finding one

Creative types seem to know how to manipulate the world so that more luck rolls into their pockets. We can become more open to this kind of experience by lowering the barriers we erect to protect ourselves, & plunging more deeply into experience. Essentially, we obstruct ourselves by believing that we are uncreative. One can overcome almost any barrier, provided one maintains the willingness to do so. The first step on the road to change is the recognition of becoming more sensitive not only to the impediments within yourself, but in others as well. It is to the bold that the rewards belong…….James Fadiman

our bewilderment stems from separating ourselves….allowing the rich diversity of life & inter-connectedness to slip away….we can trust in the meaning of our deepest calling…by the simple act of acknowledgment, we suddenly ‘know’….stagnation falls away & grace appears…

A message comes like honey to your

heart: seven friends & a dog have

slept three hundred & nine days

with God’s wind turning them to rest

on one side, then the other. There’s

another way of sleeping I pray we

avoid, the kind that’s running after

joy with its grief shadow behind it,

or the other, persistently trailing

grief, meeting chance elation at the

corner. Help us to give up back-and-

forth, matter- illusion alternating

with the mind’s calibration of what’s

good & bad, wet & dry. Anything

alligator swallows becomes alligator.

Two human-sized wedding candles walk

toward fire. A piece of paper covered

with numbers & curving color streaks

drops in water, blurs, & flows away.

…Rumi

lay it out on the line for yourself…..

Make meaning, construct & integrate into your belief system the adaptive illusion that your work is valuable. Reinvest meaning in your art making. Make challenges out of problems. Recast your beliefs so that your work looks more inviting to tackle. Weave your own meaning web, taking charge of the individual strands of meaning & the completed existential fabric…..Eric Maisel