When creative is spiritual & spiritual is creative

A rare treat last week was a super indulgent and nourishing chat (via Skype) with a fellow creative sister, mentor, and friend. With all of the forms of social networking, it is amazing how rare true conversation and connection can be.  So when it does happen (a magic alchemy of time + presence + passion) I like to luxuriate in its afterglow.

One topic that came up and which has been dipping in and out of my conscious is how spiritual practice and creative practice are one and the same for me.  As is often the case with the deepest truths, this one bubbled up without me realizing how truly foundational and essential it is to who I am and what I do.  What is so valuable about a conversation - a real exchange versus the monologues I am so good at (yes, even when I jog, I have a running commentary going in my head!) - is having a wise and perceptive friend say "Wait a minute ... back up ... can you explain what you mean by that?"

Yes, well ... ahem ... let me see ...

So I've been thinking about this central fact of my being: that my creative practice and my spiritual practice are really one and the same.  I believe I said something about them feeling the same; that in both instances I am connecting with Source and dropping into Flow. What this means to me is remembering myself Whole through practices that take me outside of my limited thinking/known self and lead me into encounters with an experience of Self that is richer and larger than what I could have imagined.  In both cases, I am seeking to strengthen Trust and Faith. In art is it about trusting I will be guided forward as long as I am showing up full present, attentive, and willing to listen to the guidance of intuition/heart/source.  Necessary is faith that such guidance will turn up!

all these paintings are works - or rather, conversations - in progress

This is true in spiritual practice: I am learning to listen and trust what comes up for me is in service of my highest good.  Both practice are about cultivate deep presence and attentiveness. Mindfulness is the foundation - and the intention - in both practices.

Creative & spiritual action are also about gratitude, celebration, and love.  In spiritual practice, I may make prayers, offerings, create sacred spaces to remind myself of that which guides and supports me. My art is another expression of gratitude and thanks.  

In both practices, I seek understanding and insight into my life, how I am to proceed on this path and what is my work -  my vital and individual contribution -  to this world.  In spiritual practice I am given insight through journey work, dreams, and through sharing my experiences with others in a variety of circle gatherings.  I share with the hope of providing insight or support for another; what often happens - which is the real gift - is in doing so, others feel safe or inspired to share their stories and in turn I am enlightened and informed.  

When I create, I often do so without any preconceived idea of what it is I am making.  I may have an initial impulse or desire - to paint my dog, to put down a piece of a dream, a story - but then I  attempt to surrender to a partnership with Source or creative inspiration. I say attempt because it isn't easy to override a lifelong impulse to control; but when it does happen - slipping into Flow is how it feels to me - I am shown things I never knew before.  Understanding or vision is expanded, new connected made, and I learn and grow through the exchange.  

Both are journeys. As I understand it, there is really only One Journey, just different strides, different modes of traveling down the path. Showing up and saying Yes, that is all that is required. How we each express and reflect that cosmic Yes is unique and highly personal and thank goodness for it being so!  

I Am So Glad

Start seeing everything as God,
But keep it a secret.

Become like a man who is Awestruck
And Nourished

Listening to a Golden Nightingale
Sing in a beautiful foreign language
While God invisibly nests
Upon its tongue.

Hafiz,
Who can you tell in this world
That when a dog runs up to you
Wagging its ecstatic tail,
You lean down and whisper in its ear,

“Beloved,
I am so glad You are happy to see me.

Beloved,
I am so glad,
So very glad You have come.

-Hafiz (from I Heart God Laughing, translations by Daniel Ladinsky)

Start seeing everything as God,
But keep it a secret.
Become like a man who is Awestruck
And Nourished
Listening to a Golden Nightingale
Sing in a beautiful foreign language
While God invisibly nests
Upon its tongue.
Hafiz,
Who can you tell in this world
That when a dog runs up to you
Wagging its ecstatic tail,
You lean down and whisper in its ear,
“Beloved,
I am so glad You are happy to see me.
Beloved,
I am so glad,
So very glad You have come.”
- See more at: http://heartsteps.org/2014/i-am-so-glad/#sthash.xRIBsAG8.dpuf

Start seeing everything as God,
But keep it a secret.

Become like a man who is Awestruck
And Nourished

Listening to a Golden Nightingale
Sing in a beautiful foreign language
While God invisibly nests
Upon its tongue.

Hafiz,
Who can you tell in this world
That when a dog runs up to you
Wagging its ecstatic tail,
You lean down and whisper in its ear,

“Beloved,
I am so glad You are happy to see me.

Beloved,
I am so glad,
So very glad You have come.”

- See more at: http://heartsteps.org/2014/i-am-so-glad/#sthash.xRIBsAG8.dpuf

Start seeing everything as God,
But keep it a secret.

Become like a man who is Awestruck
And Nourished

Listening to a Golden Nightingale
Sing in a beautiful foreign language
While God invisibly nests
Upon its tongue.

Hafiz,
Who can you tell in this world
That when a dog runs up to you
Wagging its ecstatic tail,
You lean down and whisper in its ear,

“Beloved,
I am so glad You are happy to see me.

Beloved,
I am so glad,
So very glad You have come.”

