Out of the Distractions & into the Silence

For any one that has read and practiced The Artists Way you will remember the exercise in voiding your self of all distractions (TV, Books, Radio). The thought is that by irradiating the outside distraction you can more clearly see yourself and find your creativity.

I read the start of the book a few years ago (thanks to a kind friend that gave me a copy) and when I got to this part, the part where I give up my distractions, I closed the book, put it on my shelf and didn't go back to it again....until now.
The thought of giving up my regular TV shows seemed harder than giving up air.
What would I do to relax? What would I spend time doing in the evenings?
It just seemed pointless!

BUT...

Here I am years later and I find I am now in the position of having given up the TV (now on my fifth day).
Eric had given up TV a couple of years ago and found that while he missed it at first it forced him to look for other, more creative and productive ways to spend his time. This ended as we got cable when I moved in and he slipped back into watching the box in the evenings with me. We have been talking about getting rid of it for some time but I kept delaying it. Finally a few days ago I made the call to have them put our service on hold (just in case I wanted it back) and now I am living in the silence.
The first 2 days were fine as we were busy (plus we rented movies) but after the third and now fourth day I found myself in a complete funk and missing the constant noise of my TV Mistress.

As I work and create from home I can go days only having contact with Eric and the odd call to a friend so the noise of the TV in the back ground while I painted would provide me with a sense of connection with the outside world. With that gone, I found myself yesterday sinking into a depression and feelings of loneliness even feelings of abandonment from my friend the TV.

I am happy to say that this morning I have been able to take a little bit of a step back and find my center again, leaving yesterdays absurdities in the past. While I am sure that my longing for the company of the box will resume periodically, I now feel it is at least worth giving this addiction of mine a well earned break.

The time is currently 9:50 am and in the past all I would of done by this time is get Eric off to work, check email and watch the news (on TV) but this morning I have had coffee with Eric and sent him off to work, checked the news on line, checked email, read a chapter of the book my Granddad wrote many years ago, fiddled in my garden a little, played with the dogs and written in here. I must admit that I feel quite accomplished. How on earth did I waste so much time???

While I am not yet ready to give up all distractions, like books and radio, to further deepen my creative essence and follow the Artists Way, I do feel I am walking a necessary path of becoming comfortable with the silence of the outside world and growing accustomed to only hearing my own breath and thoughts.
It leads me to wonder if my creations will change in any way????

Perhaps it was best said by Confucius "Silence is the true friend that never betrays."

Please wish me luck with this experiment of mine...& Eric as he has to put up with me :-)

Blessed be, Love and light

Second Chances

Do you ever wonder how your childhood friends are?
How your old neighbor is that you lived next to many years ago?
Or what ever happened to the cutie you used to have a huge crush on?
Sometimes,as I sit working on a new painting, these types of questions would start going through my mind and so I went in search of friends that I haven't spoken to in far to long and to my wonderful surprise I have been able to track some of them down. In the last month or so I have located and emailed and spoken with almost 10 long-lost friends who all used to be a huge part of my life.
It is amazing how easily the conversation flows and how wonderful I feel after hearing that old familiar voice. We share stories, both the good and the bad, and somehow you know that there will be no judgment as these are the same people you used to share your secrets with and that have seen you through the days of bad hair, pimples, and terrible attempts at first love.

I am incredibly blessed to have made some wonderful friends in my adult life and now I am increasingly blessed with the reignited friendships of my youth.
I think that as we grow up, get married, have kids, and settle into our careers it is easy to loose touch with those that we once promised friends-4-ever to. Life gets complicated and the days are not nearly long enough to accomplish everything so sadly we put our friends further down the priority list and in no time we can barely remember the last time we spoke to them.

For me, finding and re-connecting with these friends is a gift to re-visit my younger self and to further understand just how far my friends and I have come in the years gone by.
Friends are an amazing gift and a rare commodity so I for one will do all I can to keep in touch with these fabulous folks.

Reaching out to someone after months or years of not speaking can be terrifying but trust me when I say it is worth pushing through the fear. I am so grateful for this second chance at friendship and I only hope that some of you may be encouraged by this post to do the same thing.

Blessed be, love and light

Things That Go Bump in the Garden

Warm Spring sunshine, a cool breeze and the gentle song of my wind chimes fill the garden with tranquility at the moment. Birds sing and chirp from all the trees and my cat Grey-El has taken to sunning himself on the front step so he can accost me for pets the moment my shoveling takes a pause.
Gardening has become my new labor of love and I look forward to planning each change that I make and watering my new little plants, but there is a dark force working in the shadows. A sinister side to the garden that only emerges when you start poking around in it......

It is the creepy crawlies!!!!!

