Suddenly, Quilts!

While watching the documentary “A Century of Quilts: America in Cloth”, I caught phrases that echoed in me: "It took on a life of its own… I became completely wrapped up in what I’m doing… It’s not like we suddenly discovered something, it’s that we fell in love with the traditional (quilts)… You begin the project but about half way through, you’re no longer in control… it will tell you when it’s finished…" And I thought, that’s the ‘allowing the flow to come through and manifest’ process of creating. At our best, we humanbeings do not create, or ‘make’ anything. We do our best when we step into the great river of Life just as we are, join in the flow, and simply allow it to come through us. Because what comes through and catches and stays with each of us is caught by the net of our life’s purpose (ideally that’s our conscious intention as well, because that means we’re not trying to catch something else that isn’t aligned with the purpose we came into this world with). And what we catch this way, in and with the flow of life, is what we can best work with, express through, interpret with our own filters, and bring to fruition of beauty, harmony, grace, abundance, and for the greatest good of all, uniquely stamped with each of our own ‘signature’.

The greatest gift of it all, is that we get to witness this magical process emerge from inside ourselves, gestate, take nurture, take shape, and grow, until finally we give birth to it and thus creativity is manifested and delivered to the world. This is how all beings in creation, whether a flower or an insect or a human, re-experience creation, divinity, oneness, a piece of what it’s like to be God, because we are each a part of God.

We are, at our best, conveyors and interpreters of the Creativity that chose us, individual and unique lenses that focus on certain ways of seeing and transmitting the beauty of Creation.

It still boggles my mind that I’ve never been aware or heard of this phenomenon until a 7 or 8 months ago.

Nevertheless, I now believe, from the depth of my being, this is what true creativity is. It isn’t yours, it isn’t mine, it comes from one and the same source. There is only one, and it is all of ours.

A ‘NEW’ WAY OF CREATING & WORKING: Just begin with an idea. It doesn’t even have to be a great idea. Just begin, and more will come. That’s how it goes. This, instead of my habitual masterplanning of a whole project at the beginning. Mapping out every detail of design before I even leave the sketchpad. Of course, by the time that's complete I am often exhausted mentally and physically, my vision having taken me so far into the future I feel as if I’ve already seen the finished product, my emotions never got to come out all the way and sink its teeth into manifestation.

It is strange though, that I’ve suddenly developed an interest in quilting in the last few months, not having sewn anything other than the occasional button since my teenage years, I’m not even sure I remember how to.

I sense that I am drawn to quilting now because it is very much a form of meditation, and that it presents itself as a natural medium for symbolizing, preserving, and passing on of messages from one generation to another, from the past to the future, from family to family, culture to culture. It is rich with layers of imagery, colour, texture, poetry, narrative, design, emotions, meaning… The linear designs of quilts also appeal to my old love of graphic design. In making an image graphic, as opposed to realistic or representational, the ‘flattening’ and ‘collapsing’ of the perspectives solidifies the essence of the image through simplification, and convey it to our senses much more immediately and focused in energy. And because its form is traditionally something we wrap ourselves in for warmth and comfort, it can’t help but invite you to touch it, caress it, connect with it. Whatever the design, it always feels like it came from Mom (or grandma), our first Goddess, with her loving attention, wisdom, and wish in every stitch—even those quilted by men.

Of course, it remains to be seen (mostly by me) whether I will become a vessel for the quilting art. ;D

(Quilt shown above: Joyride by Libby Lehman)

My Practice: Work-In-Progress

Woke up shortly after 7am today (a strange, rare and peculiar event), and began my yoga/meditation without getting out of bed (I did make the bed first though.) The curling-under-a-wave sensation was there again, and the calm-of-the-void feeling with it. It was still very brief but I could feel the beginning of it settling downward into me. Then my mind was on the loose again…

Breathing as deeply as I can so it reaches past my diaphragm (unbelievable that I have to ‘tell’ myself to do that) to fill my pelvis as well, a thought emerges:

We don’t create.
We don’t even co-create.

We capture.

Everything has been created already, long ago.
We are only experiencing and re-experiencing Creation.
As vessels and channels of these experiences,
we are as unique as each pot is unique,
And how we capture is different from one person
to another, one time from another.
But what comes through us, the torrent of energy we call
Creativity, has been there all along. Long before

we were created. Like a spring
deeply sourced in the mountains, dreams never run dry.
Whether we attend to a dream or not, it’ll come around again
and again until its message is received, or our life changes
and it is no longer needed.

