Welcome to the art/life trail!
I’m so glad that you are here. I welcome you if you are a new reader! Many of us are curious regarding the ways in which we can line up with our personal creative drive. Many of us yearn to leap beyond self-doubt and self-sabotage to be recognized and actualized as the best version of our self. Here on the art/life trail we track the natural patterns of the cycles and the seasons. We apply a creative keyword to each moon/month and allow the umbrella of these 12 qualities to bring focus to the chaos that precedes any creative endeavor. Our keyword throughout September is Love. Love as an energy of connection rather than an emotion. Love as in Love what you Do.
Here we go…this is a very rich and active moon/month.
Prayer for the New Millennium
May all beings everywhere be awakened, healed, peaceful, and free.
May there be peace in this world and an end to war, poverty, violence and oppression
And may we all complete the spiritual journey.
Lama Surya Das
It’s September, the final of our three moons of summer. We move now through the four weeks of the Love cycle. September, each year, mirrors the primary energy of the year. 2017 is a year of new beginnings. September gives us time to feel the change that has happened so far this year. This is the final moon of the WE quadrant of the Natural Year.
I find this exciting and empowering to consider. September gives me the time to reflect on what I’ve have been investing in during the first eight months of 2017. This moon/month I am offered the opportunity to Love what I’ve created thus far. This is a revealing creative exercise. Take pen to paper and see what comes up for you.
Chaos is the First Step in the Creative Process
When things get turned upside down and when overwhelm appears on the horizon it’s natural to go into a tail spin. This September gives us time to see where that’s been happening.
Super Volute/Estivation, Drozda, Acrylic/board, 12 x 12″, 1998
The day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more
painful than the risk it took to blossom.
Without judgment notice where you have been wound tight.
Notice where the world is spinning in chaos and crisis.
Be aware. This is the year to embark on a mission to open and face a NEW beginning.
Beginning anything new is challenging!
Periodically throughout 2017 we need to pause. This moon/month the time is ripe for reflection. Can you name your greatest challenge? Can you get intimate with your prominent issue? What pushes your buttons? What pisses you off? Where are you experiencing overwhelm? Let’s imagine that our challenges fall into one of three areas: physical, emotional, spiritual. Once you have identified the area name it. Write it down.
I’ll start. Once upon a time I discovered that my biggest challenge is self-sabotage. I learned this by finally realizing that I had a habit of sabotaging my happiness. Unwittingly I would throw a roadblock in my path and force myself to stop moving forward. I was an expert at stopping my joy in its tracks. I would trip myself up and stop happiness. It took a lot of falling and getting back up to get me to the awareness that I didn’t have to do that anymore. That didn’t mean it was easy to stop.
Slow n Steady Wins the Race
This year each one of us can engage in a conscious beginning. Beginning anew can feel slightly confusing at best and downright frightening at worst. The door opens to a new start. It will be what we make of it. There are endless examples of the opposite of what it means to begin fresh. We might experience overwhelm or being stuck. One of my big ways of staying put was what I called ‘the inertia of trying’. There’s engaging in the slog of the status quo. You might experience resistance. Maybe your belligerent and stubborn. Perhaps you feel victimized by life itself. All of these are invitations to begin again. When we know better we do better.The three moon/months of summer are the most doing time of the year.
What are You Doing?
Take time this moon/month to lean into your history of knowing how to ‘begin again’.
2017 is a year to practice standing on your own two feet and knowing what you stand for. This year is a collective/global energy starting point. Think of this as a creative tool instead of making it into a belief. You can believe whatever you choose while also sensing into a new never before known landscape that lies before us.
Visualize your deepest desire to grow and be all that you’re destined to be…keeping in mind that ‘you don’t become yourself by yourself.’ We need one another…that’s a good thing.
The archetypal energy for all of 2017 is #10 Fortune.
Fortune represents abundance on all levels of being. Fortune comes from following your passions. Your strongest feeling is where your talent lies. Fortune is the manifestation of your talent so that you are rewarded in return.
Voyager Tarot, Fortune, James Wanless, PH.D
The eight moon/months now behind us have been helping us to develop courage, confidence, balance and stability. There’s a good deal of ‘walking in the dark’ to be embraced during this Natural Year. The creative energy of 2017 only lets us see the next step, then the next step, not the entire path. With the natural wobble taking place all year it fits to look where you’ve been over the past ten years as you simultaneously visualize where you intend to go in the decade before you.
