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

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.

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.

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

Wisdom, Vision and Craft

In my advancing years, I've come to understand how little I understand. And that is such a joyous feeling. Sounds strange, but it is so liberating to feel like a frog in a well who has jumped out of the well.

Of course, I jump back in all of the time. To be human is to search for stability, what is known, what can be counted on. I counsel clients on managing fear of the unknown all the time, working with fear has been an element of my work forever.

I love how Dave puts it "all we can be certain of is uncertainty, and our goal is to allow our intentions to reside in consciousness, and all will be as it is, as it should be".  It makes me go ahhh.... I love that. Most of my clients don't go "ahhh..." when I tell them that, so clearly I'm not doing that quote justice. I used to teach workshops on letting go of fear of the unknown, I think I will add that to my list of " what I might start teaching in Hoboken this summer".

I've learned, as many have, that the essence of letting go is surrender, and the path always leads to surrender. Letting go of the need to control that which cannot be controlled is freedom, and freedom is wisdom. It seems to me that to cultivate wisdom, we have two natural tools at our disposal. Vision and Craft.

As creative beings our vision sustains us, guides us, connects us to consciousness in meditation and if we are lucky, in the present moment. The intangible essence of our lives.

Craft is our ability, in "human time", to shape our vision in the material world, our actions, and put our work in the world out into the world. The tangible manifestation of our lives.

So putting the three together, Wisdom, Vision and Craft creates a road to balance, evolution and peace within. I like that. Maybe that's what I'll call the first class I teach in Hoboken this summer.

I'll add it to my list.

I am an avatar voyeur

I am. I've written before about watching my son play WOW, XBox 360, PS2, etc.. , watching my husband play his XBox 360 games as well.  I love it. I am a visitor vicariously loving the ether worlds that artists create, that other artists know in their hearts to be real.

Recently, I was talking to a client who was ashamed of liking to watch people play - and asked me, why I did.

It was a great question. I never thought about it too much before, it seemed interesting, funny even, but light and wonderous at the same time. For me , nothing is what it seems. I love going deeper, parsing out the underbelly of  - well ,  you name it. That is my mercury in scorpio nature, in case you are wondering.

As I analyzed it out loud with my client, I realized that I love being a cheerleader. Being a supportive - you go guy, kill that zombie, buy that armour, enter that ether world challenged mission and, well you get the idea. I love being an avatar voyeur. Entering ether worlds of beautifully drawn imaginings, and travelling along with the hero or heroine - mission accomplished or not, does not matter. I can experience it from a far, imagine my own travels, without having to risk game over. As a retired mars warrior, I like that. An arm chair adventurer. It's funny and spicy at the same time, don't you think?

Part of me thinks that is what I love about being an art collector. It seems similar to me. Watching - collecting. The indescribable beauty of another persons  vision that connects to our own - isn't that what art is all about?

I think we all love the surreal. That part of our psyche that connects with life force, demon and angel energetics that impel our consciousness forward into dream land. Which on some level is real time.

I'm sure Dali would understand this post.

I also love to play - but yet am resistant. I have not plugged in my Wii in months. My ikami wolf lies dormant waiting for Mother Devine to breathe fire into his lungs.

Perhaps tomorrow.

Dignity and Balance

I find myself wondering about the essence of dignity, and how to best live in concert with our basic life force and vitality. This is not a competitive place, but a place of presence. A place of calm and inner balance. Dignity.

Say the word out loud - Di - g-ni-ty. It rolls off the tongue, and forces a smile with an exhale. Perhaps we can practice this as a breath meditation with sound. And sit in silence afterwards.

It sounds simple enough. But then the ego gets a death grip on our minds - and our thoughts swirl. Self-loathing appears before we know it, and we sabotage ourselves and forget who we are. At our core, we are all connected in our humanity. You wouldn't know it reading the newspapers sometimes, so easy to forget. Anger arises. Dave asks me sometimes - do you want to be right or do you want to be effective?

There was a time I wanted to right. And still do at times, I have to admit. But more and more as I grow older, I want to be effective. I want to help. I want to be myself and not care about climbing, attaining, forcing, voting, changing. Just shining, from the inside out.

I don't understand the dog-eat-dog mentality very well anymore. Or perhaps I have lost patience with its values. Rising at the expense of others. If we do not join together, find a way to help each other, we will not survive. We need community now, more than at any other time. We need to be vocal and local - share and build and support those around us.

In this new age, which I hope to contribute to, the renaissance of beauty and spirit that I feel we need to re-discover in ourselves, and allow to rise, there lies at its core - dignity.