Always resourceful.
Always recyclable.
Always sustainable.
Always bountiful.
Nature’s is the only way
we can afford.

Cataloging Change

Meditation this morning was not to be, my mind is a wild wind.

I thought about the family dinner last night at my sister’s, with those whose blood is closest to my own. The halo of beauty, simplicity, and a precious harmony that seems always to surround these family gatherings the last few years. What an enormous change that has been from what used to be. I thought about discipline, how I’m seriously accepting its significance in my life for the first time. I thought about how much I want to lose this uncomfortable weight I’ve been carrying. (How much, exactly, do I want this??) I thought about writing some poems today, maybe haikus…

This year is going to require a lot of trust on my part, in Life, in myself.

Speaking of enormous change, I thought i would take a quick inventory of just how much has changed in myself in the last year:

• Yoga and meditation – woulda never put money on doing them with any degree of joy, nevermind as routine and, dare I say it, commitment??

• Zen Buddhism and Daoism – little or no concept of what they were a year ago, certainly no feel for them.

• Doing household chores and other onerous tasks with serenity and even enjoyment – you’ve gotta be kidding!

• Riding the same wave of expansion, cooking and trying out new recipés have also become a new interest. I’m beginning to have a feel for basic spices and flavours of herbs and condiments that used to be a blind spot for me.

• Looking forward to and enjoying family gatherings – and allowing my heart to be opened by love – never before seen nor felt.

• Relating to trees, lake, birds, plants, stones, my neighbourhood, even people – nowadays with a smile in my body.

• Opened to group energy with less resistance, allowing the beauty of each person to come through.

The Burden of Knowledge

Watched “Heroines: A Photographic Obsession by Lincoln Clarkes”, a documentary by a Vancouver fashion photographer who saw in the run-down, doped-up, abandoned and ravaged women of the downtown eastside, another beautiful side of the human woman. He befriended them, interviewed them, and photographed them in their own environment. What came through was his love and attention to them, the care he took and the respect and trust that became mutual, which I imagine is a rare thing with women who have been so damaged. The photographs he captured of them were heartbreaking in their honesty and haunting beauty, but what really penetrated to my core was the longing. To me, these are portraits of longing, that which we all share, no matter who we are, as human spirits. It is the part of us that never dies, and in showing us the decay and degeneration and dying of these women, he showed us also, life.
__________

The books I’ve been reading these last few days—Eat, Pray, Love; The Life You Were Born To Live; The Zen of Creativity—as well as on the Human Design System, have come together to tell me, amongst other things, that it would do me a world of good to somehow find it in myself to form a daily discipline of yoga and meditation (tai chi and qigong are also suggested sometimes). Surprising myself, I’m actually finding yoga and meditation, whenever I’ve practiced them lately, to be a balm to my being, lovely and satisfying experiences. This is something I’ve always denied as being possible for me in this lifetime. Yet, here I am, well over the hill, and finding the grace I thought was genetically lacking in myself, to dance my way into the valley.
__________

Head and right upper back congestion, again… M. gave me a massage, then I had a salt bath. In the bath I ‘heard’ that it is because there was something I hadn’t let go… Then in my bedtime meditation just now I ‘heard’ what it was: knowledge. I thought, wow, knowledge is heavy! I had no idea… being so used to gathering it and hoarding it and dragging it around with me all of my life. This stuff I’ve been soaking up lately, these clues and signs and confirmations and affirmations and wisdom and insight, are great, and gratefully received. But I wasn’t supposed to try and hang on to it. It is literally like pulling a heavy load across my right shoulder and straining forward, overextending the trapezius and the occiputal nerves until they are screaming in protest. All because I’ve forgotten to let what I learned go.

As soon as I realized this, and breathed it out, a lightness lifted up in me, and I felt my belly expand. I smiled, involuntarily. Truth sunk in, settling into the bottom.

“I take a breath in. I let it out. I take knowledge in. I let it go.” This is today’s mantra.

I know too that if, after I’ve let it go, it comes back, then it is meant to, and it’s not because I tried to hang on to it.

I suppose, even gifts given to us have a life of their own, and ours are merely hands they pass through in blessing. Some stay with us longer, but sooner or later, they all move on, along with life.

