I was walking on the beach at a favourite place of mine on the Mid North Coast meditating as I often do in the mornings. I love Early mornings because I can just let thoughts wander in and out without being distracted from business of the rest of the day. Often, when I am in this state, I feel completely engrossed, like I am in two places at once. I am walking on the beach with my conscious body, my spirit is walking with me but also dancing around me, above me and below me. I feel connected to more that just me. When I am in this state many wonderful thoughts emerge without struggling or grasping for them. They seem to come out of the blue.
I was up at my special place because I was meant to be on a self imposed writing retreat away from family and friends. I am researching how the creative process can assist in wellbeing. I had taken up all of my previous journals in the plane, even having to pay excess baggage for this because I just had so many. In actual fact, I was so overwhelmed by this, I hardly knew where to begin. My journals are a mixture of personal reflection and insights that come after mediating. I have been journaling for some time so I felt like I had to trawl through quiet a lot of material. I suppose I am telling you this so you get the idea that although "my insight" did come "out of the blue", it also had a fertile but fallow hot bed of ideas from which it emerged and had been swirling around in my consciousness for sometime.
As happens in the dream state or semi-conscious state of meditation, I cannot now exactly remember what triggered this thought or what came before or after it. I just remember that I had to hang onto it. In fact there was a voice screaming at me to remember, remember, remember. Luckily I had bought my camera and over the years I have experienced this enough to have come up with some ingenious ways to remember and record these insightful vital thoughts. So I scratched the phrase that kept being whispered in my ear by some unseen disembodied voice "ART AS A CONNECTION TO THE DIVINE" and the phrase "ART AS REMEMBRANCE". And at the time it made absolute and perfect sense to me. My conscious mind knew that I would forget the numinous meaning surrounding this insight but it had the forethought to encourage me to write it down and document it because it is vitally important for me for some reason.
I have learnt to trust these insights. I see these as guidance in the right direction. I have learnt to listen to their wisdom. This is how the magic , the connectedness of the universe works. Then, as life does, it overtakes you and you forget how important the insight was. You go on to look after the kids, work and organise art festivals (as I do). But the magic has not gone. It still bubbles and boils away without you even being fully aware of it.
And then after a while the full impact of the magic that is occurring above, below and around us becomes completely obvious and visible at one moment that you are blown away by it. This is what happened.
1. I was wondering to myself and panicking about what I had to write for my Doctorate. I also knew that I had some serious deep personal stuff to work out
2. I tried trawling through my journals to logically figure out what I was to do. This was helpful and triggered some new ideas but there was no clarity as it seemed too overwhelming
3. I went for a walk to just chill out for a while. I had no intention of thinking about anything. I just wanted to take some photos of the beach landscape
4. The insights came and i had an overwhelming sense that I needed to write these down so I wrote the phrases "Art as a connection to the Divine" and "art as remembrance" in the sand and took a photo of this
5. I wrote the following in my journal in the next few days
"I am spilling all that I am am and all that I have been. I will pick up the pieces to create all who I am becoming.........If I could throw it all away and scatter your life like shells upon a sandy beach, which parts (shells) would you pick up and which would you leave for the ocean to claim. Which shell would you pick up that you didn't previously have in your life" (notice how part way into the sentence it changes from I to you. this is a sign to me that I have begun to channel rather than write my own words).
6. I came back home from up the coast, promptly forgot everything and began preparing for the art exhibition and festival that I was organising. Part of this meant I had to paint my own artworks to enter into this. So I painted. I painted a very large painting of the headland as a woman with another smaller human woman walking on the beach. The headland woman was scattering starfish and the human woman was picking these up in wonder. I entered this work into the exhibition and called it "Walk gently On Me" No magical connection was yet obvious to me.
7. Two months after my initial walk I read an astrology website that advised to look back to what was occurring on the 7th of July as this would influence what was occurring right now in September the 17th -18th. As I was doing this and re reading my journal, I read part of the entry (above) out to my husband. He said to me "that sounds exactly like the painting that you have just painted" And I thought YES you are right. Without my conscious awareness the image that I had painted and the words that I had written bore out the truth of the phrase "Art as a connection to the Divine"
Art and writing are powerful processes that have the capability of connecting us to more than ourselves. I suppose it depends what your own personal meaning of the divine is but for me the divine is a numinous force that connects all things.