Okay, so those of you who know me personally may not be shocked by my bug filled nightmares.
It is quite well known that my "I am woman hear me roar" attitude turns into "I am a squeamish little girl" routine the second something flies, jumps, or crawls on me but I didn't realize just how many times I would have to face my fears taking up this new hobby of mine.

So far I have had to slowly make friends with:

• The biggest earth worms known to man:
  Of which I have thousands and which is supposed to be very good for my soil!
• Ugly fat grub things:
  Which I thought were bad so I would use my shovel to chuck them on the path but it turns out that they are good so I now leave them be but the crows who would helpfully eat the grubs are totally pissed and scream bloody murder at me whenever I am outside.
• A nest of ants:
  That thought me very rude when I turned over a random paving stone and in the process destroyed years of tunnels and work.
• And last but not least a freaking black widow spider:
  Who I must admit was (in the 30 seconds I was frozen in place before screaming and running like a gay man being forced into polyester) very striking and quite glamorous to look at.

As my fear of pesticides, insecticides, and most chemicals of a deadly nature is far worse than my fear of the creepy crawlies. I am having to learn to co-exist in my small, green, wondrous, oasis with all the little buddies that were living here before me.

Perhaps this is a lesson that is far greater than just my own learning to garden and over come bug related fears.
Perhaps the real lesson, for me and those of you reading this, is that despite things scaring us because they are different from us they each have a place in this world. They are each a part of our environment and this delicate ecosystem called earth.
Tolerance is a beautiful gift to give our environment, our fellow human beings and our selves. If we learn to give this gift freely than we may be so lucky to receive it in return.

If you are interested in learning about the environment around you and how you can be more tolerant and less harmful to it please check out the Nature Conservancy of Canada's website.

Blessed Be. Love and Light.

Facing our Fears Part 2

Just wanted to provide an update on my last post.
I rode in my first horse show yesterday and walked away with far more than just a prize or a ribbon, although I did walk away with a prize and 3 ribbons and one of them was a first which was cool.
But Getting back to what I really gained ... I'm not a competitive person. If I think about how I may do in comparison to others then it all goes to hell. If I think about doing the best I can do then I start to second guess, stress out, and again it all goes to hell. But if I stay at peace and trust in myself and just have a good time and allow my abilities to be what they are without judgment then I far exceed my expectations and I really enjoy the moment.
When it was my turn to ride the jump courses I just mounted my horse and enjoyed sharing a moment with her. I felt no stress or pressure just an over whelming gratitude for the moment and a thrill for what she and I were going to get to do. We had a blast together! I grinned and she kicked up her heals between jumps and both of us were living and loving that moment in time. I think we got a couple of pics and if so I will post at a later date so stay tuned.

Love and light,

Facing Fears and our Darker Emotions

I'm sure all of you are getting a little sick of hearing about my Saturday riding lessons but I must just say that today I got to jump a 2 foot course, meaning multiple jumps in a certain combination with jumps 2 feet high. Now 2 feet is nothing but keeping the correct form over the jumps is what is important and although I certainly have things to work on, my instructor says I have a natural jumping form. This is great news as it means I will get to move on to higher jumps in the future :-)

Jumping today also allowed me to see the youth in my wonderful mare Countess, as she kicked up her heals in delight after the first couple of jumps and you could tell she was having a great time. It was such a blast!!!

The more important tidbit for today is that I am also invited to compete in a minor show tomorrow. It will include 2 flat classes and 1 jumping class. The whole show is just for fun and to introduce us novices to competition.
But let me tell you that when I was invited it might as well of been Spruce Meadows because my blood pressure rose and the butterflies started.

It has taken some convincing from both my husband and father (Thanks to both!) to get into the competitive spirit and join in tomorrow but now that I have agreed to take part I am like a kid on redbull. I can barely contain my excitement!

Facing ones fears is never easy. For me it takes a push from my loved ones, a kick from my higher self and a good dose of blind faith but somehow I never regret facing a fear.

Facing any darker part of our selves can be a challenge. Tomorrow at the show it will be my fear of failure. Yesterday I had to face my envious and jealous side. No matter what dark crevice of your soul you are uncovering embrace it, be tender to it and shine a very bright and honest light on it. As it is only a part of your good soul and in that case how dark can it really be?

I believe that to shy away from the darker aspects of our self and pretend they don't exist is to give them power they don't deserve. Take out the dark emotions, give them a good spit and polish, shine love and light into then and allow them to simply crumble and blow away in the wind. Dark energy never serves us but if we deny it we give it a place to live rather then sending it back to the universe to become light again.

