Twists and Turns

I am amused and amazed by the twists and turns my life is taking these days. I am following my curiosity and my inspiration. My private practice is flowing along and the rest of my time is now doing art. Right now that is gourd painting.

It all started when I signed up to submit pieces to the state fair as a way to channel my grief. That reignited my interest in my gourd work. A number of years ago I juried into the Kentucky Crafted Artist program. I had some gourds in a local shop and was always delighted to get an unexpected check. I was discouraged because my medium of choice faded.

Recently I began experimenting with more colorfast medium, trying to get them to behave the way I wanted. Now I am playing with new techniques that capitalize on what the medium likes to do with some delightful (yes, and dreadful) results. I have been reading various "how to" books and adapting them to my technique with the goal of determining a series of gourd projects that I can teach by DVD and in person.

I am currently sidestepping the what to paint problem to try new things using their prototype project. I read about the next technique the night before and if something inspires me I adapt the project. Last night I had the idea to paint a peacock feather. That gourd is stunning in its simplicity. It may become one of my painting themes.

Right now I have my painted gourds piling up like a fruit arrangement on the top of my propane stove behind me. I can see my progress in a glance. Of course, I am delaying turning the heater on for the season. Soon some will go in the trash, and some will move upstairs. I am beginning to gather a new body of work to photograph to enter into juried art shows.

Without giving up my day job, I am living the life of an artist. This turn of events was unimagined last spring. And now I can't imagine not living the artist's way.
Why do I love my life so much?

Is It Working?

I started using the ho'oponopono cleaning technique of saying to myself "I Love You, Thank You, I'm Sorry, Please Forgive Me", for a few months now. I ordered e-books of seminars, attended a phone seminar, read "Zero Limits" by Joe Vitale and "The Easiest Way" by Mabel Katz. I have even attended a seminar, live with Dr Len. All the behaviors of a fanatic. It is what I do when something captures my fancy. I dive in, swim around and pay attention to what is happening in my life as a result.

The sentences have become my companion. They are at peak consciousness when I am driving, playing "Spider", when I ma with clients and falling asleep. I try to do them without expecting a specific result. I am noticing that I rarely feel helpless anymore, that my intellectual drama is decreasing and I live in the moment better. I have pulled my head out of the sand more and look around with curiosity even if I don't like what I am seeing.

I have been following the fires of California with interest and emotion. In the past, I would have kept the TV off to keep my adrenalin level down or have been rivieted to the TV with adrenalin raging. Now I watch, clean with my sentences and wonder at the good that will come from so much destruction. The stories of resilient spirit, the people who will start over doing something they really like in a place they really love, the new growth that will rise fro the ashes. I watch people come together and connect with those they previously ignored. All the time I am cleaning.

I have been using the cleaning to help me with my grief from the death of my friend. It probably helped me continue doing what needed doing. It didn't take the grief and pain away. Eventually I was led to experiences where I really felt someone heard the depth of my pain and then I could start to let some of it go. It doesn't consume me any longer but sometimes washes over me.

So I have more peace. The direction of my life is shifting to try to fix others less and be more gentle with myself. My artistic and creative expressions are coming front and center. I do not feel so very fragile in the face of awful things in the world.

So ho'oponopono has become a perferred tool in my toolbox. Cleaning is better than fixing. It is not my one, true way but it is an awesome way. I am already exploring Soul Healing as taught be Eric Rolf. I love it when I find someone whose way of thinking and expressing turns my brain upside down and jiggles the connections.

The reasons Why I love my life so much seem to be infinite. I delight in uncovering them one by one.

Is the Universe Friendly?

I have recently come across the work of Eric Rolf and he asks 4 big questions. The first is, "Is the Universe Friendly"? My answer to this is not as simple as I first thought. If my answer is black/white, no/yes, at least I know what to expect. If I think it depends on the circumstance then the universe would be capricious. I would be victim of its whims. Intolerable.

I did not grow up thinking the universe was friendly. I grew up with guilt and fear as motivators. Yes, there is beauty, order and majesty at every turn but I was always checking my back and waiting for the other shoe to drop.

I have since changed my belief. Yes, the universe is friendly. Look at my Gamzu theme. No matter what happens, this too is for the best. I see the emergence of this theme is my appraoch to learning and proving to myself that the universe is infact friendly, even when it doesn't look like it. Clearly i am walking in the direction that holds that the universe is friendly.

