Your Artist’s Day at the Roundtable

We have been using Arthur’s Roundtable as a metaphor for integrating your own archetypal persona Ensemble Cast.  These parts of Self—which I am presenting as prototypically twelve primordial archetype forms based on Dr. Charles and Nin Bebeau of the former Avalon Archetype Institute—each have a vital role to play in connection with your own recurring Life Themes and your life’s Mission.

The ARTIST as an archetypal Ally is a very important persona, regardless of your career.  Let’s imagine it is your ARTIST’s DAY at Arthur’s Roundtable. Invite your Inner Artist to step up to be celebrated. Allow your Artist to express herself or himself to the rest of the Twelve.

Does your Artist have a name? What is that name, to you? Ask your Artist to speak about or to otherwise express (draw? create  a mandala or a collage? write a poem about?) her/his current interests, goals and concerns about your life overall as a Total Self System. Dialogue in your journal, if you like, with your Artist persona.

As an example of how you along with the rest of your Ensemble Cast might engage your Artist in dialogue, I’ll demonstrate a brief Roundtable conversation with my own Artist Ally:

L: Welcome, Artist! We celebrate you this evening at the Roundtable. Is there a name by which you might like to be called?

Artist: Sedona.

Communicator: Oh! Well that’s interesting; why Sedona?

Artist: Remember the Sedona Life Magazine? That was me who put pictures from that magazine on your wall the year before we moved to Arizona. I helped us all to ENVISION the Beauty of Arizona to help us to make that Big Move.

Mystic: So, Sedona, why do you remind us of this now?

Artist: We are ready to envision the next stage of our Journey. 

L: Maybe we should call you Chautauqua, then?

Artist: No, I am still your Sedona.  What did Sedona mean to you?

L:  It was an Ideal, a deep Inspiration,  a Goal to arrive at that at the time represented a major undertaking. Thank you for helping us to Ground our Vision in that way.

Idealist: We need that again, don’t we?

Mystic: You mean, more of an inspiration?

Idealist: Yes. Lately Linda, we know you have become a little worried about your overall retirement picture. I feel it in my Shadow nature. You are losing some of your self-confidence about what we will be doing in retirement.

L: Yes, I feel like I have pinned a lot on something that might not manifest as we most wish it would.

Mystic: But whatever comes about, we will forge and continue with our spiritual quest; of that you can be sure.

Artist: It will be a timespace full of Beauty. Hozhoni, as a Navajo might say!

L: I need your help in this, Sedona.

Artist: I will be there with you; I am always.

L: What can I do to reinforce this positive Vision of our future fulfillment in connection with our coming Big Move?

Artist: Take many pictures while enjoying your upcoming, interim road trip Home—Home to where we will be living next. Enlarge and maybe frame some of these: the Lake, the Hills, Boats, smiling People; your Sister, Mother, and special places that catch your attention.

L: Thanks!

******   ******

images from pixabay.com

So, now it’s Your Turn! Enjoy

I welcome your Comments and Stories!

The Art of Better Rendering: Mining YOUR Story

Humans are inherently Storytellers. We conceptualize  and tell others about significant events and time frames of our lives as narratives. Stories have beginnings, middles and ends; stories have challenges the protagonists face. Stories are comic (with positive resolutions or ‘happy endings’), or they may be tragic or as yet unresolved.

Recognizing our human capacity to spin a good tale, especially about significant or critical events in our lives, carries tremendous potential from the perspective of this blog’s focus on Better Endings. Let’s talk about “better-endering” or perhaps better even, “better rendering!” We can apply the PRINCIPLE of Better Ending envisioning to events from our own life, either in the Past, Present or Future, by SEEING and then TELLING these potentials, weaving them into the story we would tell about our experiences.

