Walking My Way to Water: Week Two – Identity (She Who Pays Attention)

Hullo Ducks

Time for my Artist’s Way Check-in.  Bit tardy again.

The Raggedy Man’s computer may be … dead.  I’ve spent hours today tryna get it to start-up and nothing I am doing is working.  Googled and googled and searched and tried all the ways to restart a mac with a flashing folder with a question mark on it on a grey grey screen.  Won’t safe start. Won’t start with the option key down. Resetting the PRAM and whatzit didna work.  There is much fear and consternation and frustration about.  We are now letting it… rest.  Over there.  In the other room.  Hoping that it may magically come to life again.

I think it might be a wee battery.  The PRAM battery I think it’s called.  Too bad we don’t have a MAC store in town, eh?

All prayers (and advice) welcome.

But… Onward to week two of Artist Way fun.

~~o~~

The Quick Chicken…
(Cuz chickens are so much more fun that Check Ins)

Morning Pages: 7/7
I’ve begun to do the 3 pages BEFORE I even eat my breakfast.  Then sit back and enjoy some food and coffee before continuing to scribble.  It’s quite lovely

Artist Date:I restarted my guitar playing by … restarting with Lesson One in the Beginner’s Course from Justinguitar.com
I also began practicing again along with his suggested schedule.
Feels good to try again.  It’s hard for me to stick with something if I am really NOT GOOD AT IT pretty quickly.  I’ve restarted this guitar playing thing a few times now… I know that what I need to do is practice just a BIT each day.  To get those chords sounding good.   I hope my work with small consistent improvements over on Sea Change will help me stick with it this time.

Other Tasks:
HARDEST – The guitar thing was actually my hardest thing – carried over from the Imagined Lives (Wandering Minstrel).  I’d been wanting to pick up Pree (my guitar)  and I was… resistant… knowing I’d failed to practice the other times I tried to learn.  I decided if I made the LESSON my artist date, it would give me a chance to see if I wanted to continue with the practicing.  I really do want to learn to play. I really do.
EASIEST – Affirmative reading – making time to read over the Basic Principles each morning and night and noticing any attitudinal shifts.

Basic Principles:

1. Creativity is the natural order of life. Life is energy: pure creative energy.
2. There is an underlying, in-dwelling creative force infusing all of life — including ourselves.
3. When we open ourselves to our creativity, we open ourselves to the creator’s creativity within us and our lives.
4. We are, ourselves, creations. And we, in turn, are meant to continue creativity by being creative ourselves.
5. Creativity is God’s gift to us. Using our creativity is our gift back to God.
6. The refusal to be creative is self-will and is counter to our true nature.
7. When we open ourselves to exploring our creativity, we open ourselves to God: good orderly direction.
8. As we open our creative channel to the creator, many gentle but powerful changes are to be expected.
9. It is safe to open ourselves up to greater and greater creativity.
10. Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move toward our dreams, we move toward our divinity.

I read these principles every morning, but not every evening.  My evening routine went off the rails this week.  Again.  Blergh.
I noted each day which principle stood out for me and was quite fascinated that it seemed to shift each day and that I would carry at least ONE of the principles into the day with me.  The one that my focus returned to on more than day was #8.  Which was grand, as I was also aiming to pay attention to small blessings and note them in my evening chickens.  I may continue this practice for another week. Or shift it and read the Rules of the Road (see below) instead.

Extra Tasks Done –

• My walks slipped off this week.   I miss them.
• I did carry on with the affirmations – in the mirror and written out at least once at the close of the morning pages.

WHAT JUMPED OUT FOR ME…

… being quotes from the book and my own blatherings

 

Tagged: the paragraph that speaks of how the attacks to our creative self can be external or internal… Knowing that most of the attacks on my creativity come from the inside,  I aim to use the Metta phrase I learned when I first heard about Insight Meditation – “May I be safe from internal and external harm.” to battle these attacks.

