Tuesday, June 29, 2010

Visions and Ideas

I taught a class tonight in creative visualization and self assessment - 2 career management tools. And it was very interesting. What I discovered was that at times our visions of our success are very different than our ideas of what success means. It seems to me that our job is to create bridges for ourselves between the two.

I think that happens with manifest creation all the time. Our spirit send us impulses in the form of vision. We travel the roads of the ether in that spaciousness. Then our egos and minds create ideas based on conditioning that we feel compelled to actualize. Where do they meet?

What do you think?

Monday, June 28, 2010

Moving through time and space

As artists we tend to flow through time while working. The process of creation manifests an impulse within to move through time and space into a nether region of possibilities.

Possibilities. A blank piece of paper. A white canvas. Awestruck. The space in between my hand raising to put a mark down and the time it takes my brain to catch up to the impulse creates a living meditation.

Possibilities. A breathe.

I close my eyes in daily meditation to sit in the lap of the possibilities of the moment. That is the way my brain organizes the time.

In truth, there are no possibilities, because it all exists already.

That is the most hopeful thought in truth.

I find eternal solace in the knowledge that I move through time and space only in my mind. My ego can hold that to be self evident. And then leave me alone.

My spirit home - ah, I am that. Peaceful. Perhaps the bridge is in the painting.

Sunday, June 27, 2010

Breathing Meditation

I'm starting a series of videos and podcasts for my Wisdom, Vision and Craft Class.

Here is my first test video. A breathing meditation. Any and all feedback is welcome!

http://www.screencast.com/t/ZjZlNDc2

Saturday, June 26, 2010

Lunar Eclipse - Grand Cross

Intense energies tonight and forever. Living on the precipice, we are. How to help?

Breathe.

Remember that we are not the body. We are not the mind. We are not we. I am that. And that makes me "we". Lovely in its simplicity really.

Dave and I walked along the beautiful Hoboken waterfront today - talking about life in the dream. We are all living in the illusion of reality, the dream. Perhaps it is enough, that awareness. Perhaps our duty to humanity, our neighbors is to recognize that it is a dream, and help maneuver the best we can within it. Until, such time as we are dissolved within it. And then, both inside it and outside it.

Then all that would matter would be the breeze.

I like that.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Meditation and Visualization Class: Wisdom, Vision and Craft

I am so excited about the Hoboken group starting next week. Artists coming together to meditate and visualize life connecting with heart connecting with spirit connecting with their creativity. Everything comes around to inspiration and manifestation.

I feel inspired.

I've created a google group for the class:

http://groups.google.com/group/wisdom-vision-and-craft

If interested, let me know

Saturday, June 19, 2010

One must make shift with things as they are

After walking downtown from SVA, I wandered through the Housing Works bookstore on Crosby street. One of my favorite used bookstores and cafes.  I can never figure out the cafe hours though, and it seems to be always closed when I'm at the bookstore. But, you can sit at the cafe tables anyway, and read, drink the water you have in your bag, and absorb the great vibes of this store.  I love those wonderful books and mahogany bookshelves.

I usually buy a $1 book and find some treasure or another that I can then give as a gift to a friend. My latest find is "A Sand County Almanac and Sketches Here and There" by Aldo Leopold, illustrated by Charles W. Schwartz published 1949.

It starts with "there are some who can live without wild things, and some who cannot. These essays are the delights and dilemmas of one who cannot."

It made me think - who am I? Am I one who can or cannot? I am drawn to wild things - and frightened by them. Long to loose myself in the natural world and yet I hide in cities - have my entire life.

He says "conservation is getting nowhere because it is incompatible with our Abrahamic concept of land. We abuse land because we regard it as a commodity belonging to us. When we see land as a community to which we belong, we may begin to use it with love and respect."

"Land is to be loved and respected because it is an extension of ethics." It is right. Simple. I like him.

I was so moved by this. Perhaps as the world experiences ruin in a continuous death gasp of modernity, our sham recovery and unadvertised depression, we, the creative, the spiritual, the everywoman/man will voluntarily reconnect with inner and natural value.  We can develop an ecology of spirit in line with Leopold's observations of 60 years ago.  I think. I hope. I'm not sure.  I don't like camping. I don't like bugs. But I do love the open sky, and the open ocean. And watching National Geographic.