For the Past, for example, we can revisit our significant events with an eye to seeing the LESSON we have learned from that experience. Some say that the more we can MAKE SENSE of our past events, the more likely we are to face similar challenges more successfully in the future. Live and Grow becomes a story in itself. I invite you to print this post and  write the Lesson or Strengths you have gained from some past event in the space provided below:

For the Present, we are the central protagonist, on par with mythical heroes or Everypersons in literature. What can YOU DO to bring about a Better Ending to some thread of the Story you are currently living? What are the inherent potentials of the Moment you are presently constructing—whether positive or not? WRITE/ TELL the most positive outcomes of the life you are living NOW. This is important. I encourage you to journal, talk with a loved one, or artistically visualize and represent the positive potentials of your CURRENT Life Chapter. Here is some space to jot some ideas about this story:

For the Future, well, here the ground is So-o-o-o RIPE for you to envision Better Endings. The Future, I believe, is NOT fixed in stone. We can consider the future as a relatively open, endless set of possibilities. Now then, which potential becomes a STATE in some future Present is ultimately up to YOU. Current or lifelong patterns and habits of thought, motivation, and action certainly orient us along a pathway from Present to Future that sometimes SEEMS relatively fixed and immutable.  That is where MINDFULNESS, however YOU can practice this, comes in. One technique I offer in Your Life Path is to envision several “Alternate Future Lifescapes.” Envision a desirable Future Scenario. Write it out or practice active contemplation about it. Then, either on the same day or later, creatively envision an Alternate future scape; several even. What does this desirable imaginative future CARRY that reveals your deepest values, goals and motivations? What CORE VALUES does your desired Future embody? Here is some space to jot some ideas, but I invite you to write this out elsewhere as a descriptive STORY of the life you can be living as you REALIZE this desired future set of conditions and lifestyle:

Now then, PICTURE your Life Story as a WHOLE. What is the MESSAGE of Your Story; your Legacy that you would like to leave?

And finally, how? What are some things or ONE THING you can be doing Now or in the near, realistic, practical future that can help to bring about your most desirable future conditions, your own Better Ending?

Better Rendering means to re-tell your Story focusing on the lessons, messages, and strengths you have gained that you can APPLY to your Present in order to manifest the life of your dreams.

images are from pixabay.com

I welcome your Comments and Stories!

 

 

 

 

Picture Your Life BETTER

Imagine each Chapter of your Life Story as a picture. You can look at any of these pictures in your mental bank, as it were, to reflect and to examine that chapter like a single event framed in a dynamic, holographic wide angle photograph.

 

Imagine the Big Picture of the Life Chapter you are in Now. Where are YOU in this picture? I invite you to journal, discuss with a loved one, or visually represent your response:

How do you envision your current chapter might end and the next one begin? What IMAGE comes to mind as you imagine a coming TRANSITION? Journal, discuss,  or visually represent this coming Transition:

Finally, draw yourself into the most positive potentials of a desirable future life chapter. Is this your next chapter or are there one or more other transitional chapters you can anticipate between now and then? See if you can imagine the series of chapters that can bring you to the fulfillment of your Life Dream, your Dream Come True. Journal or visually represent your response:

Transitional Chapter

Transitional Chapter

My Life Dream Realized!

As you engage with this imaginative technique you are drawing upon your Artist archetype Ally. YOU as Artist are a Visionary. Imagination is your Divine gift that can lift you from any situation and help you to manifest a Better Ending!

images are gratefully from pixabay.com

I welcome your comments and stories from engaging with this imaginative self-development Tool. You could Comment to this post or send me a Facebook or email message and I will share your response in the Comments section.

 

 

“So She had Outdanced Thought”…Go with the Flow

I was listening on National Public Radio this past week to a discussion about Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi’s TED talk theme of “Flow” (http://www.npr.org/2015/04/17/399806632/what-makes-a-life-worth-living).  The neuropsychologist explains that the brain can process no more than something like 120 bits of information at a time. The more closely we focus on some activity, the less we are aware of many surrounding conditions or facts that might otherwise vie for our attention. When we are working with great concentration on something we dearly love—like a work of art, giving a performance onstage, writing, or competing at a sports event, we enter “the Flow,” effectively transcending space and time altogether while absorbed in this all-consuming activity in the Now.

The NPR journalist associated this transcendent experience of “flow” with Abraham Maslow’s notion of a “peak experience.”  I know this concept quite well both as a writer and from when I was a competitive Fencer. I recall quite well one fencing tournament in Tucson, Arizona. I was so focused on being centered and fencing from that Center at that particular tournament that when I fenced, I won every bout 4-0 (and the tournament) and yet I hardly even knew what had just occurred when I stepped off from the fencing strip. The actions themselves had become almost “automatic”: advance/ retreat, attack / parry-riposte, etcetera were not consciously engaged but happened spontaneously from that Center. …”What a rush!” one might say, when this happens!