 

By not asking the Great Creators help with our creativity, and by not seeing the Great Creator’s hand in our creativity, we could proceed to righteously ignore our creativity and never have to take the risks of fulfilling it.

Yup… yup… yup… I’ve never really thought of this in this particular way before.  I have never, except as a hair pulling desperate cry from my heart asked the Creator to HELP ME WITH MY WORK.  Why not?  I’ve no idea.  I just … never thought of that before.

It sounds silly to me, right now, that I have never thought about this before.

I have come to see that my work can … reach in to a sacred place in myself and my audience… and I have totally asked the Creator to help me ONSTAGE as I performed a work… but to ask Her to … guide my pen… to lead me on… I have never VOICED this.

I think I might begin.
And I think I might … more clearly… hold the awareness that the Work is an offering.

 

It is very important to understand that the time given to morning pages is time between you and God.

That just smacked me… Just smacked me between the eyes.

It is.

It really is.

 

 

Draw a sacred circle around your recovery

 

Tagged: Draw a sacred circle around you WORK!

 

It is actually easier to write than not to write.

So true so absolutely undeniably TRUE.  And so hard to remember.  Heh heh.

 

The section on Crazymakers rang so familiar to me.  On many levels in many areas of life, not just in my work.  Especially this:

Crazymakers triangulate those they deal with.

Lordy… I do know this.  We mustn’t allow them to turn us against each other.

And then there is this…

As much as you are being exploited by your crazymaker, you, too, are using that person to block your creative flow…. The next time you catch yourself saying or thinking, “He/she is driving me crazy!” ask yourself what creative work you are trying to block with your involvement.

Ooof… that’ll hit you in the gut.

 

Begin, this week to consciously practice opening your mind.

Tagged: Notice blessings, opportunities and the Random Sacred.

 

And…Oh… the stuff about her grandma… weeping weeping goodness.  I would so love to grow into a woman who sees the world the way she did.

Life through grandma’s eyes was a series of small miracles…. She stood it by standing knee-deep in the flow of life and paying close attention…. Survival lies in sanity, and sanity lies in paying attention… The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight.  The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention. … The reward for paying attention is always healing…. More than anything else, attention is an act of connection.

Wow wow triple wow, right?  I especially love the bit about the capacity for delight.  May we all increase our capacity for delight.

The precise moment I was in was always the only safe place for me to be.  Each moment, taken alone, was always bearable. In the exact now we are all, always, all right.

Amen, Sister.  It took me so long to learn this one.  I continue to work on it.

And this… well this is just one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever read…

I remember her pointing  down the steep slope from the home she was about to lose, to the cottonwoods in the wash below.  ‘The ponies like them for their shade,’ she said.  ‘I like them because they go all silvery in their green.’

Beautiful.

~~o~~

The chapter ends with Julia’s Rules of the Road.

RULES OF THE ROAD
In order to be an artist, I must: 



1. Show up at every page. Use the page to rest, to dream, to try. 


2. Fill the well by caring for my artist. 


3. Set small and gentle goals and meet them. 


4. Pray for guidance, courage, and humility. 


5. Remember that it is far harder and more painful to be a blocked artist than it is to do the work.
6. 

Be alert, always, for the presence of the Great Creator leading and helping my artist.
7. 

Choose companions who encourage me to do the work, not just talk about doing the work or why I am not doing the work. 


8. Remember that the Great Creator loves creativity. 


9. Remember that it is my job to do the work, not judge the work. 


10. Place this sign in my workplace: Great Creator, I will take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality.

~~o~~

MY PERSONAL NUGGET…

This week’s strongest take away for me is the reaffirmation of the power of paying attention.

I aim to increase my capacity for delight and to open my eyes and heart to all the small miracles that flow to me each day.

Yeah.

I want that to be my identity – one for whom life is a series of small miracles.

~Amen (and a little woman)

Thanks for stopping by.

Wishing you a happy, creative, week ahead.

Go easy ~p