The news is now filled with images of California burning. The stock market analysts are decrying the decline of the dollar and the next wave of housing drama. And I ask again, is the universe friendly? This is the crossroads. If the universe is unfriewndly, and my world is in danger of collaspe,I feel justified to behave like chicken little, sleep poorly, and stuff my feelings with food. My reaction to the threat is enough to scar me for life, even if the events never unfold.

If the Universe is friendly, then I know at some deep level that all is well and will work to my best interest despite all appearances. I start looking for the open doors and opportunities to recreate my life in a joyful way. It works for me to believe that the Universe is friendly, no matter what. Gamzu!

I see it in the big things. I don't always feel it in day to day life. When the pup has diahrea in the house for the umpteenth time today but he doesn't poop fast enough when I take him outside. I am in a hurry and know I will have more to clean up when I get home....the universe does not seem so very friendly. I realize the stress of such mundane things are self created. At the same time, I notice how ingrained old beliefs really are and what level of conscious attention and intervention is needed to realloy shift my core reactions.

I am not disparing here. I am noting I am on a journey and the climb to the top of the mountain is punctuated with twists, turns and downgrades. It is a step to realize I am choosing my framework and acting accordingly, patiently (or not)with every aware moment. That I can choose to see the universe as friendly is one way I answer why do I love my life so much.

Do I Want It? Really?

I learned something about myself following my trip to Pittsburgh. If I really want something, I go after it fast. After the Chihuly exhibit we went to the Pittsburgh Glass Center's open house and hands up day. Someone demonstrated making glass beads and glass blowing. I decorated a glass and had it sand blasted. and everyone had the opportunty to add bits to a double panel glass mosaic.

The mosaic artist, Davieo Devis, was totally embracing and sharing of her art. On the way home Maelanie and I discussed doing some mosaic. Who knew she had a yearning to work with glass but didn't want to work with lead? We discussed places to get glass and where we might be able to get installation contracts.

I was smitten. Melanie checked out the internet. I called a friend whose mate used to work in glass and I hit the jackpot. I bought scrap staned glass for $1 a pound. 110 punds to be exact. But there was also a stained glass lamp project that had been sitting in jigs for 5 years already following the death of its craftor. So I arranged to take all the pieces and to transform it into a mosaic in memory of Brenda.

So after squeaking out bits of time here and there, we have a 24 x 26 inch grape arbor piece ready for grouting and framing. This all happened in the course of a week. No stress. No delay. Just an opportunity seized.

So when I want, really want, I am like a dog with a bone. When I decided to take a class in glass fusing the week my dad died, I followed through. It took time to mesh my schedule with available classes and I had to drive to North Carolina but i was on a mission. I am planning my next class already.

I contrast this with things that sound good to do, things inspired by hypnotic writers, like create a great passive income internet business. I read and study but no action. I may end being one of those people who has to sleep in my car because all of my art has taken up every nook and cranny of my home. Art for art's sake. Ahhhh, the joy of it. I wouldn't mind selling some pieces also. Maybe I will learn to how to set up a web site.

In any case, when something is really for me, I go for it. I am learning about why I love my life so much.

Field Trip in Fantasy Land!

I Love glass! Art glass that is. I recently took a field trip to the Chihuly glass exhibit at the Phipps Conservatory in Pittsburgh. It was a 10 hour drive each way and so very worth it.

Chihuly, the blown glass master, is know for pushing the limits of size in glass blowing. He does organic shapes in fantastic color and builds them into towering sculptures that are placed into landscapes such that it seems they have always been there. Walking through the conservatory was like traveling in an exotic stage set.
Each turn of the corner brought me face to face with a new vibrantly colored theme.

This is thinking outside of the box at its best. It boosted my own imagination and creative juices. We went twice. First at night with accented lighting and them during the day to catch the play of natural lighting. Sometimes it was hard to think it was the same display. The only change in environment was the lighting but it transported me into two very different realms.

The whole experience was like a treasure hunt in that each new interface of glass and landscape was a delight to my senses. Sometimes the path wound in ways such that I could see the same pieces from different angles. WOW. One piece had a spider adding its special touch. Oh the have the abandon to throw myself out into the world with abandon like a spider, knowing that wherever I landed I would not only be fine.