Poetry is a medium that brings out my own artistic nature or my ARTIST Archetype Ally, that part of Self that I gratefully share consciousness with to better appreciate form, color, balance, and Nature.  One of my favorite poems from my favorite poet, W. B.Yeats, expresses poignantly the transcendent Flow of the Artist; in this case, in his dream of three Figures: “A Buddha, hands at rest / Hand lifted up that blessed; A Sphinx, head erect, in triumph of intellect… ; and “right between these two a girl that danced”.  Here are the relevant verses from part II of “The Double Vision of Michael Robartes” (from http://www.yeatsvision.com/Doublevision.html ) :

II

On the grey rock of Cashel I suddenly saw A Sphinx with woman breast and lion paw, A Buddha, hand at rest, Hand lifted up that blest;And right between these two a girl at play That, it may be, had danced her life away, For now being dead it seemed That she of dancing dreamed.Although I saw it all in the mind’s eye There can be nothing solider till I die; I saw it by the moon’s light Now at its fifteenth night.One lashed her tail; her eyes lit by the moon Gazed upon all things known, all things unknown, In triumph of intellect With motionless head erect. That other’s moonlit eyeballs never moved, Being fixed on all things loved, all things unloved, Yet little peace he had, For all that love are sad. O little did they care who danced between, And little she by whom her dance was seen So she had outdanced thought. Body perfection brought, For what but eye and ear silence the mind With the minute particulars of mankind? Mind moved yet seemed to stop As ’twere a spinning-top. In contemplation had those three so wrought Upon a moment, and so stretched it out That they, time overthrown, Were dead yet flesh and bone.

III

I knew that I had seen, had seen at last That girl my unremembering nights hold fast Or else my dreams that fly If I should rub an eye, And yet in flying fling into my meat A crazy juice that makes the pulses beat As though I had been undone By Homer’s Paragon

So what about you? When are you most in the Flow? How can you use this experience to channel your inner Artist and to accomplish your deepest ambitions?

images from pixabay.com

ART to the RESCUE: A Popular Better Ending Theme

One of my favorite all-time movies is the original “An Affair to Remember” with Deborah Kerr and Cary Grant. Of course it is a highly romantic tale of star-crossed lovers who find each other on an ocean cruise while both are otherwise engaged with the ‘wrong’ people back on land.  What interests me this month as we are exploring the ARTIST archetype is how in “An Affair to Remember,” it is the ARTIST to the rescue, to save the day and make sure not only that these two destined lovers marry, but more importantly, that each is able to manifest their fullest potentials.(Click to see scenes at  http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050105/ )

Nikkie Ferrante, global playboy about to marry for money to perpetuate his high living lifestyle, is in reality a frustrated Dreamer, an Artist.  Meeting Terry McKay, who teaches voice in New York City to children, brings Nikkie face to face and heart to heart with his true inner calling, not just to marry Miss McKay but to return to his Art at any cost in order to support a family on his own. When these two promise to meet after six months at the top of the Empire State building to forego their prior engagements and declare their love for each other so they may marry, Nikkie gives up his aim to ‘marry into money’ and live off his wife’s inheritance and he vows instead to be an ARTIST, destitute if need be, even alone if that must be what occurs after the six month hiatus.

It is also quite literally Art to the rescue in the pivotal scene at the end, when Nikkie visits Terry to bring a gift of a shawl from his deceased Aunt after he and Terry have become estranged. He had been there at the Empire State building and believed that Terry was not, although the audience is quite aware Terry was hit by a car and crippled on her way to their meeting place:

“I was looking up; it was the nearest thing to Heaven. You were there!”

Terry visits Nikkie at her apartment where she remains seated on her couch; it is only when Nikkie enters her bedroom and sees his own painting of Terry wearing his Aunt’s shawl (which he was told had been purchaesd by a lady in a wheelchair), that he understands. Terry also wanted her independence and to be true to herself; she needed to be able to walk before she would have sought out Nikkie on her own.