Working Life Path 24/6

“It doesn’t matter what we do
until we accept ourselves.
Once we accept ourselves,
It doesn’t matter what we do.”
~ Charly Heavenrich

If accepting myself means not constantly trying to improve myself, to correct, and to heal what’s wrong with me, then I’ve not accepted myself as I am. I still think there’re things wrong in me, in my life, and I’m always trying to find and change those, out of fear, not out of love or acceptance. That’s the issue, and obsession, with perfection which Dan Millman is pointing out for my life path (24/6) in his book “The Life You Were Born To Live”. True to form, I did not get it at first—what are you talking about, I know I’m not perfect! (Look at what I’m trying so hard to change that!) Besides, I wouldn’t be reading this book if it wasn’t for this little blemish of mine… ha!

Reading about the number “2”, I see that I need to accept also, that on at least one level in existence there will always be duality, and I DON’T need to, nor am I responsible for bringing it into oneness. I only have to balance the opposite forces to suit the situation. It isn’t my job to attain union (perfection!). I leave that to one greater than I, with trust and serenity.

About the number “6”: “They’re here to let the light they carry shine through their action, not to become preoccupied with them.” And “It’s who they are that matters, not how well they do or what they know.” Because “People like and care about them, not how well they do every little thing. Those working 6 have a certain purity radiating in their energy field due to their high ideals.”

“The only perfection is perfect flow, and perfect fun.”

About the number “4”:

“If you have built castles in the air,
your work need not be lost.
Now put foundations under them.”
~Osa Johnson

I can’t, or at least haven’t, sit still with my imperfection (and other discomforts), which is my bed of nails. Or maybe more like a hair shirt, because I chose to put it on, just so I’m constantly reminded of my failings. It gives me something to do, itching and scratching, trying to soothe the rash. Even better, it guarantees a full-time job for many lifetimes to come. Maybe an eternity.

New Adventures in Zen Living

I’ve been trying out recipés in the last couple of weeks, ever since our last domestic eruption and resolution (admittedly a near dissolution) over household responsibilities. So far so good, as M has been mindful of doing his share. I have decided to integrate more of a Zen attitude about how I do chores, my state of mind and attention when I do them. I used to tell myself, if I have to do them I might as well enjoy them. Now I feel it can be more than that, better than that. The enjoyment can be from a deeper place, bubbling up like a ceaseless spring with an effortless ease. Effortless, and inexhaustible. That’s how it can be, and that’s how it has been. Now I put on my favourite music of the moment, and I dust, or mop, or cook. I sing or dance along with the music, I appreciate the beauty of cleanliness as I go, and I give thanks for the bonus gift of physical exercise if I actually work up a sweat. This has changed the way I feel and do chores entirely. I am giving myself an ‘A’ on Zen-housekeeping, so there. Zen can be fun, who knew?!!

So far I’ve made a roast, red lentil stew, Tex-Mex Corn Chowder, chicken and bean cassoulet (except I used chick peas), and astonishingly, all of them have turned out quite to my own satisfaction, and M’s taste approval. This is no small spuds for those of us who disdained cooking as a waste of time. We are eating healthier and at better times, and it’s been easier on the budget too. I knew I collected these recipés all these years for a reason (ha!)

I think about how I used to resent mightily the time, energy, and focus doing chores took away from me, when I would rather be reading or learning or sleeping even, and I can’t quite remember why I hated and resisted it so much, why I couldn’t find joy in it. It was the same even after I quit my job and had supposedly all the time in the world. This change that’s come about is like I finally found the switch and decided to flip it, from OFF to ZEN.

Next culinary Zen adventures: Stir Fry with Orange Ginger Balsamic Sauce, and Balsamic Glazed Fish Fillets.

Waiting As Stillness

Woke up in the night laden with the heaviness of financial burden, which prompted me to go back and work on a dream I had 4 days ago, without any conscious notion prior that the dream was about exactly that. Having worked through it now did not ‘lift’ my spirit (the dream was about a digger with forklifts), though there is comfort in knowing that the lift will come. I just have to wait. I sometimes think waiting is the highest form of torture for humans. Waiting to be guillotined is worse than the actual moment of being guillotined.

What is it about waiting that is so painful to bear? My inner knowing tells me that this is the wrong question to ask… hmmm…

Well, because to wait is to be in stillness, and we all know how hard that is. To maintain focus, that is, mindfulness, in the present moment, in the task at hand, which happens to be waiting in this case, and not try to distract that presence of mind from the anticipated boredom and restlessness (symptoms of the mind being elsewhere), IS being still. So, waiting is perceived to be painful and arduous because we are not waiting with stillness, we’ve not learned that waiting, in this life, IS stillness.

I am not waiting, then. I am being still.