On a personal note: I will confess here from my blogging pulpit that yesterday I faced a very large dark emotion. After a loving and friendly call from my ex-partner, who's life seems filled with love and blessings, I felt jaded and hurt that the universe hadn't sent him horrible and hurtful times. I felt karma had taken the day off and decided to reward rather than punish him for the crappy way he had treated me during our relationship BUT the truth is everyone deserves happiness. My ex-partner is a good person who has faced his darker sides and who allowed me to learn very valuable lessons. The time we shared together had far more good than bad and despite hurting me he mainly loved me. I was far from an innocent by stander in our relationship as I chose to be there and participate and for that I must take full responsibility.

JK - If you happen to read this, thank you for your call. I learnt a wonderful lesson from it in allowing my self to be human and to embrace my dark corners. I am so happy that you are happy and that you have chosen to keep in touch. Blessed be to you and yours!

Love and light to you all,

The Much-To-Do About Boobs

This ones for the girls....

Have you sat down recently and thought about boobs? Yours or someone Else's?
I find myself this morning wondering how breasts became such a hot topic and how one body part can be related to so many emotions, thoughts, experiences and controversy.

In what seemed like an overnight transformation I went from a flat chested 11 year old girl to a 36C curvaceous 12 going on 20 year old. All of a sudden my mother was having to try and hide me from the leering gazes of 35 year old men. This overnight change in my body didn't just mean that clothes fit differently but it meant EVERYTHING was different.
I became a sexual being in the eyes of other people because my body had changed, and let me tell that at 12 I was no where near ready for it.

The tops that on my friends looked cute and innocent looked sleazy on me. My friends mothers weren't sure I was the kind of girl they wanted hanging out with their daughters and they certainly didn't approve of how their older sons and their husbands were all of a sudden offering to babysit.

Having breasts changed my life the moment they arrived and they continue to play an important role in my life. They let me attract certain lovers but deter others, they prevented me carrying on with certain sports, they have both advanced and hindered career moves at certain times, they have formed a part of my personality and I have both relished and rejected them at different times of my life. Breasts are controversial and those are just my own.

The power of the breast is overwhelming.
It is what nurtures our young, lures our lovers, forms our fashion sense and fosters billion dollar industries from creams, bras, surgeries, magazines, film, and countless others businesses.

No one goes unaffected by boobs.

So why do I bring all of this up? I suppose it is to ask you to be sensitive and to give this over worked body part a bit of a break.
Their is a reason that breast cancer is rampant in our nation and it is more than just the physical nature of our world. It is also the emotional pressure that our commercial driven North American lives force on to this unsuspecting fragile collection of tissue.
As women we criticise our breasts for being too small, to big, too low, too pointy, too, too, too and I think we just need to give them a rest.
Stop judging yours and everyone Else's.
Stop allowing society to tell you something is wrong with them.
Stop forcing them into padded wire contraptions that force them into unnatural shapes.
Let them breath for Goddesses sake!!!!

1 in 27 women will die of breast cancer. This is staggering!!!!!
I say embrace your tits. Their size, shape, and stage in maturity.
Love them for what they are and take great care of your mounds.
Don't forget to check them to ensure good health and perhaps let them see the sun first hand.
www.bcsc.ca

Blessed be, Love and Light

A Complex Answer to a Simple Question

This morning I was asked a simple question.
"Do you ever loose yourself in a character of a book your are reading? Really loose yourself where you start thinking like they do?"
" Oh yes" I replied. I spoke then of a few favorite characters from the books that I love but the question has lingered with me well past the original conversation.

I think I loose myself in characters all the time. In books, in movies, in songs and even in friendships. But more often I find my self in my interactions with these characters. We have a choice in how we learn our life lessons and although I spent my younger years learning some difficult lessons through traumatic events such as death of friends and family, date rape, leaving school, leaving relationships, and so on... I have discovered in my slightly older and wiser years that I can learn valuable life lessons through listening to the stories of others and allowing myself to become a character in a story for just a moment and then relate it back to my own life. I no longer need to experience first hand a difficult path to gain the wisdom from it.
I feel very grateful that I can open my heart, mind and soul to another persons experience and gain insight from it.
It makes me wonder if that isn't the Spirits goal. To live on earth learning a handful of lessons that we can take back and share with the greater conscience at our time of passing.
How wonderful it would be to live on earth as we do in the Spirit realm sharing our insights and feelings without having to experience the drama first hand.
It takes an incredible amount of empathy to transport yourself into a character that is far removed for your notion of who you are and very little to relate to a figure you admire or respect yet I have grown more allowing myself to bathe in a character I feel disdain for, as it those who are different that can be our greatest teachers.
As I said, a complex answer to a simple question but one worth continuing to think about.
I hope you each enjoy your next book or movie. Try allowing yourself the joy of loosing and finding a part of yourself in an others character. Just remember to tie on a safety rope before diving in so our mental institutions don't become overloaded! :-)
Blessed be. Love and Light,