Expressive Art Newsletter #5 - Making Friends With Time
Sent Monday, March 1, 2010
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Hi
My New year's resolution this year has been to become friends with
time...and as I do...I have been feeling such a willingness to be
simply happy with what is....whatever it is. As I become friendly
with each moment of time, my life is not so marked by reactions to
people and events but is more of a curious witness to what unfolds.
Perhaps my life is fuller than it ever has been with work, school,
my writings and with connections with many people throughout the
day, but I can see as I become more present...I am improving my
uneasy relationship with time.
Ondrea and I did a session with our business coach last night and
she pointed out how much I talk about time and how many of my
dreams involve "having time". I have also been going over my
journals these past weeks and have been seeing how uncomfortable my
relationship has been with time. I have felt like a continual
victim to "not enough time". I have recently created a new
journaling e-course on making friends with time called 30 Days of
Inspired Creativity.
I sense that in the past...my constant longing to have enough
"time" alone to create... and to be "myself" was because much of my
being "in the world" and in relationship with others was false. I
was coming from who I thought I "should" be with others instead of
the truth of who I am and it was exhausting. These days I just am
myself...I am present to the truth of myself in all situations and
this feeds me energy. I no longer so deeply "crave time" to be
alone and to "be myself" because every moment is a time to be
myself.
Eckhart Tolle describes the concept of time so perfectly:
"The elimination of time from your consciousness is the elimination
of ego. What we are speaking of is the elimination of psychological
time, which is the mind's endless preoccupation with past and
future and it's unwillingness to be one with life by living in
alignment with the inevitable is-ness of the present moment."
Whenever your habitual no to life turns to a yes, whenever you
allow this moment to be as it is, you dissolve time as well as ego.
For the ego to survive it must make time - past and future - more
important than the present moment. When you react against the form
that life takes at this moment, when you treat the now as a means,
an obstacle or an enemy, you strengthen your ego. Hence the ego's
reactivity.
The more reactive you are, the more entangled you become with form.
The more identified with form, the stronger the ego. Your being
then does not shine through form anymore - or only barely.
Though non-resistance to form, that in you which is beyond form
emerges as an all encompassing Presence. It is more deeply who you
are than anything in the world of form."
What I can say about time is that I am learning to be in it without
resistance and for the most part of my day I am able to be at
peace. I do not allow myself to think ahead so much. I try not to
mull over the past so much unless it relates to a present upset. If
I am commuting to work or school, I see the house that I pass, I
notice the sun on the fence and the manicured lawn. I see beauty
around me.
If I am cooking dinner after work...the candles get lit, the jazz
music is turned on and I am just puttering and cooking. If I am
walking with my daughter, we are just walking. We look at the stars
in the night sky, we meander, we laugh. There is a perfect peace in
that. In the midst of a busy life, I can be timeless.
Love to you,
Shelley
"From wonder into wonder existence opens." -Lao-Tzu
CREATIVITY ARTICLES
The Art Habit
Daily Art as a Spiritual Practice
Creativity and the Shadow
Exploring the Forbidden with Art
Creativity As Play
Art is a Wonderful Playground
The Creativity of The Moment
How Creativity Transforms Life
Creative Over-Indulgence
Creativity Addiction, Compulsion and Workaholism
Expressing Vulnerability With Creativity
Getting Underneath Our Social Mask
Expressive Art E-Courses
New E-Course
30 Days of Inspired Creativity
This E-Course offers you a daily place to contemplate your life
and will point you in the direction of developing a lifelong daily
self-reflective journal. 20- 30 minutes each day will begin you on
the path of cherishing your own inner life and finding out what
uniquely matters to you.
Creative Intuition
This free course will help you gain clarity into where you are in
your life right now and what steps you need to take to round out
your growth. The course involves choosing one image to meditate on
each day.
Deepening Creativity
Miniature collages are a wonderful way to begin creating without
pressure. This is a course that teaches that spontaneous creativity
is as effortless as breathing and is as profound.
Collage For Self-Discovery
This is an in depth collage journaling course that is very near to
my heart. It is a practical, mystical journey into the depth of the
creative soul.
Featured Book
Happiness is Free
By Hale Dwoskin and Lester Levenson
This is the astonishing story of Lester Levenson and his personal
awakening to his true self.
His co-author Hale Dwoskin writes, "There is a strong, almost
universal belief that growth was hard work and required baring your
soul and reliving, painful, unresolved issues. However, that all
changed during a very fortunate encounter with a remarkable man.
Lester Levinson writes of his awakening, " I began by asking
myself, "What do I want out of life? And the answer was happiness.
Investigating further, I went into the moments when I was feeling
the happiest. I discovered something which startled me at the time.
It was when I I was loving that was the happiest. The happiness
equated to my capacity to love rather than to be loved. That was
the starting point."
"When we get in tune, our capacity to love is so extreme that we
love everyone with an extreme intensity that makes living the most
delightful it could ever be."