The trip was also highlighted by meeting up with a member of a mastermind team. It was like Susan and I had known each other since grade school. We stayed at her home, a 200 year old stage coach stop. She took the day off, drove us around Pittsburgh, encouraged me in my gourd work. While she and Melanie played with photos, I took rubbings of the wood paneling in her home.

Our 36 hours in Pittsburgh filled up my senses. What a great life! I'm ready to re-engage with my art big time.

I Love You in North Carolina

Ho'oponopono is now based on cleaning my relationship with God to get back to my pure state by repeating "I Love You. Thank You. Please forgive me. I'm sorry." over and over and over. It is becoming my mental mantra. I went to NC to attend a weekend seminar with Dr. Len, the current Ho'oponopono spokesperson. I wanted to "grok" ( from Stranger in a Strange Land meaning to understand with all ones senses)the essence of Ho'oponopono. That included checking out the energy of people who had been doing it for longer than I have as well as learning additional cleaning techniques.

I came away with 2 main insights. The first came from the simple repetition of the idea that I am either in that pure state as I was when God created me or I am filled with "pooh". Every question that came up, every example cited turned out to be an illustration of "pooh". Over the course of the weekend I really did begin to see how much of my mental processing was in fact "pooh". I make up stories around the tiniest of circumstances to help me feel out of control, guilty, less than....
I assign meanings to words or events that were not intended. I talk myself into overwhelm. Replacing that with "Thank You, I love you", is curios is a useful way.

The second insight is how slippery it is to take 100% responsibility for my life.
I am not talking about guilt or blame. I am speaking of responsibility as in "if it shows up in my life, I am responsible". I have been in the habit of assigning things in my life an independent reality. So when the puppy ran away and got into trouble and came home with a fractured pelvis and needing a tail amputation it was, "The puppy he..." with no inkling of my responsibility in that. Even as I write this, I see the concept is obtuse in my telling of it. But somehow I am getting a sense of it in my insides.

I have long repeated the statement, "There is no one out there but me", to remind myself that somehow this life is my illusion and how I see it, the stories I tell, I determine, even if most of it is unconscious. I guess it has been my way to claim my power. After all if there is an "out there" I am powerless. If my experience arises from within, I have influence.

One of my great epiphanies that I wrote about some time back was when I asked, "What if I did choose my parents before I came in"? Suddenly I no longer felt victimized by them. I became intrigued with why I would choose them. What was in it for me? It was the turning point of my relationship with them. I ceased resistance on that point. Taking responsibility for my all I experience now releases my resistance to life.

So far, Ho'opponopono has cleaned a lot of mental clutter and reduced my resistance to life. This makes it one of the better tools I have discovered in my life. Ho'oponopono has made me love my life so much more. It is good.

Packing in the Moments

Sometimes I don't write because I am wallowing in self pity and other times because life is moving at such a pace that I take little time to scribe my reflections. In this case it has been the latter. In the past month I have been to a Ho'oponopono seminar on North Carolina, a homeopathy class in Phoenix, the Chihuly Glass exhibit in Pittsburgh followed by a wedding, and enraptured by a glass project. And all of this was interspersed with seeing clients!

This might be called living life in the fast lane. When I read what I have done, I hardly believe it was only a month. There have been times when this would have been a blur. I'd be moving so fast from one thing to another I'd miss out on the moment. But as I reflect on these times, I am pleased to report I was present in the moment and living each experience fully. I am savoring richly textured memories.

What made me so present in this flurry of activity? Certainly,they were all things I wanted to do. I made conscious choices that also factored in the more tedious aspects of travel time, shifting clients to accommodate my schedule and shortened time for life's more mundane activities like laundry, cooking and trash. My grief accompanied me like a tattered rag doll in a child's hand. I simply brought it along with me.

I am also attributing credit to using Ho'oponopono by saying, "I Love You, Thank You", as much of the time as I could remember. I find this keeps me more in the present moment and I spin fewer dramas in my head about what something means or how I am being thwarted. Without the drag of so much mental process, events unfold much more smoothly. And inspiration pops in. It has been a highly creative month as well.

This past month has been a time of grace. Good people were present for me, interesting learnings, and when the tears came, they did; and when they left, they did. They are not as frequent now as they once were. Life is good. I am loving mine.