Welcome to the art/life trail ride for the last day of 2015. It’s been quite the ride has it not?

 

Now as we turn the page on the Gregorian calendar it may be helpful to remember that here on the art/life trail we have eleven weeks remaining in the Natural Year. We follow the path of the Natural Year allowing for a slower pace and much more grace as the art/life trail ride advances. The idea of ‘hush the rush’ feels like a fit.

 

The Four Directions, Drozda, 18 x 18″, oil pastel

For our creative purposes we stay close to the unfolding of the cycles and the seasons using the four directional points as primary navigational tools.

Over the next 11 weeks we will be pioneering / forging new trails into The Mystery. You will notice the contour of the trail and the land. Our timeline for exploring The Mystery extends from December’s Solstice to Spring’s Equinox on Sunday, March 20.

Have fun and begin to make friends with The Mystery and its patterns.  By nature expect to be taken off-the-beaten-path. Schedule a daily ‘Meet The Mystery moment’. Make The Mystery a conscious part of your awareness and make headway as you round the trail’s bend. Renewal is coming.

Curiosity can be a boon to this leg of the adventure. Be curious about everything…the seen the unseen, the known the unknown…stay open to possibility. While the mass media is charging forward with resolution and goal setting… here on the art/life trail we’re more inclined to ‘not know’ and ‘not see’ being wide eyed and wondering about what is up ahead.

Three months of exploring The Mystery in the midst of the rest of life becomes a resolution that forges an evolution…you just may find that this is how goals actually manifest for you.

When I first moved to Virginia I often sang to myself to stay calm within all the changes taking place. One of my favorite chants looped through the lyrics to one of Laurie Anderson songs called Sharkey’s Day:

“Nobody knows me. nobody knows my name. and sharkey says: all night long I think of those little planes up there. flying around. you can’t even see them. they’re specks! and they’re full of tiny people”

Read more: Laurie Anderson – Sharkey’s Day Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Because I had moved to a brand new place and had to dive into the process of reinventing my career I sought professional support. I traveled 14 hours south and worked directly with my career coach. She believed in my work and generously granted me permission to make her book my frame for a course that I began to teach titled, ‘Creating Your Own Career’. This one action threw me headlong into The Mystery and I began the never-ending story of creating the art/life that supports me as I support you, as we support one another in becoming more fully who we are here to be.

This week we begin to delve into The Mystery as an essential part of the art/life path. For the next 11 weeks we will take on the willingness to engage ‘the seen and the unseen’ as well as the ‘known and the unknown’.

To level the path and help to remove the rocks and stumbling blocks you might decide to take this empowering step…face your chaos.

My coach taught me to embrace the chaos as the first step in renewing the creative process. We see this demonstrated time and again in the natural world of which we are each an integral part.

Things break down

Things fall apart

The floor drops out 

 The news comes in

There is a diagnosis

A notice arrives in the mail

Step through the briars and the brambles to the open space within the tangle. It’s worth the scratches and even the inevitable poison ivy outbreak as we make our way into the new land of the coming spring. You do it, I do it, together we do this by facing The Mystery of the eleven weeks ahead.

Best way to clear the path...keep a journal

Whose to say that the breakdown won’t lead to the breakthrough

When things fall apart something new can be invented

If the floor drops out from under us we can free fall

When we receive the news it may be the best we’ve ever heard

The diagnosis could easily state that All is Well

The notice arrives in the mail and tells us that we have been accepted

 

MY SHORT STORY

I began to journal in 1969 … First: for me writing it down has been a genuine and literal lifesaver. Second: blank pages start my meet-up with The Mystery of the moment. I watch as words appear dancing freely page after page. When I have traveled as far as I need to go I stop. I then actively ‘eat my words’ by taking them back into myself. I am nourished by them as if by the most motherly  love filled meal. My words become an emotional and psychological leveler each and every time I move the pen. That doesn’t mean my writing is good, or bad or ugly or even worthy of being read by anyone else…journal keeping is a life line to the art/life trail ride that keeps the path cleared for entry.

Intuitive writing, along with yoga, served as first steps in my long healing process (post entrapment/sexual violence at the hands of three extremely dangerous miscreants). I am convinced that for me these two tools as my first line of healing made all the many other modalities in my comeback trail the more pertinent and potent.

I am hooked on ‘handing-over whatever intrigues or ails me’ to the blank page. I now have well over 150 illustrated journals in my archives.

Therefore I can stand with and for all that is shared in this terrific ‘begin now’ journal article…give it a spin if something is eating at you…or if you are eager to learn to ‘eat your words’ in a healthy and dynamic exchange that is sure to nourish you. Write it down and then go back and slowly ‘eat your words’.

We prime the pump that takes us in and down into the womb-cave where The Mystery meets us. We face the chaos and open to the possibility.

How is chaos visiting you?

What thorns are grabbing and holding you fast?

In what way do you imagine being free to move forward at the pace that fits for you?

Journal, write, watch the words dance across the blank page…then as sweet nourishment eat your words and digest their beauty, goodness and truth…this is your art/life trail ride, never to be repeated. 

See you next week on the trail. It’s the winter quadrant and the keyword is The Mystery. These weeks allow us to go deep within to learn more about what we want/choose/desire to have come of this natural time. Here together we breakthrough the patterns and the addictions that catch our clothes and hold us fast like brambles growing thick on the uncharted path ahead. Here we pause. Fifteen minutes a day will do for a start.

 

I am a working Heartist with more than thirty years of practice in supporting the creative best in each of us to come forth and shine. Join the movement: make joy the vocation of your mind.

Connect with the uplift of ‘Luna See’ and Lifecycle; time management tools for aligning with natural creative rhythms. Discover and uncover the ecstatic thrill of ‘making life the master peace’.

Let’s travel together into realms of calm and renewed heart-centered emphasis.

Being with My Mystery, Drozda, 2010

Through our shared journey with our monthly newsletter  ‘Luna See’ and the creative consult service ‘Lifecycle’ you will discover and expand your ability to experience, express, create and contribute your deepest and wisest most authentic gifts to this unspeakably beautiful world.