games with the kids
- committed to going for a walk after supper instead of a drive
- reduced consumption of fast foods (better for her health and reduced waste)
- started buying produce from a local farmers’ market.
By Catherine O’Brien, PhD Saturday, May 26, 2012 thanks to Good News Network
Honor the Pause
26 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in break, pause, time out Tags: break, Memorial Day, pause, time out
It’s the start of Memorial Day weekend, take a time out! The fact you are reading this means you haven’t unplugged, so for this moment, at least, stop reading and honor the pause. Plug-in to yourself!
Occupy Yourself!
25 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in occupy movement, personality Tags: occupy movement, personality
In order to be ‘ego-free’ you first need to know what it is you are making space for, and wow, that can be a lot of fun! . There is nothing more rewarding than standing in your shoes/being/body and declaring to the world, here I am! Confidence, charm, beauty, resilience, the ripples effect all in your path.
I had a conversation with a colleague the other day about this and she said, ‘But Eileen, how do you know when it’s “too much”?’ Basically, when is occupying ‘yourself’ too much for the world around you to cope with.
My initial response was, ‘let the world deal!’ just keep expanding! But once I came back from that bubble, I did mention that it is helpful to have the “dimmer switch” as I call it, as a helpful control valve on an expansive personality.
So how does it work? Basically, when you are in certain circumstances where having your personality occupy the whole room would feel suffocating, you imagine you have a kind of ‘dimmer switch’ to turn down the volume.
You are still occupying yourself, being you, but instead of on full out neon flashing lights, you are a bit more incandescent, shall we say.
But there is a caveat. You have to be mindful of the switch. So if you alter your mind, through substance or situation, that switch will not be under your direction. When that happens, oh, and I can say this has occurred more than once in my life, watch out world!
The personality has entered the room.
Which, isn’t a bad thing, in fact, it be quite entertaining, as long as you have the time and space to be entertained.
But it’s ‘full on’ and this is the challenge, because it’s a bit difficult to be mindful when that happens. Best bet is to have an exit strategy.
Take all that whirlwind energy and start to pull it back. This is not easy, nor is it necessarily fun, but it is possible, and a way of integrating that expansiveness back into you for even a greater occupation!
I’ve got more to say on this but not enough time this morning to continue…hopefully tomorrow…stay tuned..
Holes of happiness
24 May 2012 Leave a Comment
in art, gardening, guerrilla, Happiness, urban Tags: gardening, guerrilla art, Happiness, urban
Holes Of Happiness is a short documentary looking at the reactions of the public to some pothole gardens that have been popping up around East London It’s guerrilla art gone native! Will give you a good smile for the day and possibly some creative ideas for what you can bring to your city to help it brighten up a bit. http://www.thepotholegardener.com
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