by Katherine on December 23, 2009
Today I received my weekly email from Free Will Astrology and as usual, the horoscope for my sign, Pisces, was thought-provoking and totally perfect.
Robert Brezsny, the creative mind behind Free Will Astrology admitted he was puzzled while watching a singer at a music awards. She performed while swinging on a trapeze and he wondered why she didn’t just let her song and her singing stand on its own. He went on to advise all Pisces not to go overboard but just sing our songs. I loved the simplicity of his words, and I am going to take this advice to heart for 2010.
This being the time of year when it’s good to look back on the past year and envision what we want for the next year, I am going to posit a similar outlook for everyone, not just Pisces.
I wish you all the joy of knowing your “song” and the capacity to sing it to the world in all its glory.
by Katherine on December 19, 2009
Today I received a book that I had ordered from Amazon. The book is The Gift, Poems by Hafiz and it is a book that has been on my radar screen for some time now. Randomly opening the book, my eyes fell on this verse from a poem called Today, and it inspired me to create this week’s intention (not for Friday but still in time for next week!).
My understanding of my purpose, passion and existence increases daily through the gift of awareness, and by viewing the world with the wonder of a child.
by Katherine on September 26, 2009
The Flash!
I go back less and less to my old concept of the word mind and look more and more to my new understanding of it as my alignment with the Creative Mind. My old concept was that mind was simply intellect, and I believed that operating through intellect and hiding from my emotions for many years kept me from my greatest creative gifts.
Now I see that opening myself to a different idea of Mind has allowed me to free myself from focusing through the left brain and using my whole brain and whole heart.
I’ve been exploring the idea of essence coming into form for a couple of years. I have an idea, I take the necessary steps and then I see the outward form representing my essence take shape in the physical world.
How my creative gifts are expressed through individual form is unique to me. Even the manifestation of an identical idea in someone else’s hands would be completely different from mine. This means no ideas can be stolen from us.
This week, I discovered that what I have been calling Bright Shiny Object Syndrome has been a negative self-judgment that has placed limits on myself and denied the fullest flow of ideas from the Creative Mind. I have placed my faith in the opinions of others who state that focusing on one thing and taking action is the way to a successful life.
Now my intention is to play, to love the diversity of moving back and forth between different ideas, to love the excitement of being able to immerse myself in many creative activities. I have faith that when I truly align with the Source of All That Is, I can play joyfully with many ideas, I have access to all money and resources that I need from Infinite Supply, and I have all the time in the world to create. By co-creating with the one Mind, I can bring any inspirations I choose into form and by doing so, express my divine essence through them.
Wow, that really rocks!
by Katherine on March 11, 2009
We don’t like pain. Damage to our creative lives can seem completely inexplicable to us. Why did they do or say THAT?
But seeds of creative growth lie in every painful event. First we must experience all the feelings – grief, anger, fear – the event generates. The feeling stage is subjective, and our particular life experience will impact our responses. It is important to have the feelings, yet we must find a way to do this without inflicting damage on the people around us.
We can write out our feelings in journals or letters. (Yes, my letters were totally mean and vicious… I just never sent them.) We can care for our wounds in art or walking or music. We can work with healers. Each individual must find what works for them and recognize that there is no set amount of time spent on this stage.
Once we have resolved all the feelings involved we move on to the second more objective ‘viewing’ stage. When we are no longer bound up in the feelings we can take the time to step back and understand what happened from a wider perspective.
Enter the metaphor. Developing the ability to see metaphorically greatly enhances the ability to understand important phases of our creative lives.
You may have caught the metaphor I used already… the seed.
Here is another metaphor for the viewing stage. Imagine that one day while at an art gallery, you are viewing impressionist paintings. Standing very close to the most famous work by the painter Georges Seurat, A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, all you can see from your perspective are blobs of colour. There is no meaning in the picture. But as you step back you begin to see images: people, animals, grass, trees, water, and boats. The picture begins to make sense.
Here is another scenario. One day you are at a garage sale and you see a multi-pieced jigsaw puzzle but there’s no box. Instead all of its pieces are in a bag with no clues to what the picture looks like when assembled. Because you love a good mystery you buy it. Your only guidelines are the shapes of the pieces themselves. Although it is frequently frustrating you persevere and a picture starts to form. Details are revealed one by one and finally you begin to recognize the subject matter of the picture.
A third metaphor: see the trees…AND the forest. Here’s what I mean. Only after you have worked through all the feelings can you step back to see the deeper meaning metaphorically. Then you know the whole story, both from up close and from a distance. The two will integrate and make sense so you can move on with a deeper understanding of life.
This two step process can help you resolve life experiences in the past regarding your creative abilities. That’s because metaphors are non-linear, right-brained forms of creative expression.
Have you met a metaphor lately?
by Katherine on December 12, 2008
This week on my mastermind call we were all marveling at the fact that once again we are all in the same place.
Here is what we all recognize: instead of creating something new using an old familiar process, we want to create a new process, something completely unique that we’ve not done before.
What’s the difference?
It’s the buzz, the energy, the juiciness in the act of creating. It’s the longing for our imaginations to take wing.
What’s juicy for you?
by Katherine on November 25, 2008
What creative idea would you start right now if you dared?
Creativity shifts us forward in our life like nothing else we do. It is the essence of who we are and the form through which we express that essence… a poem, a building, a medical device. Or a blog!
Let’s face it. Life has moments where all we see on the horizon is a big black cloud with no sun or blue sky anywhere to be seen. We can create drama or we ease through those moments by looking into the heart of the cloud for the jewel hidden inside. The cloud is what happens to us. The jewel is the act of creating because in that act we are expressing who we really are.
Artists and poets and writers and artisans and crafts people have known for eons that the act of creation is profound and sometimes even life-saving. (I have personal experience on that.. stay tuned!)
So right here and now I want to dispel the idea that only artists are creative. Who started that idea anyway?
We create every day and it takes many forms both large and small, both short term and long term. How about an architect who envisions a beautiful building and then creates it? How about someone whose dinner table is as beautiful to look at as it is to eat?
It’s a way of thinking and being. It’s how we live while we travel the distance from one point to another or one day in our life to another. And the most direct route is not always the most rewarding.
When I was in elementary school I used to consistently get a D in art. I couldn’t reproduce a tree that looked like a tree, or people that didn’t look like stick people. But I had an ear for music that surprised people as early as when I was two or three. I might not have been a Mozart but it was clearly a gift.
But here’s the darndest thing. It was the D I got in art that had more impact on me. Where did we get the idea that it was okay to rate someone else’s creative endeavor? Wow, if that ever changed, a whole lot of newspaper reviewers and arts critics would be out of a job!
So this blog is going to be about sharing the many ways that unique individual essence is creatively expressed.
Creativity Shifts……
What creative idea would you start right now if you dared?
