Following the Moon with Gratitude

Rescue, Drozda 2001

24x30"

Acrylic on wood

'Luna See' looks at time and gentling our movement through time.  It offers an art/life resource for affecting the quality of the day as the highest of arts.

Welcome to the last hours of the Disseminating Moon phase where the emphasis is upon demonstration and sharing.  Pay attention to whether sending your vibe out into the world helps you to Trust the process of your art/life at this time. Often we learn to trust life best when still, quiet and solitary. Other times we need to be active and in touch. July has just provided you with 31 days of Growth so that you could access and activate deeper levels of Trust. Trust happens now....can you lean into the opportunity?

Coming from a background of violence and trauma I can state without doubt that this has been my most challenging point on the wheel...the main event that catapaulted me into 16 years of gripping post traumatic stress took place in the month of August. Yet step by step healing happens. And there is rarely any situation that has to hold you captive when you Trust the manner in which the art/life grows to meet you. Its quite stunning and often so unexpected isn't it?

Wren House Garden, Drozda 2010

                                                     Steep thyself in a bowl of summertime.
                                                                            ~Virgil ~

Tuesday, August 3 through Friday, August 6 we're in the Last Quarter/Third Quarter phase of this four weeks. This is when we have the chance to be mindfully grateful for all that has visited since July 11. It's a lovely time for reflective gratitude and realization of all the gifts that your art/life offers.

So often we confuse ourselves thinking that as the artist we must be constantly creating in order to justify the title. Here's the beauty: we are artists. We don't cease being creative and gifted and even skilled no matter how long we must sometimes be removed from our media of choice. The lovely and instinctive transition from the active sharing of last week to the realignment that comes now can help us to assimilate this truth. You might interpret this 3.5 day phase as if it were a sigh. Ahhhhh. Let it all go. Drop it. What's the hurry? Where are you trying to get to?
Paradoxically the push of this very active time of the year that we're in still functions best when we make haste slowly.

On Friday the Balsamic phase of the cycle enters and we have from then until the New Moon on Monday, August 9 to withdraw even a bit further so as to contemplate.
  
Are you beginning to feel the flow of the lunar phases and do you get a sense of how your art/life can flow with them?

Within each 29.6 day cycle we recieve these last days of the moon's passage to heal, lie fallow, so as to dream of what will be. From Friday through Monday... take time to rest. Naturally life goes on yet take the time to imagine that you will be birthing a new/renewed part of yourself.  For this brief time imagine that you are lying still, in utero, visualizing what you may bring forth when the next cycle begins. It's one of the grand wonders of being the artist that we are giving birth continuously simply by sending our breath out into the world. We are enough.

As we step into August 2010 the overall vibration shifts. Notice light. The dazzle and the shining. Really practice being conscious. Be your own dazzling light. I appreciate what Suzanne has to say in her recent post.

The idea might be similar to the Buddhist teaching which suggests that we practice as if our 'hair were on fire'. Consider that image. That's dedication.

Where is your dedication right now? There isn't any standard that says that you have to be doing your being in any prescribed way...actually it's really healthy if you can simply trust that what is happening for you now is exactly what is meant to be happening. This is a courageous act. Most of us are busy thinking 'it ought to be different than it is'. Yet to Trust is to do just that. Let all things be exactly as they are.

To begin to connect with the best quality of August consider how breathing helps to direct your thoughts. Gently be with that idea for a moment. Take that in: your breath directs your thoughts. In line with that is; this month watch your thinking patterns and notice your conversation. Pay attention to the way you use words. How do you talk to yourself? I was behind a car this week that had a bumper sticker reading: HUMAN KIND: be both.

Really notice the way you speak, how you describe, explain, depict, illustrate, express. Does your language lift you? Do you drag yourself and others down? Just notice.

TRUST is the keyword for August and it brings reminders, lessons and tests. Each experience arrives to help  us see how well we actually trust the challenges and the sweetness of the art/life. See if, for you, there is an inner urge to express your ideals, launch an invention (as in a new art form), align with your highest inner directives, gain a clearer connection to your spiritual vision. There is no need for pressure.
In Buddhist teachings we're advised to recognize that as humans we bounce continuously between the 'Eight Worldly Dharmas'. They are pleasure/pain, gain/loss, praise/blame, fame/disgrace.

We think that if we get pleasure, gain, praise and fame we'll be happy. We run away from pain, loss, blame and disgrace and judge them failures.

Once again it fits to bring in Pema...she's wise, feisty and makes it so understandable:

From When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron:
"The irony is that we make up the eight worldly dharmas. We make them up in reaction to what happens to us in this world. They are nothing concrete in themselves... In meditation, we can notice how emotions and moods are connected with having lost or gained something, having been praised or blamed, and so forth. Gradually our practice evolves. We start understanding that, just like us, other people also keep getting hooked by hope and fear. Everywhere we go, we see the misery that comes from buying into the eight worldly dharmas. ... [This is] the beginning of growing up... When we begin just to try to accept ourselves, the ancient burden of self-importance lightens up considerably...Having compassion starts and ends with having compassion for all [the] unwanted parts of ourselves, all those imperfections that we don't even want to look at. Compassion isn't some kind of self-improvement project or ideal that we're trying to live up to. There's a slogan in the Mahayana teachings that says, 'Drive all blames into oneself.' The essence of this slogan is, 'When it hurts so bad, it's because I am hanging on so tight.' What it implies is that pain comes from holding on so tightly to having it our own way and that one of the main exits we take when we find ourselves in an unwanted situation or an unwanted place, is to blame."

Tara's Mantra, Drozda 2010

10x8"

Media Blend

commission 

The energy this August is helping you learn to trust that no matter what your experience you can observe your reaction and response with a 'wait and see' attitude. This can help you take a long view or an eagle's eye view...either way the idea is to take this opportunity to learn that we're all in this together. You are not alone.

One touch of nature makes the whole world kin.

William Shakespeare

Every 90 days there's a turn to the wheel and you can set a new goal or build onto what you have already manifest. It's so focused and at the same time so open  to your own interpretation.

August 1, was the cross quarter point between Summer Solstice and Fall Equinox...that places you at the midpoint in this current 90 day pattern. What do you want to accomplish by September 22? No need to push...it can be subtle and for yourself alone.

Or you can gather and share the joy of what has been created and what is yet to come.

Parade of the Animals 2010

Contemporary Art Center of Virginia

Always be ready to see what you haven't seen before.

 Corita Kent

 

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~May you sing the days~

       Iona