Underneath the clutter there has to be something... Something to guide the day... Something to inspire a new way... Something hidden beneath the hay...
Creative blocks are confusing and frustrating. We all want that something that will inspire use to create...to feel....to express...... Nothing is innately WRONG, yet there's not UMPH offering that awesome, miraculous idea....
I live for these moments. I live for those feelings of despair and joy and sadness and wonder and .... well, about everything and anything spectacular to my inner world. Funny thing is though - I am seeking emotional balance all at the same time. I want mental health. I want low stress. I want to feel contentment in my heart.
So here I go in my day to day... seeking peace, doing what I need to do in order to find that inner stability, etc. I wake up in the morning and I'm fairly at peace with all that is. Wonderful right?!
Where is my creative inspiration at DAMMIT?!
I chuckled after I wrote that. It's funny right... the things that give us inspiration. It's those moments of deep sadness and grief that offer the best songs. It's the ecstatic bliss we find in the moments of joy that creates the most beautiful art.
What about the in between spaces??! Where things feel calm and ... well honestly... quite average and normal.
I find a lot of my inspiration through the act of journaling. I pick up that pen. I write and write and write. I invite my heart to be bold and authentic! What am I truly feeling? What's on my mind? It's so healing to just let it out on paper, WITH NO FILTER. I often will write a poem. I many times, start finding where my heart is truly in it all. When I can finally access MY HEART - that's where the golden juice is.
I could make art from that any day! We all can! Taking that thought that is on your mind and turning it into a few verses, maybe a song, maybe a poem, maybe you want to create a piece of art about it.
This morning I discovered in my writing how much I needed to work on forgiveness and self love. I was somewhat reviewing my recent thoughts and feelings about my life, and I felt immense shame. I felt ashamed for how I felt, how I expressed my feelings, how I was even confused at the time about how I felt.
I tried to reassure myself that I was loved.... but I didn't feel it....
So I asked myself, "How do you truly believe that you are loved?" If the universe truly love us, if we are loved by our Creator..... if we are innately LOVED...... how do we believe it???
I cried this morning, because the truth was I didn't feel I was loved. I didn't love myself. I didn't love who I truly was for all of my experiences.... how I showed up in the past.... any of it... So I took my handy-dandy mirror that sits on my desk. On one side of it, it say "When nothing is certain, everything is possible." That side normally faces me on the desk, where you cannot see the mirror. I like the quote. Well, I turned it around this morning and I looked in the mirror and said I love you. Over and over again. I fought my mind because it wanted to critique my face the whole time.... areas of blemishes, or acnes spots, wrinkles now forming WTF! I kept directing my focus onto my eyes and saying "I love you. You are loved." I forced myself to see myself as a soul. Not this face staring back at me.
This morning uncovered I truly do have some self-love work I need to tend to most definitely. Somewhere underneath the hay.... there's the knowing I am a perfect soul, perfectly worthy and lovable, right?! That deserves compassion, right?
How do we feel love and compassion toward ourselves?? This is something I am practicing and putting my attention on in order to understand better. We need to love ourselves. It's the most important thing we can do while we exist on earth.
This morning I made a choice to put my phone on airplane mode, be intentionally unavailable, so that I could make the time for myself. I had no idea this would even come up on the docket. I had a to-do list!! What the heck!! I couldn't have asked for a greater gift though. All of it came from mind-dumping this morning. Mind-dumping on a piece of paper, looking for inspiration. I had to clear the distraction though. Distraction from my thoughts, distraction from external cues, distraction from me trying to get on being productive immediately.... The greatest gift I found this morning was the need for self-love. I hope you find some self love too. You deserve it. We all do. We are all perfect creatures of Creation. We deserve to remember how beautiful we are.
I am grateful that mind-dumping led me to remember the power of mirror work. It was through my journaling that I realized I needed to forgive myself. Boy - forgiveness is some hard work.... There's nothing truly to forgive right? How do we make ourselves right with the past? Compassion, I believe. That takes acknowledging where we were at the time, that we did the best we could have in each and every moment. Yea, that deserves some love. We cannot all be perfect. We want to be. I'm often trying to be perfect. I am not sure I ever will be... yet in essence we are right? It's a hard balance to walk in the spaces of our imperfection and our perfection. My self-judgment has been the greatest block to self-love. Yet, at times it has pushed me to be the best version of myself that I can be.
I am learning to think dialectically. I am a type of therapy called, dialectical behavioral therapy. Often people who enter this therapy have trouble seeing the grey areas of things. It's been a new practice of mine to try to hold thoughts dialectically. This means I am holding two opposing thoughts at the same time, holding them both as true.
"I have made mistakes in the past." AND "I am learning from them and working at not making the same ones in the future."
"I am sad about leaving my job" AND "I am looking forward to the upcoming change in my life."
Versus
"I always make mistakes."
or "I'm not sure what to do about this change in my life."
Self love is being able to hold all of the opposing thoughts about ourselves true at the same time and still KNOW that we are lovable. We are always lovable. Can we believe it for ourselves?!
I am looking forward to more mind-dumping.... leading to healing. It really has been a great experience to clear out all the clutter of the mind, to access the soul. The soul really is so beautiful. I highly suggest the practice of journaling to you all! Give it a try. Over and over. Don't give up before the juicy gifts come to the altar of your heart, awaiting your love.
