Monday, August 2, 2010

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 TrustTrust 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.

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

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

 
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~May you sing the days~
       Iona


10 comments:

  1. As your luna posts unfold before me, each one resonates more deeply, feels ever fitting into the unfolding of my own life! Trust couldn't be a better focus for me - not that it would ever be a bad one, but between a construction project on the home, and in the bod - yeah, trust is what it's all about for my peace of mind, body and soul! Thanks Donna, for your beautiful wisdom and spirit, your artistic soul sharing work. Lovin' it, and loving you! K

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  2. As Karin commented .... each luna post resonates more deeply. I am feeling the need to withdraw and contemplate..... and to trust .... which is the hard part. Let all things be exactly as they are.

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  3. The word trust is pregnant with possibility. I gathered that thread of trust from your last post and pulled it into this new phase. It comes instinctively after a while doesn't it? I found myself writing to someone asking about a decision they needed to make--to trust their instinct, their intuition. I found myself needing to do the same this weekend!--Thank you for reminding us with such vigor 'When it hurts so bad, it's because I am hanging on so tight. Um Hmmm...

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  4. Hey K
    As you know... I was out of town last week visiting my 80 year young mentor in her gorgeous mountaintop home.

    She and I sat outdoors (with the Humming birds, Goldfinches and Blue Birds)reflecting on our 30 year friendship and the many changes that we have each naturally addressed.
    This visit, for me, was the perfect platform for the cycle of Trust that we have now entered.

    I am so grateful that you feel the vibe of this entry and I Trust that all of your Holy Helpers and Mighty Companions will carry you through this legof your most amazing journey. Trust that ;-)

    Hi Robyn~ isn't that the best phrase: Let all things be exactly as they are.
    That wise guy Buddha left that wisdom for any one of us who chooses to pick it up and carry it along as we travel. Ooo lala

    ~HannAH ;-)I love the way that you state that:
    "I gathered that thread of trust from your last post and pulled it into this new phase"...
    Yesss...it is the way it shows itself...circles, cycles, walkin' our path is the way I have described it and I love that each spiral turing of the year allows each of us to find our own entry point on that year's wheel. No competition and no pressure. So lovely.

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  5. I love to read your luna posts and then look at my life and seem how they are or are not in sync. At the end of last week, after I cleared out my studio space and got rid of old things I didn't need anymore, I found old magazines that I have saved for close to ten years because I loved the pictures and the thoughts so much. I spent the last 3 days sitting outside with stacks of these magazines revisiting all the things that use to inspire me. It has been a mini vacation and a chance to dream again. It seems, from your post, that I am where I need to be. Just love your blog.

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  6. my first thought this morning was, Look at the light dazzling. It has shifted.

    am good to go for reflective gratitude and realization of gifts... will try to focus there this week--that should be a lot, overwhelming if i can enter it fully.

    A huge thank you for your wisdom and these posts.

    Yes,that Pema book is a great one, i have even passed mine around some, and it comes back to me, always clear powerful and useful as the first read.

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  7. Yes, the light is dazzeling and different this morning (I agree with mansuetude) as this last month of summer begins. A time to trust myself and to be here completely... so you were in Jasper too!? roxanne

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  8. "Rescue" is a powerful painting. Trust is not easy.

    I study your posts and the comments.

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  9. I so love to read your posts and jot down the dates with suggested focus and use them in my life. Your July post about growth prompted me to look at my art and direction and decide to take two very different art classes to shake things up a bit.

    A little slip down a slippery slope (literally) on a 3hr hike found me with a sore back and chatting with my qi gong teacher and a physio (who practices in a pyramid!). What I came up with was a need to slow down and yes, the word trust came up! So interesting to see trust as the focus for August. And I have felt a calling to just be, to be quiet and still and alone. "Healling time" is what comes to mind as well.

    Love that bumper sticker! I'm not a bumper sticker sort, but I almost could be for that one.

    Love the Pema Chodron quote. Such a good reminder. We bounce around between hope and fear so much!

    Thanks again for all the wonderful inspiration & gentle direction you offer. Many bows to you!

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  10. Always love your posts and appreciate you sharing them. Amazing to me, that it appears I am still in sync with the phases of the moon. I have viewed my recent illness as a 'pause' and as I regain my strength a time for reflection. It's always nice to make a positive out of what appears to be a negative.

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Thanks for stopping '-)