Grounded

My Goddess of the Lotus

The final stage of my four month Vision Quest with Whitney Freya brought us down to EARTH which is pretty appropriate as I plan to bring into this post an analogy about some cute fluffy creatures with big ears that like to burrow below the earth and make their homes among tangled tree roots, but more on that later.

Here with feet on terra firma we solidified the lessons learned in building our creative practice and gained clarity on what we wanted to manifest going forward.

Working through Air, Fire and Water had prepared the soil ready to plant the seeds that would be the start of new intentions. As I've been painting layers and meaning I've been building my understanding of what it will mean to take my coaching message out into the world.

I've also been realising how important it is to nurture those tiny new ideas and actions. Just like little green shoots, they are tender things that require constant attention - if I don't give them enough light, feed them or leave them in the dark they will wither and die. Ideas and intentions need room to grow, to put out new shoots that explore and develop.

Our the course of Vision Quest we have been learning to switch on and listen to our intuitive mind. The act of creativity, when we are completely in flow, will quiet the noise of our everyday lives and allow messages to come through. This might sound a bit 'woo woo' until you actually try it. Just as our brains sort through the day's events in the form of our dreams at night, so does our right brain like to figure things out.

Ready for the rabbit analogy now? Strictly speaking the bunny wisdom I want to share with you comes from a creature that didn't always live underground - not until he was 'real' anyway! I am of course referring to the Velveteen Rabbit! Tapping into our right brain through the creative process is like rummaging through our stuffing until we find what makes us real.

The simple act of writing down our thoughts and questions we seek answers to on our canvas and then covering them with layers of paint is like spark to a flame for our right brain. As we play, the brain sifts through its store of knowledge and produces solutions. It asks not "what is it?" but "what can I do with it?". Being intuitive opens us up to taking a much wider view, we look from all perspectives, going beyond the here and now. It never ceases to amaze me at what comes out when I start to paint, collage, create. I'll often look back and wonder if someone else made what is before me.

Then, moving off of the canvas and back into 'real' life we begin to learn the lessons from our creative practice. So many times when I make art I'll stare at a terrible first layer and want to quit. But I've learned to keep going, reinventing, trying something new, innovating.  It was just a step on the journey, a test to see if you could fight off any resistance you were struggling with.

And so now, as I develop my coaching practice I'm taking these lessons to heart. I fail fast, try another layer and bring in different tools and methodologies to see what will happen next. It's already making me a better coach.

And if you don't believe me, how about this guy?

"The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant. We  have created a society that honours the servant and has forgotten the gift."

Albert Einstein

Going with the flow

“If you are interested in something, you will focus on it, and if you focus attention on anything, it is likely that you will become interested in it. Many of the things we find interesting are not so by nature, but because we took the trouble of paying attention to them.”
― Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Finding Flow: The Psychology Of Engagement With Everyday Life

Have you ever felt the flow? Perhaps it was while watching a movie, playing a console game or ... CREATING! That's when I get it - those times when hours fly past because you are so immersed in the enjoyment of your process. When I'm in flow my intuition seems to take over. It's my right brain kicking in and adding its flavours to my creative juice.

Letting my paint and life flow in the direction it needs to go

Can you remember what it was like when you were a young child and presented with a blank sheet of paper and some poster paints. Did you sit there and moan to the teacher that you couldn't draw or that you didn't know what to paint? Or did you slather colour across the page, sticking your tongue slightly out of your mouth in concentration, and just make something?

Flow is naturally represented by Water and was the element explored by Whitney Freya and my band of vision questers last month. We dove deep into our soul and cleansed ourselves of notions that we weren't good enough or that everything had to perfect.

Imagine your life at present immersed in water right now. Are you all at sea with the waves of life taking control and casting you against the rocks. Is the sand clogging your senses? Do you need a sense of direction?

Or are you at one with your intuition, flowing down the river? When an obstacle appears on the horizon you don't fear it, you just flow right around or maybe grab the things from the water that will serve you and let go of what doesn't.

I've been painting with my intuition, just letting what wants to come make its way onto the canvas. Mostly the same canvas, I've fought the impulse to hang onto something just because it looked good at that moment and instead practiced detachment.

Evolution of a Picasso-inspired painting - later it became a red bird!

The lessons I've learned have applied in my work life too. I was holding onto a role that had been a comfort blanket but hadn't realised how much it had gone from soft and welcoming cashmere to a scratchy horse hair that was bringing me out in a nasty rash! So, I bravely let go of that which no longer served and followed my bliss. Right now for me this is stepping away from my regular income and throwing myself in the deep end as I launch my Creativity Coaching business. Scary stuff but there are no rocks so far! The water is warm and I'm bobbing along just nicely!

And as I flow into this new coaching career I seem to have Liz Gilbert on autoplay in my ear reminding me about how important it is to act on your ideas before they carry on downstream to find someone else to grow them to fruition. So, while in flow I've already launched both a new Facebook Group and a collaborative art project to further help bring my tribe together.

Art is Life. Life is Art.