" ...whatever the truth may be, this much is crystal clear: our bigger-and-better society is now like a hypochondriac, so obsessed with its own economic health as to have lost the capacity to remain healthy. The whole world is so greedy for more bathtubs that it has lost the stability necessary to build them, or even to turn off the tap. Nothing could be more salutary at this stage than a little healthy contempt for a plethora of material blessings.  Perhaps such a shift of values can be achieved by reappraising things unnatural, tame and confined in terms of things natural, wild and free. "

Natural, wild and free.  I'm game ( no pun intended). Maybe I can let myself be wild.  Perhaps all I need is curiosity, and I don't have to camp.  Maybe I can just open my eyes to the natural world, and sit in the silence that is true, and in that complexity and simplicity that is real - make shift with things as they are.

As long as there are no bugs, I think I can do it.

Saturday, June 12, 2010

I am a C S A advocate

CSF - means community supported farm. We recently joined a CSA (community supported agriculture) group in Hoboken, sponsored by the Catalpa Ridge Farm in NJ. Farmer Rich and Sue have been growing "real" vegies for 15 years as a CSF and I cannot tell you how happy I am to be eating and cooking for my family from their bounty.

In addition, the CSA movement fascinates me. Imagine - a group of families (150) pay Farmer Rich and Sue upfront so they can plant the fields and grow food for us that is not poisened, modified, genetically interferred with, just "is". And as a cook, to eat and touch live food, I have been ecstatically cooking all week. Even Elia ate salad all week, and Dave and I have kvelled over each and every vegie.

There has to be a model here for all of us. As the world turns and changes, and falls apart, how can we as artists also create a CSA (community supported artworks). There must be new models that can be created. We know how beauty soothes the soul, how art is the heart of renaissance in life.

I know if we all 'sit on it, pray on it, think on it" ( thank you Boston Legal) we will intuit a new  way of sharing , promoting, making a living as and for the artists in our souls.

With the collapse of '10 underway, it is up to us. No one will save us but our intuition and joining together, somehow in groups that of common purpose, common image, common intent... I don't know yet, don't have the image yet - it is foggy. But it is forming. I can feel it taking hold. I look forward to joining with those whom I resonate with, and those I don't (ah those karmic lessons) so  in light and positive practicality we co-create what is needed.

Art is needed. CSA - community supported artwork

Open to suggestions.

Monday, June 7, 2010

Creative Visualization and meditation class for artists staring June 30th

I'm delighted to announce that I will be running "Wisdom, Vision and Craft" a creative visualization and meditation class for artists (and their guests) on Wednesdays from 6:30 - 8:00 pm starting June 30th - July 28th.

I have always believed that spirit, peace within, presence and art making can go hand in hand. As vision makers, we have access to realms others do not see or sense, yet we do not understand them nor know how to bridge the material plane with the artistic plane with the spiritual plane that underpins it all.

This class will try to create bridges for that process so that artists can develop business mind, spirit mind and open heart mind all at the same time. Class will incorporate talks on astrology, trance, vedic philosophy and healing principals to create and maintain balance in life and feed creative input. Visualization topics will include careers and success, managing fear and anxiety, aligning meaning, inspiration and purpose, plus others.

My intention is to create a place for artists and creatives at heart, to come together under one roof, to evolve, discuss matters of the heart and spirit, and use meditation and visualization as a tool for awakening and strategic living that is reasonably priced and of lasting value.

5 classes from 6:30 - 8:00pm. Class will meet at my home at 924 Castle Point Terrace, 2nd Floor, Hoboken, NJ. At times, weather permitting, we will meditate together in the park by the river next to my house. The class fee is $75, or you can come on a class by class basis, stop by if you are free and there is room for $25 per class.

Hope you can make it. Let me know if you would like to reserve a place. Email me at rhonda.schaller@gmail.com

For those out of town, I will be doing this class in the Fall 2010 and Spring 2011 via teleconference and webinar