Weekly Reflection (week 3): Cycles

What lessons are cycling through your life right now?











(Before we move on, take another look at the AMAZING "logo" designed for me by one of my Unraveller heroes, Sylvia. A beautiful work of art and inspiration - thank you sweet Sylvie! I am so honored and proud!)


This week's reflection came to me in an unusual way. Unusual for me, that is. Generally, I have a question/idea in mind and then I create something using that idea as inspiration. What I have been moving towards in my life is a greater trust of intuition. To be given a slip of an idea, with no sense of the whole picture and to take that clue, move forward and await further instructions - Definitely NOT how I am wired!

So I am taking an art journaling ecourse (fantastic by the way) and Friday's lesson was to experiment in a new technique. Yikes! Blank page - blank brain. Being practical, I recalled a previous idea to use my art journal as a way to explore the wisdom of the various goddesses from my Goddess Oracle deck. I grabbed my deck, asked for guidance, and pulled a card. Funny how there are 44 cards and I regularly pull the same 4 or 5 cards. I turned the card over and there was my familiar friend, goddess Kali. Yep, goddess of destruction.



I began working on my page, trying some new techniques and staying open to what lovely Leonie so aptly calls "divine messes." First I journaled on what Kali means to me and then - gasp! - I gessoed over my writing. Destruction is definitely not my forte. The page is many layers and I had to keep pushing myself to go further, even though that meant risking passages I liked being covered over, damaged or obscured. I tend to hold back, to play things safe, bird in the hand type person. But if I am clutching that bird, how can I grasp new gifts, new lessons as they wing by?

As I continued to lay down color, lines, stamping away new images, the reflection for this week emerged. The journey involves setbacks, discoveries, getting lost and then being found. In that process, we come to a new place, a new space of understanding or wisdom and from there, we move forward to the next discovery, our next truth. In yoga and meditation retreats I have often heard "you have to break down before you can break through." I am not comfortable with the ensuing chaos of a break down - everything is turn arse upwards and the pieces are scattered about with no clue to the final form. But creativity, growth all need the nutrients found in that murky pool of chaos.

I have described the previous year in my life as a thawing out. Images of seeds, tender shoots emerging from the earth embody how I feel right now. The cycle I am in, the lessons I am learning are about growth, letting go of what no longer serves me and shedding outmoded notions of myself. I am the hermit crab who had outgrown her shell and is in that vulnerable stage of moving into a new home. Options abound and it is overwhelming and confusing at times. But the message of Kali is to trust the process, recognizing where I am in the cycle of destruction, birth, and life so I can know how to be. In my current stage, I recognize that being overwhelmed is okay. It is part of the cycle and if I am patience, if I keep exploring, examining, trying things on for fit, well, order will slowly emerge. The path is there, it just is cluttered a bit which forces me to stop and linger awhile.

And take time for creative play ...

(okay, so it is very hard to look fierce while sticking your tongue out! I guess I needed some blood dripping from my mouth and a necklace of skulls around my neck. But here is another act of being Fearless!)