Chapter 9
Clarity
A Creative Challenge
Thank You!
Clarity
Through New Eyes
A New Energy Dance
Springtime
Editing or Cartwheels?
Early Morning
Greening
Perfect Timing Is
Nourishment
A Creative Challenge
February 10, 2014
A month ago I was invited to participate in an experimental workshop, at my area Apple Store, intended to teach Final Cut movie editing software in a way that would be efficient, effective, enjoyable, successful. There would be four of us focused on our individual projects which would have specified parameters as to length and theme. “I’ll give it a try,” I said, fully aware that I felt less than 100% enthusiastic.
I accepted the opportunity for two reasons. I believed in the idea of this teaching style, as expressed; I could see that it seemed to be a worthwhile idea, and if implemented more fully in the future, an efficient use of everyone’s time — both trainers and participants. I also recognized that this might be a one time event — or, if offered in the future, the scheduling might not work out for me.
Four weeks ago we began the five weekly sessions. Unlike the others in the workshop, I had never even seen the Final Cut Pro X software we would be using to create our projects. The length of our projects would be 5 minutes. The specific theme we were all given had to be included in whatever way we chose to interpret it. During session number five we would be showing our work — incomplete or finished — and there would be others present for the “event”.
For an hour and a half, I made lots of notes. As the session was drawing to a close, I heard my name. “Tritia’s on overwhelm,” said the trainer, smiling — and not surprised. He was sure the extensive new tools would all click in for me, at some point, because of the similarities with iMovie which I was already using.
The clicking in surely didn’t happen during week #1 — or week #2 — though I became a very diligent student. To retain some measure of confidence, I focused on what I could do readily. I knew my project would have a narrative, so I wrote it. I did some photographing. The entire project swept in as one piece of inspiration. I knew I could easily complete it, more basically, by using iMovie. This is where exasperation arrived: I had to learn about the myriad new colors in my new paintbox — before I could make any tangible progress.
I now have 15 pages of transcribed and printed notes. These help to point my way through this creative challenge. I arrived at sessions number three and four with increasing enthusiasm. Between these sessions, overwhelm transformed into I-know-what-questions-to-ask-to-facilitate-my-project. Progress.
As good fortune would have it, session number five has been postponed for one week — a surprise to everyone, including our talented and inimitably enthusiastic trainer. Tremendously helpful.
The creation of a five minute video, with entirely new tools — the range of which is almost mind boggling — has been incredibly preoccupying. To put hours and hours of time into five minutes is, for me, off the charts if seen as labor intensive. And yet, I cannot see it that way. One learns not to count the time when engaged in any enriching experience. How I may use my new tools in the future is not entirely clear for it is an evolving process. There are glimmerings. And they are invited to begin arriving after one week from now, when my five minute “epic” has been shared.
Thank You!
March 02, 2014
Thank you to all of you who helped me learn how to use the editing tools with which I brought “From Sunrise to Sunrise” from my imagination into form. You have helped me to clearly see an expanded potential in this new way of “writing” which has been arriving with me in recent months — one which includes images and music as well as narrative.
Thank you to all of you who have taken the time to watch “From Sunrise to Sunrise” and share with me your comments.
At the outset, as I was creating this MiniVideo, I wondered how well “From Sunrise to Sunrise” would land because it is so relatively quiet in a world that is predominantly otherwise.
Your comments tell me that there’s a part of each of you that is fine with slowing down and pointing your attention into a quiet and visually relaxing space — at least for five minutes.
It’s clear to me also that our culture has become so visual and sound-oriented that I wonder about the future of writing, and books.
I also see that the hours and hours of editing and tweaking it takes to produce five minutes of video which may remind you to take time to be in touch with yourself is well worth my focused attention.
For those of you who are wondering if there’s another MiniVideo-in-process, the answer is: Yes!
Clarity
March 04, 2014
Clarity is priceless.
We consistently have opportunities to refine our clarity, and to see with new perspective.
"To see what you have not heretofore been able to see has strong impact on your concept of reality.” (from The Goddess and the Rainbow Bridge, 2001)
When we have new insight, new clarity, the effect is as though the bright sun has illumined what was formerly hidden from us in the shadows created by our imprinted concepts and habitual ways of being.
As we adapt to the golden sun-bright waves of change within ourselves, our world can feel more playfully vibrant and radiant than we have ever imagined possible,
We begin a new energy dance, and the possibilities and opportunities inherent within it are limitless.
Happy Refining!
