morning contemplations
Notes from my studio yesterday:
Getting a slow start. My body and mind just won’t be rushed into activity.
And as I feel the beginnings of self-judgment and recriminations queuing up to have a shot at me, I take a breath and remind myself that a slow start doesn’t have to mean a no start. And a slow day is okay, with slow actions, slow thoughts, slow transitions. I don’t need to finish everything I begin today. I just need to take steps, even small, slow steps, beginning where and how I am now because I can’t begin anywhere else. I just need to take steps toward where I want to be.
The ego, trained over the years by society’s expectations, wants me to get moving, and get moving fast. And if I can’t do that then I should just give up until and wait to try again that vague someday when everything is lined up perfectly. Then all will go well because I’ll be getting something DONE.
The ego hates the PROCESS, and it can’t accept where you are, as you are, as not only acceptable but perfect as and where you are. Surely, change is needed. Surely, a finish line needs to be crossed, a measurable result needs to be achieved. Otherwise, how do you know you have the right to keep moving forward? The ego can really only think in black and white, and it misses all the beautiful subtle grays in between. It doesn’t understand or trust or appreciate the beauty of being in the process, whatever that process looks like, whatever that moment looks like, whatever that painting looks like.
Being present to the process, to the moment is where the ALIVENESS is! Not in the checking off of the to do list – in the doing of the to do list!
And by embracing each moment, no matter its appearance, and living from that place where you are, new energy, new breath, new inspiration, new vitality can then be allowed into your life.
So, as I sit in my studio feeling a little slower than I’d like, a little more tired than I thought I would, a little less driven than I “should” be if the day is to look the way I (my ego) had planned, as I listen to my ego/my inner critic throwing up resistance and barricades and stop signs, and nattering on about how I can’t work like this, I can’t take action like this, I started badly so I need to give up until I can get it right… I breathe. I remember my lessons from intuitive painting and I look for the place of true aliveness in this quiet moment and I quietly take that next slow step. And it brings me into the expansion and flow of creating and living from where and who I am and away from the contracted and blocked space of “should”. And I breathe again.