Seems Like a Very Long Time
Take a long look. Look out toward the horizon of 2027. It seems so far off in the distance, yet this is the year to begin expanding into a sense of the new. Consider new pathways for your physical, emotional and spiritual life. Create a vision. What do you choose to experience?
2017 feels edgy and stretchy. You are far enough along on your lifepath, and we are deep enough into this year, to realize that we get what we concentrate on whether we want it or not. All this year we are exploring this edgy place. This year offers us the opportunity to stretch into new thinking patterns, planting fresh seeds for the decade ahead.
Consider…your opportunity and capacity to collaborate over the coming decade. Recognize…where you can stand in your power, where you can choose to be a self-appointed leader in the area that you Love. Our keyword for this moon/month is Love. This is the last moon of the summer season. There is a push to DO what you can with what you have. There’s the opportunity to see that currently you have enough, you do enough and you are enough. That’s a Love attitude.
See you next time on the art/life trail!
Lookin’ UP^
Iona
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I love what I am doing. I am visiting my daughter in Las Vegas. Getting in some down time and together time. It has been a crazy summer. Bought an RV .named her Gypsy. Took maiden trip to NC two days after getting her. Since then up to Conneticutt and back to NC. Base was in VA. Got kicked out of there while on another adventure to Wyoming and Colorado where the siding was blown loose from Gypsy. While in the shop for three weeks, I’m informed to get out is my VA home. Was kinda stuck. Now that I have Gypsy back and a place to leave her, I’m flying to VA to move out of said house and into my car and drive it to NV. Should arrive on VA Monday along with IRMA or what’s left of her. It has been an adventure. Every day a test or a challenge of something or other. This being my first experience with a camper, it has been a learning experience, too. I thought I was too old to learn new things however I still do, whether I want to or not. I still keep a positive outlook . One step in front of the other I continue up on this amazing journey called life. Got to take the worry out of it. Still catch myself there but aware that it does no good. I make plans with too many options and need to shift thru them and pray on them and decide. I made the flight plans before IRMA . Well, I love an adventure. Friends in VA, Oklahoma, and Colorado have helped me along the way and continue to do so. I love them all. Everything works out perfectly with Faith in the Devine Creator. We are all here journeying in love together.
Happy trails! Peace out
Hi Diane…what a grand report on your unfolding adventure with Gypsy! I look forward to hearing how it’s all coming together now that you’ve been west for a good month. Happy Trails!!
What a timely post. It shows me the spiral of life vividly. As you speak of beginnings and chaos and creativity, I am also aware if the endings. I see the flow of these seeming polarities, one into the other; the infinity sign, on and on. For a moment there is calm acceptance and profound peace in this knowing. What is the saying from the side of the tea box from so many years ago. ‘Love is not what you say. Love is not what you do…Love is love.’ Thank you for the loving kindness that you are.
Hi Sara…yes. Love is timely isn’t it ‘-)
Always and everywhere.
I LOVE that Sun Bear offered us the entire moon/month of September to really focus on this quality of creative connection. So much awareness can happen over a four week period of focus.
“LOVE is the glue.” That’s what Joey used to say. This moon/month we get to ‘glue ourselves; ME to WE in preparation for the coming Fall Quadrant when the ME + WE = LIFE…
we’re prepping to LOVE LIFE. That is the kindest act of all.
Lookin’ UP^
Boyohboy, do I LOVE your posts, Donna!!! It’s pretty much impossible for me to read these ‘acts of love’ that you do for all of us regularly without a smile spreading broadly across my face. The words always seem to be profoundly applicable to my current life situation. You are a gift to us all in so many ways! Can you send me an email…I am so ready to sign up for your XLC mentoring once again!
Hi Marianne ~ it’s lovely to meet up with your beautiful reflection of the art/life trail. We create the path together…that’s the joy of it, don’tcha think? None of us can traverse this life/art path without support and sponsorship. It’s a wonderful reason to smile broadly and to discover the “profoundly applicable” aspects of what touches, moves and inspires us.
Here’s to our shared present!! AH HO!
And…yay…I look forward to our XLC sessions..up ahead ‘-)
Lookin’ UP^