Hare mind,tortoise heart

They say patience is a virtue and i used to practice this whenever i could/ remembered to...you know, trying not to get annoyed with the frail couple pottering along and blocking the pavement...listening to a person repeat the same story over and over with a kind and interested heart as i know it's important to them, and know i need to do this sometimes...trying to deal with annoying incidents without losing my cool... However, i feel like i am being challenged to endure...experience... a new kind of patience. I sit and wait and hope and trust that i will find my path in life. I have always felt a frustration, a desire to live an authentic life and, importantly, to be of service as i am meant to be...to reach my potentials and thrive. However, I feel like i am currently in a kind of suspension...no place to go, no direction, no drive. I have my thoughts about what i think my path might be, but there are subtle shifts and changes...and i am trying to wait, to trust and do all the things all the books i've read suggest. It goes against the grain however....the logical workings of my socially developed mind...how will anything emerge in the abscence of my doing...how will i get to where i want to be if i do not know how or where to begin? Maybe i should begin with x or y...maybe this...maybe that...and it's agitating. So, I am trying to practice patience...real deep patience where i let go of the reigns for a bit, where i just try and remain calm and hopeful. It makes me see that this kind of patience is alien to me....i think about something i want to do then i go about making it happen to the best of my ability...I act and do and pursue with my mind...for sure i can be lazy, and sitting around is not a problem to me, but it is sitting around as a conscious decision to wait and see what i feel...to make space...that's difficult. I am waiting to act and do with my heart...and it's not telling me anything. Sometimes i doubt it will ever tell me anything, but then i remind myself of this page i did a couple of weeks ago.

My mind seems to operate and talk to me at the speed of a hare but my heart seems to operate at that of a tortoise...there's just no rushing it...maybe it needs time to catch up as it's never been given much opportunity to work before - my mind was my king. Or maybe i need to slow down and realise there is another pace in life...a more relaxed, less urgent heart-felt way to be...

Truth and Time

Here are a couple more of my dolls...

'Truth'

Is there only one truth, or is there only our truth? How do we know if our truth is really our truth? Does truth evolve or is it whole...a whole that is gradually uncovered?

Time

Time...I'm always so conscious of it...always thinking of my age... ageing... time passing....time wasted.... what have i done with my time.... what should i do with my time...where has the time gone since i was 7, 18, 28, 35...I've always had an obession with my age - even at 18 i couldn't believe i was so old...imagine! I made her and thought she was a reminder about the importance of time...but i guess I don't need a reminder...maybe she is just an outward representation of my obsession with time...what's that about?
Apologies for the ropey photography - I am so not a technician and photography does not come easy to me...

The Road Trip

Two very different people decide to embark upon a road trip.
The first person is very clear about the route they wish to take, the destinations they want to reach, what they want to do...so they plan what they will see and do in each place. On their trip then, they are sure to see the key sights as determined by the opinions, wisdom and experiences of the experts in the travel books they'd read. Each step of the way they can 'tick off' each milestone they reach and feel satisfied that they completed what they set out to do. No deviations are desired. By achieving and seeing those things mapped out, they can also tell everyone else clearly what they did, what they saw and others will know what they are talking about. The planning of their journey minimises their anxiety and helps them feel safe, and enables them to feel a sense of accomplishment at the end; they know they achieved what they set out to do.
The second person does not plan their trip but merely starts their journey with the intention of seeing where this takes them. Of course, this is fraught with potential perils:

1) they don't know where they are going, so what if their vulnerability is exposed and they get attacked by someone?
2) what if they go round in circles because they are unfamiliar with how to move forward?
3) what if they get lost and are alone with strangers ...somewhere cold and uncomfortable and dangerous?
4) what if they run out of money?
5) what if they miss all the important sights and experiences on the way?
6) what if they go to places that scare them with people who can only speak in a foreign language around them?
7) how will they know when the journey has come to an end if they don't know where the final destination is?
It is clear, however, that a reverse tale exists where infinate possibilities can arise purely down to the lack of planning and pre-determined path

1) what if people don't perceive them as vulnerable and let them travel without fear or concern?
2) what if concern about moving in circles is not realised? All journeys have signs and landmarks that guide the way...it might mean journeying past them over and over until they become familiar however...
3) what if they use their voice and intuition to ask for direction and help if they become lost? They might be surprised at the hand of strangers who will direct them
4) what if they trust that if money runs out they can always get a job...make things...do some dirty or menial work...it doesn't add up to not start the journey for fear regarding money
5) they might or might not miss all the important sights and experiences on the way. It depends on how they define important...there are those sights and experiences people desire because they've been guided others but there is also beauty that they never knew existed...they need to ask who is this journey for?
6) there can be scarey places on both planned and unplanned journeys due to circumstances, chance, universal law, coincidence...the unplanned journey becomes less dangerous when you talk to people in that place who can share wisdom. Foreign languages dissolve through shared connections and attempts to speak in the other person's tongue.
7) they'll feel when it's time for that trip to end...they don't have to do anything or go anywhere until it feel right

The one last advantage of this trip is that there are no expectations or outcomes...experiences can be accepted for what they are and as they happen..the lack of planning means there are no 'musts', 'shoulds', 'have got tos' .
I have chosen to take that road less travelled (cliched i know :-} but somehow true)...I have moments of doubt...I have moments of excitement...i hope to feel brave as i start my new journey to who knows where - i have a vague inkling of where i'd like to go, but I'm trying to temper my will and give my trust a leg up as i begin....Where's you're journey taking you?

