This past weekend, as with all of my life lately, lots of
changes have popped up. For starters, I bought a house and I’m moving in
a month. I had a couple huge epiphanies that are still bouncing through my daily
routine and life and I’m inching closer to launching a new business project.
Not surprisingly, all of the above just kind of shuffled
into my life with quiet movement of a stranger in a doctor’s office lobby and
plopped down. No big entrance or even anything more than a salutation-like head
nod of acknowledgment. Why? Great question. I don’t know.
I know that my neurotic self-critical mind plays out
conversations old peers have of how funny it will be to watch me fail. I know good
friends, my ex and nearly everybody gives me that sweet, pity look of “Sure….
you’ll do great with that business.”
Sunday I was feisty
and irritated the way all writers or anyone with huge unattainable expectations
of the day can be. I was in a tizzy and trying to push off a friend wanting to
meet for lunch. “EAT? Now? I’ve got so much to do! Fine…give me twenty minutes
to meditate”
I sometimes randomly select a card from an Angel Tarot Deck
I love. It takes the “think” out of it. I love signs, synchronicites and in a
time of my life where I feel so alone and left standing to make a million
decisions, its nice to pass the proverbial buck.
The card I pulled was one I’d never seen and said something
like this:
“Patience! Slow the
F- down!” (Yes, I’m paraphrasing…Angels don’t scream.)
“You dreams are blooming more rapidly than you realize. Still, they
need nurturing and patience.” On the
back it said: “It takes time for a seedling to push through the ground and
mature into a flower- bearing plant. Yet, each moment of a plant’s life cycle
can bring joy to those who notice beauty. In the same way, enjoy the process of
realizing your dreams. Slow down and feel gratitude as each step brings your
manifestations into tangible form. Notice the lessons and love that springs
from every moment that you engage in acting upon your dreams.”
Little moments like that can shake one’s entire perspective.
I’ve been working on two mini-collections of paintings and photo-quotes. One is
about the “Heart Compass” and the other is called “Grace Gumption and
Gratitude.” It’s cute really, to be faced with your own obnoxious hypocrisy all
by yourself. (read: myself.)
I understand the concepts of slowing down, of smelling roses.
I can put beautiful images together in pretty word trains that inspire exactly
what that card said to do. I just
happened to be too busy, and crabby, and spread thinly to entertain the
indulgent and rather rude idea of people wanting to spend quality time! Ha. I
literally laughed at myself for a few minutes staring at the card. Laughed
hard.
I’m the oxymoronic concept of creative flow being white-knuckled
without sleep so I can try and share the recent understandings I’ve come to
about how precious time, life, self-love and acceptance are because letting go,
trusting, following your own path and grounding in gratitude is so very
healing.
So I meditated without expectation, just on gratitude and
slowing to nothingness. In fact, after that meditation which felt amazingly
freeing, I walked out of my office and met my friend, and didn’t work on
painting, or my website, or novels, or articles the rest of the day…I just
stopped. Stopped everything else except being grateful and paying attention.
Then strangely, my three-year old son, whom I usually
consider my “human distraction” and I spent hours carrying my paintings
one-by-one out to the front yard and sprayed them with UV varnish, and other
non-environmentally friendly sprays. We talked. We laughed. I spoke to him like
I was talking to an adult and he responded (with minimal truth or relevance) as
if he knew what I was saying, just like all of us. I truly was besotted with him, as you might be able to tell from the video below:
Then my older daughter came out, and asked if she could
paint. We sat in the September sun as it warms the breeze and presents a golden
hue over everything just listening to music and making art.
Huh. So let’s recap: I was pissed I couldn’t work, so I
tried to control my schedule with fury. Then an Angel card says “You’re nuts
and missing your life.” So I walkout out on all my self-placed expectations and
just live. In just living, I end up completing not, one or three, but five
paintings WHILST spending quality time both outside and with my two out of
three of my children?
Does it not make you snicker at how obnoxiously complicated
we all tend to make our lives? Control, limits, constraint, ego and negative
thoughts didn’t get my work done. Nope, letting go did.
I’d say that’s something to be grateful for, and It has
inspired me to hold my self to a Seven day gratitude challenge. Each day I have
to meditate only on my blessings, approach absolutely everything with a
perspective of gratitude, help two people for absolutely no reason other than
they could use it….in whatever way necessary, and list fifty things I’m
grateful for every day.
I’m in awe sometimes at how funny the universe and powers
that be are. The humor is not lost on me, even if my youthful non-grey hair is
because of these little lessons.
Grace, gumption and gratitude.
I’m on it!
~~~~~~~~~
"Shimmer with a smile. Life is hard, bloom anyway."
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