"How We Stop Ourselves"
I am always "turning away from the ecstasy". There are things I know I love doing, yet I stop. Why? Everytime I meditate, there is a benefit. Still, I stop myself all the time from doing it. My mind is filled with fresh and realistic reasons about "why it's not time to meditate. "exercise creates more oxygen and a "new mind", but I am almost frantic to postpone it. eating well provides an almost instant reward. yet I run to empty foods from childhood that used to comfort me, and now are sedating.
I'm often seduced by struggle.
It's as though it's painful to feel "too good". I'm used to the effort, and sometimes confused by the joy.
I am familiar with rejecting pleasure, and with a low-grade, almost constant feeling of despair. There are many companions for this journey, even though it makes no sense, I find myself clinging to sadness to avoid feeling my emptiness, or even happiness!
I think it is easy to stop ourselves from being too bright, too happy, too successful. conformity also soothes us. we can predict it, and there is the illusion of control.
Unfortunately, we also stop ourselves from being too visible, unusual or vivid.
"I am not eccentric! It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel, set in a pond of goldfish! "Dame Edith Sitwell
We stop ourselves from being too loud, too different, or too much.
Yet we crave our individuality, our wild special selves. We want to live our adventures, and be seen for our essences.
Who are you after the guests have gone home? Who are you after you take your makeup and clothes off? What do you dream about? Who are you reading? How do you stop yourself? Who are you?
I found this a powerful excerpt to read this morning..and I ask myself these questions and most of all encourage myself and all of us to really live loud, your wild selves and enjoy being all that you are ....wonder.full.
This is my May Intention Collage I did for the "creative awakenings" process - Side 1 above and Side 2 below...
During this May Creative Awakenings Envisioning Process...This came out...The lotus imagery is coming out loudly for me in my work..I think it symbolizes the awakening time coming out of this dark and drudgery time...where things were murky, unclear..and yet out of this time comes such a beautiful blossoming, like the lotus...So for May, my intention was to Let Go and blossom anyway, relinguish control...love, art, grow, creatively....
I am finally sharing this now...but I did this a while back..it will soon be time to do the June Envisioning process..highly recommend this process...Check out Sheri Gaynor's Creative Awakenings book and site etc.
Technically speaking, this collage was so great to do also, I have been really pushing myself to use different materials, techniques, glazes, etc. I did this in preparation for my May 11th teaching Collage and Mixed Media Workshop at the Kitchener-Waterloo Art Gallery..it was a ball of fun too....