I took this Phrase idea to my Doctoral supervisor who is a scholar in sociology of religion. When I explained what I meant by this he was very excited and encouraged me to write an academic article about "art as a connection to the Divine".
Magic happens...this is what makes life magic to me
I was up at my special place because I was meant to be on a self imposed writing retreat away from family and friends. I am researching how the creative process can assist in wellbeing. I had taken up all of my previous journals in the plane, even having to pay excess baggage for this because I just had so many. In actual fact, I was so overwhelmed by this, I hardly knew where to begin. My journals are a mixture of personal reflection and insights that come after mediating. I have been journaling for some time so I felt like I had to trawl through quiet a lot of material. I suppose I am telling you this so you get the idea that although "my insight" did come "out of the blue", it also had a fertile but fallow hot bed of ideas from which it emerged and had been swirling around in my consciousness for sometime.
As happens in the dream state or semi-conscious state of meditation, I cannot now exactly remember what triggered this thought or what came before or after it. I just remember that I had to hang onto it. In fact there was a voice screaming at me to remember, remember, remember. Luckily I had bought my camera and over the years I have experienced this enough to have come up with some ingenious ways to remember and record these insightful vital thoughts. So I scratched the phrase that kept being whispered in my ear by some unseen disembodied voice "ART AS A CONNECTION TO THE DIVINE" and the phrase "ART AS REMEMBRANCE". And at the time it made absolute and perfect sense to me. My conscious mind knew that I would forget the numinous meaning surrounding this insight but it had the forethought to encourage me to write it down and document it because it is vitally important for me for some reason.
I have learnt to trust these insights. I see these as guidance in the right direction. I have learnt to listen to their wisdom. This is how the magic , the connectedness of the universe works. Then, as life does, it overtakes you and you forget how important the insight was. You go on to look after the kids, work and organise art festivals (as I do). But the magic has not gone. It still bubbles and boils away without you even being fully aware of it.
And then after a while the full impact of the magic that is occurring above, below and around us becomes completely obvious and visible at one moment that you are blown away by it. This is what happened.
1. I was wondering to myself and panicking about what I had to write for my Doctorate. I also knew that I had some serious deep personal stuff to work out
2. I tried trawling through my journals to logically figure out what I was to do. This was helpful and triggered some new ideas but there was no clarity as it seemed too overwhelming
3. I went for a walk to just chill out for a while. I had no intention of thinking about anything. I just wanted to take some photos of the beach landscape
4. The insights came and i had an overwhelming sense that I needed to write these down so I wrote the phrases "Art as a connection to the Divine" and "art as remembrance" in the sand and took a photo of this
5. I wrote the following in my journal in the next few days
"I am spilling all that I am am and all that I have been. I will pick up the pieces to create all who I am becoming.........If I could throw it all away and scatter your life like shells upon a sandy beach, which parts (shells) would you pick up and which would you leave for the ocean to claim. Which shell would you pick up that you didn't previously have in your life" (notice how part way into the sentence it changes from I to you. this is a sign to me that I have begun to channel rather than write my own words).
6. I came back home from up the coast, promptly forgot everything and began preparing for the art exhibition and festival that I was organising. Part of this meant I had to paint my own artworks to enter into this. So I painted. I painted a very large painting of the headland as a woman with another smaller human woman walking on the beach. The headland woman was scattering starfish and the human woman was picking these up in wonder. I entered this work into the exhibition and called it "Walk gently On Me" No magical connection was yet obvious to me.
7. Two months after my initial walk I read an astrology website that advised to look back to what was occurring on the 7th of July as this would influence what was occurring right now in September the 17th -18th. As I was doing this and re reading my journal, I read part of the entry (above) out to my husband. He said to me "that sounds exactly like the painting that you have just painted" And I thought YES you are right. Without my conscious awareness the image that I had painted and the words that I had written bore out the truth of the phrase "Art as a connection to the Divine"
Art and writing are powerful processes that have the capability of connecting us to more than ourselves. I suppose it depends what your own personal meaning of the divine is but for me the divine is a numinous force that connects all things.
I took this Phrase idea to my Doctoral supervisor who is a scholar in sociology of religion. When I explained what I meant by this he was very excited and encouraged me to write an academic article about "art as a connection to the Divine".
Magic happens...this is what makes life magic to me
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