For the past nine weeks myself, Michael, LeeAnn and Mel have been going through The Artist’s Way together. We decided to do this when the class didn’t make at the studio but we still felt that it was an important experience to give ourselves.
The intention of the course is to awaken sleeping creative potential. This is facilitated through daily journaling, weekly tasks and a weekly chapter. Each chapter addresses challenges that arise on the path to creativity. It also allows us to explore why we have bought into these challenges and presents opportunities and new perspectives to transform them.
I didn’t have many expectations when we began the course. If I did, they were open and mostly exploratory. For me this is the best way to enter a new project. Over the past nine weeks life has opened in a beautiful and surprising way.
I find myself taking a greater interest in my family. I want to spend more time with friends. I have reignited my college outlet of writing poetry. I am expanding my vocation at the studio to include cooking. I have become more efficient with my time and have started working longer hours at the studio on projects that I care about.
These are just some of the ways I have been affected by this course. I feel that I have opened in the best way possible- I have moved more into a space of love.
The weekly book prompts are all over the map. Below is a picture of me on Saturday morning right outside Michael and I’s apartment complex. I am wearing my new favorite dress that I just bought on our honeymoon.
It is 9:30 in the morning and we are going to take a thirty minute walk around our apartment complex. Wearing the orange dress was inspired by a prompt from last week that suggested to wear my favorite outfit for no reason at all.
Today I wrote a letter to my oldest sister for her birthday thanking her for all the ways she has supported me throughout my life.
When I was in college, I wrote poetry as a must. It was as if my soul would shrivel and die if the words and the energy weren’t somehow conveyed. Today I am re-entering the path of poetry not from a place of angst but from a place of contentment and child-like exploration.
Here is a poem that I wrote this morning as I was reflecting back on some difficult life experiences.
Enjoy!!
If Life Never Gave Me a Blow
If life never gave me a blow,
I’d be flying high with hot air in my ass.
But thank God he delivered me
From the notion that I am meant
For peace, happiness and security
By clinging to anything outside of me.
God played a trick on me.
He made the world quite tricky-
In order to find Him,
I had to turn Everything
Upside down and inside out.
Until finally, he said:
(God speaks)
“I am the space that you don’t see.
Stop.
Until you learn to see that which is unseen,
You will be chasing your tail
Like a witless dog.
I am not in the doing.
I am.
But you must go through Hell and back
To empty yourself
Of everything
That stands between you and me.
You have become bloated
With pride, ‘spirituality’, and ‘good deeds.’
When you stand free
And unimpeded-
Clear as a crystal.
Then you can step into me.
And you and I will become one."