New Beginnings

New beginnings are the theme of my moment. I have recently resigned from my job in order to pursue a new path...OMG!!!This was...IS... such a big deal for me...years in the making...but I've finally decided to try and take a new path...I'm not fully sure how it will happen, if it will happen but I have to trust SOMETHING will happen. I've been in Education for the past 8 years and I have learnt so much, but it's not for me now. I want to continue to work with people... help facilitate people's growth as I am passionate about this...I never tire of it...including working on my own growth.... but I need to do this in my own way, outside the parameters and boundaries of formal educational systems. I have some ideas of what i might do...but i'm trying to pace myself...i have a real tendancy to get all enthusiastic and rush headlong into things...this time i'm trying to be more measured, trying to believe if it's right for me their will be the space for me...there is no rush. It's took a moment to write this but years to realise it. Years to clear the fog of who i really am and what i really want to do; years to pluck up the courage to tread my own path; years to dare to try and show myself and trust myself. And this is with support of my husband and some close friends and, when i eventually told them, my family. For some of us it's hard to see and show ourselves... really hard. I am still finding my way here.
I've also been busy on a new series of dolls, which i am in love with, both in terms of making them and seeing them in their finished glory...I'll share a couple now and more later

The Possibility of Transformation

I took a painting that did not feel right...did not make me happy...and i changed it. Like re-painting an image, I believe that we can change elements of ourselves and our lives... but similarly we need to dare to make the change and begin again - taking the old and trusting things can be improved, enhanced, made to feel better. This video shows how transformation is gradual - a trial and error - a playing with elements to see where things fit- push and pull - keeping going. It's tough though, accepting that transformation happens in small changes and subtle shifts that gradually take form and mutate into something new. Trusting that even when things don't feel like they're shifting, they are...slowly. And, perhaps the hardest lesson for me is accepting that even when it all seems done, a review of things shows us further areas for change and enhancement...new possibilities and new ways of doing and being

In the middle

In the time that has elapsed since my last post change has been occuring. I have made a big decision which signfies my commitment to living my life in a way that feels personally meaningful and fulfilling. An authentic life. I have found that in trying to define my true self it is difficult to determine between what is real and what is fallacy. To seperate out what i want and need to be and what others want and need me has been difficult and is still somewhat of an ongoing puzzle. What society might say is successful and accomplished and what i see as successful and accomplished are sometimes at odds, and that in itself feels odd...it presents a tension that needs to be resolved inwardly rather than manifested outwardly, if that makes sense. This is real easy to write, harder to believe, even harder to practice and implement. But perhaps that is the word - practice and rehearsal and implementation...gradually 'performing' the way I want to...trial and error...time and repetition. This....



and this...."Free to Bloom"


are so implicitly linked don't you find..

So here i try to sit, in the middle of transformation. Not being one thing, not yet being another. Holding on tightly and trying to keep faith and hope that i am doing the right thing. Hoping that i am moving ever closer to becoming me ...i want congruence, familiarity and love within myself for myself. This is my journey. This is my struggle. I am getting there. We can all get there..... little by little...

Starting to breathe

I know I have been neglecting this blog. I have been busy, busy though nurturing myself. This has been a long, slow process in which I have been making small but deliberate steps to transform both myself and my life. For years and years I have felt stuck in a quagmire (??)...and when i say years I mean maybe 20 ...yes, that long... since my teens. I feel i have been in a place that felt removed from me...a place where I was existing but suffocating...a place where something deep deep down inside knew that something was not right, did not fit. For sure, to the outside world i had few reasons to be unhappy - a lovely, kind husband, comfortable home, my small family, a few friends and an alleged great career. But something was amiss and I did not know what, and often I did not think it should be there, beating myself with negative self talk, like "what have you got to worry about... don't be so selfish... be grateful for what you have... just get on with it". I truly think that our souls talk to us though - however distant and infrequent these rumblings are, however alien they feel, however much you doubt their truth, they are there, even when you are removed from your Self. Deliberate and persistant I think our true Self will not let us be, not until we can really be as and who we are. Agitation, anxiety, distress, remoteness, frustration, apathy...all potential signs i think, all messages from our Self to ourself. I think these are telling us something. What that is can be hard to discover. It takes awareness and time, a tenderness, an optimism. Maybe support and help and talking it through. Journaling too has helped me...so much...both writing a journal and art journaling has helped me get to know my Self better. It has allowed me the time to sit with my Self and my thoughts and feelings and focus. Little, little steps are truly all that is needed to start our journeys. I am inpatient. I wanted to get to my destination, my arrival to Self, thinking it's a Utopia where I will be complete. Now, I think little steps are often all we can take...and I also think that the journey never ends...it has no destination...it is like travelling the world on foot...no matter how many peaks and troughs, how many achievements and wonders, there are always infinite more things to discover. And, maybe, it is because of this that the journey is worth taking in the first place...the possibilites are endless, our potential for growth is endless, and so knowing the true Self also becomes an endless but wondrous journey.