Staying Calm

How do we stay calm under duress? To feel empowered instead of afraid? Empowered. To be fully in our power. Power within brings an amazing strength. Power within is not power over. Makes me take a deep breath as I type. That's a clue.

True power has nothing to do with the ego, with things around us or what we have. It is a sense of being - an at home feeling with the perceiving - that we are our truth. Not that we are doing our truth. A subtle difference, and yet everything is in that distinction. We are not in truth the perceiver or the perceived. We are simply prior to all of that.

Dave and I took a walk along the waterfront today, and he reminded me that all of the psychic phenomena that I have experienced in my life, was simply the dream illustrating a path through the dream to something prior. I love that awareness, and agree.

I find it calming.

And how do we manage that awareness? It's a tall order that can happen instantly. All messages in meditation and psychic phenomena can lead us within the dream to understand that the dream is simply a phase. We can go beyond it. But it is the route we take, the personal myth that our dreams illustrate that takes us there.

I find that calming as well.

Beyond to prior - that is what some refer to as the source.

This is where breathing meditation helps tremendously. We can feel empowered by knowing that we cannot control the biography around us, we can witnes it and be the essence that is the witness simultaneously. Deep breath. It is all in the script really. We simply need to live it in awareness. Everything holds a lesson for us about our karma and our work in the world.

I find that to be very calming. And down right joyous.

I've been asked to teach 2 courses in Spring 2011 for the School of Visual Arts Continuing Education department, a course in visioning and one in fund raising. The core of both need to be on "staying calm." How do we create calm in our careers and in our art projects? How do we teach ourselves calm in our life planning and search for meaning? How does our sense of calm impact our art projects for the world and the communities benefit?

Staying calm. In a world that is collapsing around us, I think the best answer to "what do you do? is "I stay calm".

Create Meditate Center

Dave and I have named our home the Create Meditate Center. The "living room series" was such fun, and the energy of the artists meditating, talking, sharing was brilliant. A wonderful experiment, that we will continue through out the fall.

A holistic approach to art, life, and career - it is really such a wonderful offering to our community. I find such meaning in doing this work, and being myself.

We'll continue to call it "Wisdom, Vision and Craft" but have expanded it now to be a series of astrological, creative visualization and career strategy classes for
artists (and their guests).

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. We must learn to incorporate the spirit within. And then apply it in the world. This way our work and our vision can help heal and create renaissance in our communities.

Our intention is to create a place for artists and creatives at heart, to come together under one roof, to evolve, discuss matters of career, heart and spirit and form community.

A registration form is posted to the group

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

So here is the schedule for Aug, Sept and Oct 2010. I am really excited about this.

Evolutionary Astrology
We will meet for 5 Thursdays, your personal chart will be used as a learning tool. Find out why you are here, and what your soul’s intent is.
Dates: 6:30 - 8:30 Thursday evenings, 9/30 - 10/28 $75

Principals for Success: A Practical Guide to Abundance and Alternative Thinking for Artists
We will meet once a month, Saturday’s 10 - 3 for a day of meditation and visioning, Sunday’s 11 - 3 for a day of art talk, strategy and discussion on how to apply the visions from meditation.
Dates: 8/21 - 8/22 $75
Dates: 9/18 - 919 $75
Dates: 10/16 - 10/17 $75

The initiation of Plato - upcoming classes

Classes coming soon:

The Living Room Series:
Evolutionary Astrology: Why are you here and what is your soul's intent?
Natural Principals: Creative Visualization and Strategic Planning

Teleseminar on metaphysics is in the planning stages as well. Here is a link to a great book you might want to explore:

Initiation of Plato

Streaming consciousness

The images that play within my minds eye stream through me. I guess we all are animate video screens of content. Sometimes the content is my mind - those incessant thoughts that distract and cause disruption. I give them so much power. The past plays back to us disguised as the future. Though it is the same movie, different characters but I know that story line.

How freeing when I can notice it. Laugh at myself or say, "ah - interesting. What am I doing that for - now?" I love when I can perceive the act as it is enacted. When I am in my most aware place - that calm centered place, then I am the witness and not identified as the player. Love those moments. Feels ageless. When I know I am truly prior.

That is the beautiful stream of consciousness. Not thought, not mind, not emotion. Streaming fields of energy and vibration as it courses through the body and creates awareness. So poignant and liberating.

Realization is the tiny moments of the real.

Momentary yet eternal. When time dissipates and all that is - is prior to thought. Before the naming, before the understanding, an expanded feeling of ahh....

Makes so much of human activity seem miniscule and childish. That peaceful center that radiates love and changes perception of self to SELF, has a sense of humor at its core. I think we are human so we can learn to laugh at ourselves. Laughing yoga makes so much sense to me.

I picture the streaming consciousness as a waterfall - sitting in a cross-legged position, in a circle of liquid light I am washed clean of thought and emotional presence into a state of dissolution. Eternal, Noble, Beautiful. Tickled. That is true happiness.

Personal Myths

It has been my experience over the last 30 years or so, that each 
person's journey is unique. We each have our own symbol system and 
mythic journey to follow. That is what is so interesting about the 
human dilemma. We are both ONE and not, at least from our minds point 
of view.

So the metaphors in this healing journey, are sign posts for 
our hearts and minds to follow as we illuminate the soul within. That 
is what psychic healing meditations can open for someone interested in using meditation practice to 
launch their metaphysical investigations.

I find these types of meditations to be an interesting route into the other realms, we start with self - to dissolve self, and our spirit guides the messages received.
It is always personal and universal at the same time. A adventure through the planet Uranus, to say the least. That is how it feels to walk our personal mythic landscape. Unknown, scary, confusing, immediate and yes, at times we even fall asleep. No matter, it is always interesting.

To be compelled forward by our own metaphors fascinates me, and is an artist path.

In our artwork we depict the unconscious impulses, that drive the 
ideas we carry onward.  Sometimes they are of the mind, sometimes of 
the heart, at times when we are lucky, they are of the universal mind. 
 On some energetic level we imbue our surface 
with wisdom.

Our task, as students of the universe, is to simply be 
and witness the gifts that we can allow ourselves to take in. 
Sometimes that alone is a lifetimes worth of work. Compassion for self is called for.

Through a dedication to our practice, we can uncover the peace that 
our personal myths lead us to, ultimately to the eternal light. The eternal silence, the liquid consciousness of the ONE.

How we get there is always personal, where we get to...that is the universal. Lovely.

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?

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.