Welcome to this week on the art/life trail ride!

October 1-30 brings the Experience Moon.

We are standing at the West Gate on the circle of the Natural Year. From here we begin the deep inward turn on the trail that takes us down and in.

As we begin to move away from the appropriate business of spring and summer we engage a brief review:

What About ME?

Journal page, Drozda

At spring equinox we entered the East Gate where we learned anew how to relate to ME. ME is a code word for nurturing the relationship with wise selfish, placing first attention on self so as to gain just a bit more Clarity that led to just a bit more Wisdom that brought just a bit more Illumination. Throughout spring we develop this creative focus.

Relating to Others

At summer solstice the South Gate swings open helping us learn new skills in our relating to Others. The summer quarter of the Natural Year brings a bit more creative Growth as we learn to Trust just a bit more our innate ability to Love.

MOCA Studio workshop, Drozda, 2014

At fall equinox we pause at the West Gate. This is a natural time to reflect upon relationship with Others as seen in the mirror of ME.

Here is a 10 minute West Gate review of the first half of the Natural Year:

Moving into the Life Quadrant

As we gaze in through the West Gate we can see that it is our relationship with Life that now takes center stage. For the coming ninety days we can each in our own way gain just a bit more Experience that will lead to just a bit more Introspection that will culminate in just a bit more Strength in how we relate to Life.

The art/life trail ride is a track and celebrate journey. I celebrate Life and will give myself all sorts of opportunities to make a note of something wonderful that emerges during a day…right now I celebrate the Pileated woodpeckers return, the aroma of the earth as leaves crunch underfoot during my daily hike; I celebrate the wonder of color bursting out in the landscape when the sun is shining and the soft mist that comes from being in the cloud of an approaching storm as I am today.

This week I also share the celebration of my dear once-upon-a-time student now beloved poet/sister/friend Jasper Lotus Hawkins spiraling around the Natural Wheel of her Life for the 50^th time…WOO HOO!! Well done Dear Jasper!

Jasper Lotus Hawkins, androgynous horse-being and Tuva

The repeat of the Repeated or
20 Minutes in the Beauty of Bewilderment

Standing naked beside myself,
a wilderness of one
no longer existing,
surrounded by many.

I am a ninety two year old man
dying in your arms.
I am a young woman who
cannot see but I see you.

Whispering trees urging me
home speaking in a language
I desperately want
to understand.

Ancestors calling, singing
me back to my original self.
How do they know
I’ve gone missing?

I rub my limbs with wild
lavender and return to
the dream of its own dream,
the repeat of the repeated.

Searching to the depths
of a cluttered ocean.
There you are underwater,
dry, sitting, floating.

“Where have you been,” I ask.
“Behind you, in front of you,”
you say. I am there
and still missing.

My chemistry is stunned
with my wanting. Contractions
aching in my solar
plexus expanding

reaching out to touch you
without touching.
Tattoo me with your touch.
I will carry you home.

This is my moment
to love you. My waking is
with you sleeping in my
wanting, swimming, blending.

Mysterious melting
ice in the spice of
our distant souls,
singing

Jasper Lotus Hawkins

Scared Sacred Each and Every Fall

This is a sacred part of the journey…the Experience Moon/Module offers opportunity to see where we’ve been (as the 10 minute MP3 file guides us) and to also anticipate where we’re bound. 

Best also to consider that this is the shadow side of the Natural Wheel. Like it or not the weeks ahead will brush us up against personal demons, devils and strange beliefs…think All Hallows Eve and Day of the Dead. This doesn’t have to be bad news. As you explore the land of the unseen, unknown and anxiety producing aspects of Experience you can come to Love this part of the adventure as well. As my mama often said, “This too shall pass.”

Get Real

In the Experience Module we’re given 31 days to get real. For our creative life that might suggest a calming and quieting down. We might take a turn toward the soul’s knowing as it relates to the heart’s desire. When we make this turn it rattles the cage of our gremlins. These shadow parts wake up and tension will often kick in.

Journal page, Drozda, 1994

It’s natural and helpful at this time of year to pause and face our own shadow. The shadow is the creative blow-back of thinking that we aren’t enough, don’t have enough and will never be enough. The shadow is the part of us that wants control and the power to know what’s on the path up ahead.

Journal page, Drozda, 2002

We can’t know our Experience in advance. We can’t know exactly how we’ll engage Introspection or know in advance where our Strength will be coming from.

Being together on the art/life trail ride provides space and creative time for imagining what it means to be ‘care full’ and ‘art full’ rather than getting mesmerized by the shadow dance and staying over long.

Experience Horse Power

Jasper Lotus Hawkins becomes Horse in 2016

What does it mean to be horse rather than being rider? What a grand shift in the power of the trail ride Experience! Horse power with a new level of meaning. You as empowered vehicle. Rather than being astride or inside the vehicle you are the ride.

I felt a palpable shift in my interior when I first heard Jasper’s declaration. I felt a Clarity! This feels like an artful Wisdom! I sense into the radiance!

“I’m 50 and I am Horse!”

This statement is the result of natural organic Growth. A demonstration of joy infused Trust that comes as any one of us makes the choice to Love the relationship with the spring ME and the summer Others.

Horse is majestic and capable of great speed, horse is a symbol of liberation and power. Horse is beauty and strength.

 Pinterest

I’m at my retreat farm as I write this. There are a pair of horses that live up at the entrance gate. They have a small grassy paddock and a little stall where I see them grazing when I arrive and depart. Sometimes they aren’t in the paddock and I notice how my first reaction is ‘Oh No…they have been sold or in some other way taken off never to be seen again.’ Then I get a grip and realize that they have been moved to a pasture that can’t be seen from the road. It reminds me of how quick I can be to jump to conclusions. The West Gate and its path of Experience, Introspection and Strength give us ample time to notice our resistance patterns. We do ourselves a favor, and do no harm, when we can name and claim the ways that we make things up and stop the flow of calm and kind. 

This moon/month take some time…remember what we’re up to here can take place in as little as 15 minutes…imagine being visible to your Experience with Life.  

Georgia O’Keeffe stated that she painted because there were things that she had no words for.

Georgia O’Keeffe

 What inside of you is needing a new way to Experience Life?

Stand at the West Gate  

Open to the future. Keep a sense of containment by visualizing the three to six months ahead. We can’t see them. They are out there up ahead on the trail that we make as we move forward step by step…being horse.

Being Your Own Horse Power

We have no clue what the future holds. We may feel anxious and uncomfortable as our shadow pops out onto the path in an attempt to distract or dissuade us. On the trail ride we Trust that we have enough Growth now to Love even that shadowy Experience…because something wonderful is bound to appear on the other side.

Do you know someone who is challenged by not enough time, money, energy, ideas, inspiration or well being? Here at the turn of the season is a lovely opportunity to root deeply into the possibility to Experience a new level of creative engagement…invite them to be part of the trail ride…sign post up ahead…

You are enough

You have enough

You do enough

Meet up next week on the art/life trail…Enjoy the ride!