- See more at: http://heartsteps.org/2014/i-am-so-glad/#sthash.xRIBsAG8.dpuf 

july 4 (finally, friday)

Summertime and every day is beginning to feel like a friday ... but this day is also a holiday ... which means, more painting please ...

but make sure to take time to rest and recover 

my sketch book practice has burst wide open as I play with different materials and ideas to share in my upcoming Sketch Diary Explorations online camp.  Discovering the magic of oil pastels ... swoon! Bring your art journal and I will bring the s'mores. 

filling my well

We need time out of our everyday, outer-directed lives, and not just at major life transitions, when it is most advisable, but regularly. I think metaphorically of how necessary it is that we have "diastolic" time. For it is during diastole that the heart relaxes and fills. During systole, the heart contracts and sends a powerful stream of lifeblood out. For the heart to work and provide sustenance to the whole body, it must relax and fill.  And so must we.

Jean Shinoda Bolen, Crossing to Avalon

I've been off the grid.  Not only disconnected from phone, laptop, email and all virtual connections but physically removed from the clutter and distractions of modern living.

I went on retreat. The road there included crossing this creek 

symbolizing the sense of both separation (moving over to a new shore) and containment (merging with others, reconnecting with source.)

I left thinking this would be a time to empty, time to slough off what is long past healthy and vibrant and move closer in to my essential being.  Get back to basics and recover what all too often gets buried under piles of busy work. 

I went to paint and learn new ways to dialogue with creative spirit.  

I embarked upon a journey that started on a cold, windy, dark Nebraska morning at 4 AM. Sleepy miles in an airplane delivered me to warm and sunny Arizona.  Miles traveling through desert landscapes with sisters new and yet familiar, welcoming and welcomed into my heart with the ease of a salamander slipping into a stream. (Okay, first piece of magic here: the image of salamander popping into my head as I reflect upon the merging of this sisterhood ... quick look into salamander medicine: "The salamander comes to those who are in need of change in their lives. The salamander evolutionary feat to observe, and as such, it asks us to evolve in our own lives." and "[T]he salamander hold symbolism of psyche, spirituality, emotion, and ease of motion. These attributes are intensified by the salamander's nocturnal nature because night time is symbolic of shadows, secrets, dreams, intuition and psychic abilities too.")

I had little in the way of expectations when I left home.  I was open to receive even though receiving is not my strong suit.  But this place was insistence that each of us receiving her medicine.  And equally strong was the pull - the imperative - for each of us to give of ourselves healing medicine for all, including the land, the spirits, the ancestors.

I am still in the process of integration ... not sure that understanding will ever arrive nor whether it is necessary on an intellectual level.  What knows is my heart, my soul and that language is deeper than words. 

What I can share are the snapshots of my encounters: the song of the water and wind through the cottonwood trees urging me to abide in cooling, soothing water and to offer my gifts into that flow;

 

The marks of mama mountain lion reminding me I share this place with beings powerful, respectful, in harmony with life and asking me to do the same;

 
I practiced shamanic seeing and beheld the whole of earth, the whole of life reflected back to me in a single eye of a beautiful sister. I know each of us carries within the seed of such immensity and potential to feed, sustain, support and create.  I looked but more importantly, I was seen and witnessed by moon, stars, sunlight and the Mother herself who spoke to me and make it very clear it is time stand up, quit hiding, and do the work that has been entrusted to me.  

Under that gaze I felt the immensity and the intimacy of being a creature privileged to call this earth home ...

Beholding the responsibility of that gift and the urgent need for loving, healing action and care to shift the course of things, to bring about change that is needed now more than ever if we hope to pass this world onto our children and their children.

What started as a retreat became a sacred pilgrimage for me ... a journey to reconnect with Nature, with Spirit and with my Self.  The bonus prize was the chance to learn, laugh, play and spend time in the company of so many gifted women, wise and wild,  irreverently joy-filled and soul-fully deeply committed to the work of healing and empowering themselves and those around them. 

Where this all will lead, I don't know nor do I need  to know.  I am simply trusting and following the strongest muscle of my body, the source of all truth and life

Offerings were made, much left behind in the emptying ...

Much gathered in the filling ...

Surrendering into flow and excited to see where the waters will carry me.  I just have to follow the signs ...

To quote one of our fearless leaders:  Giddy up!  Git 'er done!

So I will. So I must. 

We speak. We sing. We swallow water and breathe smoke. By the end of the ceremony, it is as if skin contains land and birds.  The places within us have become filled. As inside the enclosure of the lodge, the animals and ancestors move into the human body, into skin and blood. The land merges with us .... We who easily grow apart from the world are returned to the great store of life all around us, and there is the deepest sense of being at home here in this intimate kinship. There is no real aloneness. There is solitude  and the nurturing silence that is relationship with ourselves, but even then we are part of something larger. 

- Linda Hogan, Dwellings: A Spiritual History of the Living World

Buckets of love and gratitude to these two lovelies who held the space and called in the guides, spirits, scorpions, spiders and other critters.  Big love to and from both of them.  I'm proud to share the bunkhouse with these Cowgirls.

Jen Gray and Pixie Campbell from Visual Quest, Arizona