Through New Eyes
March 17, 2014
On the tenth of each month I celebrate the anniversary of my birthday. In doing so, my focus is not the passage of time. Rather, it is one of appreciation and arrival.
This incremental rebirth, within myself, provides an opportunity to see through new eyes.
The question I ask myself is: Where do I sit, in the cosmos and on Earth, and what does it all look like? And does one want a local view or a wide one?
The answer is a feeling-based perception and knowingness.
With a sense of arrival and rebirth there is implicitly an opportunity for a new beginning — at a new level, or with a new focus.
Everything we choose to create begins as a feeling inside ourselves. We create either actively or passively.
When we choose to create actively, every opportunity we take to celebrate arrival within ourselves and a new beginning — with new energy and excitement —serves our intentions.
A New Energy Dance
March 26, 2014
In my first book, Journey Through an Open Door, there is a short section titled “All Mirrors are Magic Mirrors”. When I wrote, in Journey, “All mirrors are magic mirrors for they show you who you are,” I had no idea how much this understanding — that we humans are mirrors for one another — would eventually serve me.
Twenty years ago I looked into a mirror in which I saw a place so long ago and far away that I did not remember such a time and place had existed. I then became more fully a “medicine woman”, a role which I didn’t necessarily enjoy but which taught me much about the archetypal journey of the feminine.
After Golden Pebbles: Celebrating the New Earth was published in March of 2011, the first glimmerings that the medicine woman role had been completed began to appear. Steadily and surely my outer world experience shifted, correspondent with my inner knowingness that the time had arrived to welcome change. That was the beginning of a new beginning — and surprises I could not have imagined!
One month ago today, I quietly celebrated the twenty year anniversary of the astonishing mirror’s arrival into my awareness. Feeling another opening to change, I entered a chrysalis — a dreamtime place where I welcomed appropriate shape-shifting into new expression.
I looked at everything I had nurtured for two decades, and recognized clearly that I had completed the essential nurturing; that which has been nurtured now has its own point of balance, and its own momentum.
Detached from two decades of preoccupations, I delighted in my view of a new space within myself — a beautifully expansive space, with new room to dance!
I now look over my shoulder at the fascinating month since my visit within the chrysalis where I welcomed new expression.
Although my transformed wings have barely started to dry in the gathering light of the Spring sun, I find that a new energy dance has truly begun!
Springtime
April 04, 2014
Within the cycle of nature’s year, Spring is the time of renewal, and new beginnings.
We see renewal all around us as the warming sunlight stirs flowers and trees to their budding and blossoming.
We, too, are part of this dance of blossoming in nature’s garden. We, too, respond to the sun’s warmth and are stirred into new expression.
Spring provides a metaphor: We create our own personal garden, and our own dance within it. We choose what to plant and to nurture.
In my metaphorical garden I have two kinds of plants, both of which I tend with affection: perennial, and annual. The annuals are with me for a while, and then, when a cycle is completed, they are replaced with something new.
That which calls to me from my soul may be compared with a perennial plant in my garden. It has permanence. Soul’s knowingness I nurture consistently.
Springtime beckons everyone to awaken and notice the magic that is unfolding everywhere around us — and within us. Springtime invites us to breathe in new energy and new possibilities inherent within Mother Nature’s dance of renewal.
Editing or Cartwheels?
April 24, 2014
A Memo to Myself:
Greet the flower beings
who smile at the sun
Feel the breeze in my hair
as it whispers through the trees
Cartwheels in the meadow
Sit by the stream
Close my eyes, listening
And dream.
While tending my metaphorical garden, I seem to have been outside of time. It surprises me to discover that it's been nearly three weeks since the most recent MiniBlog.
Perhaps I shouldn't be surprised. Two new MiniVideos have been completely preoccupying, though fascinating to work on.
Side by side with those projects, in my awareness, is a follow up to the Prout's Rock Path video completed last August. Part two has been calling to me since October.
Amid all of this — and everything that now comes up on my “to do” list — I see an opportunity to create a new balance point.
It's nice to have video editing tools in my paintbox — to use when inspired to do so, and kept in perspective with everything else which calls to my heart.
As the sun warms, my body-mind-spirit inclination to stretch and move about has new impetus. Now moving from my imagination into expression: Feet on the Earth, feeling my connection with Mother Nature. Dance-like yoga, expanding. Perhaps cartwheels. Yes, they are still with me — childhood exuberance not forgotten, nor the how to.
Early Morning
April 30, 2014
In the quiet of the early morning I’m enjoying simply being. Candlelight dances on the ceiling. Pre-dawn birdsong has not yet begun.
It is the New Moon, and a Solar Eclipse, and my desire is for clarity about how to focus within this new energy, this opening which affects us all whether we are consciously aware of it or not.
In recent days I’ve stepped back from all my pre-occupations to take a look. Intending to shift my attention, I’m refining.
I love these moments when I can ask for insight to arrive with me, tap me on my shoulder, turn my head around. The answer then arrives where the question is asked.
That which has been preoccupying now recedes. That which has been delayed has new momentum. I’m gently adjusting my steps within the energy dance, discovering the new balance point which serves me right now.
I’m remembering what most calls to my heart, and feeling everything else falling into place from that perspective.
Your mind serves your heart
Remember how to feel.
The balance is created by your feeling.
(from the song “Listen to Your Heart”, 2005)
Greening
May 11, 2014
As June approaches there are changes. We see this demonstrated in the outer landscape with greening and blossoming. It is likely we are also seeing this demonstrated in our lives. Especially if we have been paying attention — discerning our own feelings and choices — we discover new openings.
Gentle rain showers have recently been lowering the pollen count and freshening the air while also nourishing the trees and plants who now constantly illustrate change. Each day, new growth is observable — delightfully so.
During this time of showering and greening there is, for us, a multilayered metaphor: Clearing and nourishing/renewing are happening at the same time. This is a time of new growth and expansion. We, too, are awakening into new expression.
Within ourselves — and amid our busyness — we create space for new expression and expansion.
As June approaches, every step we take — fully present in each moment, discerning — can contribute to our own new expression, new expansion, new blossoming. The momentum for positive change is gracefully with us.
Perfect Timing Is
May 21, 2014
The third portion of Spring has now begun and Summer is near. The longest daylight of the year, in the Northern Hemisphere, will occur one month from now. Currently, the sun rises before 5:30 AM and sets after 8:00 PM. Thus, sunshine vitamin D is delightfully available — from Source energy — for many hours, on any sunny day.
When I compare notes with friends who, like myself find this warming season to be a time of positive changes, of happily moving forward in new ways, I see that we are similarly experiencing delays — delays as perceived in contrast to our concepts about timing.
My envisioned focus for Spring and Summer began to shift several months ago when delays first became apparent. At that time, I adjusted my plans and chose to translate "delay" into opportunity-in-the-meantime. One aspect of that "translation" has been my focus on movie editing, and the completion of a related learning curve which has been ongoing for several years.
At the moment I see very little space in my schedule throughout June, so I must admit that several months of “delay” — delay in moving forward as previously intended — is somehow serving me by creating a comfortable flow of change.
Whenever I feel that there are too many puzzle pieces not yet landed, I soon receive an indication that everything is progressing well. Only the timing has shifted.
It’s an interesting experience, this process of profound change. And for those of us who are paying attention, the opportunity to refine — to fine-tune our own choices and movements — is consistent.
Regardless of the appearance of delay, placing our attention on our intention — coupled with appropriate action “in the meantime” — is key.
If we navigate within the current of the stream of change, rather than trying to push against it, we will then find that movement from where we are to where we choose to be can happen with relative ease.
We will also discover that regardless of appearances — and our concepts — perfect timing is.
Nourishment
June 07, 2014
With warmth, compassion and humor — and broadly-scoped knowledge — Amma Sri Karunamayi radiates clarity, wisdom and understanding. She holds a superlative mirror into which one can gaze and see glorious possibility.
I bathe in this mirroring of understanding, nourishing my heart and soul. I feel privileged to have this opportunity
It is my observation and experience that profound heart/soul nourishment is rare in our culture, and rare globally.
Thus my annual journey is a highlight of my year, and I draw upon it consistently — intentionally remembering that which has been transmitted and received within a short span of time, as “time” is counted. Throughout the year, those special hours expand in my awareness.
Earlier this week, on a beautifully clear and warm day, I drove to the village for the small once-a-year venue adjacent a mountain stream.
Nourishment-beyond-describable echoes in my soul. And inspiration happily flows.
Once a year I travel through the New England countryside, amid the lush greens of late Spring or early Summer, to a small village in the mountains for a special event.
The low-key annual event provides an unparalleled opportunity to observe, to listen, to meditate in the presence of one who clearly demonstrates that she is an embodiment of Divine Motherly Love.