The song Terry coaches children to sing in the movie is about listening to one’s “conscience;” again, to be true to one’s innermost callings rather than taking the easy, obvious pathway in life.  Many people defray or submerge their own ARTIST’s WAY; that is, they may not listen to what their unconscious, archetypal ARTIST part of Self is trying to express, either to the world or to their own conscious sensibilities.

images are from pixabay.com

Express your own Inner ARTIST’s Nature! What would it have you do today? In an important situation? Heed the Call!

I welcome your Comments and Stories!

Adult Coloring—Try It, You Might Like It!

Last week while I was at a bookstore I counted something like twenty-five different adult coloring books on just one wall of book shelves. Mandalas, Mehndis, Botanicals, Mindfulness patterns, Geometric designs, Calming Art, Color Therapy, Nordic Designs, Labyrinths, Celtic designs, Tesselations, Whimsical Gardens, even Ancient Alchemy Coloring, as just a few examples, can all be found at the Barnes & Noble bookstore or at Amazon.com.  This trend has exploded in just a few years to become a mainstream hobby or meditative practice.

Coloring by these ‘mystical patterns’ are claimed to reduce stress, calm the nerves, and unblock one’s creative resources.

I can attest to the veracity of these claims. For several years I have at intervals colored Celtic designs, labyrinths, and Mandalas. For six months as I was healing from a broken relationship and preparing for a big move, I colored an entire book of Mandalas and taped them onto my bedroom wall, filling the entire wall.  I found that in the PROCESS of coloring a Mandala, which colors to use came to me intuitively, and invariably I infused the drawing with a meaning that pertained directly to some aspect of my life experience or current feelings.

I felt that these colored images I immersed in “said it all,” expressing a secret language of the Soul that did bring understanding and healing. They allowed me a mode of holistic communication that felt integrative of my various feelings and archetypal energies and they helped me “make sense” of what was happening in my life.

I invite you simply print this blog post, magnify the images below on a copy machine, and try your own hand and Heart at one or all of the images below. You can use colored pens or crayons to color at your leisure. (These are all free images from pixabay.com). I invite you to share here your insights about your experience!

What Are Your Favorite Colors? Color Your World Vibrant!

This month we are exploring and celebrating the ARTIST in all of us: focusing on your ARTIST Archetype Ally as a significant cast member of your Total Self System, in terms of archetypal psychology.

The Artist persona archetype is often suppressed because of conditioning or socialization from childhood. “Don’t be such a Dreamer,” a parent might admonish their child who shows early artistic interests. “Practical” career interests are often encouraged over one’s artistic ambitions. And so, the Inner Artist may be drawn inward, maybe even pairing with a Descender archetype comrade.

These suppressed personae are still a big part of who you are in the fullness of your Self and personality.

Aim to encourage your Inner Artist to express herself or himself this month, this week, today! I proclaim this blog to be a SAFE SPACE for you as the ARTIST you are and can be.

What are some of your favorite colors? Why these, by the way? Here is some space below for you to journal your responses to these questions:

 

 

 

 

For me, I love purples and blues, maroon, gold, and white. I have associations with each of these colors; I love also how they combine to form MAGENTA, which was the main color that appeared in an aura photograph taken of me a few years ago.

I associate purples with my astrological sign of Cancer. It feels deep and mysterious and is the color of the Etheric plane or the collective unconscious in one aspect of my belief system. Blues suggest mental phenomena to me: high thoughts, broad beliefs, and positive consciousness or Mindfulness itself suggest this color to me. Maroon is a special color. I associate it with Teaching (with a capital T); I often imagine spiritual Masters wearing maroon robes when I practice spiritual contemplation. And white, well, that is the GOAL altogether, is it not? White Light, blending yet transcending all other hues and shades. White Light brings me to a peaceful state unencumbered by earthly matters or concerns. I can live in the White Light, and maybe part of me always does!

Many Native American cultures identify specific colors to represent their sacred cardinal directions. The Hopis, for example, use the following color associations:

NW:  yellow (Kwini’wi, summer sunset)

SW:  green  (Te’vyuna, winter sunset)

SE:  red (Ta’tyuka, winter sunrise)

NE: white (Ho’poko, summer sunrise)

Above: black (O’mi)

Below: Below (At’kyami)

Hopis see these cardinal color elements all around in their sacred environment and they place them into their ceremonial paraphernalia. They truly do color their world with these primary color forms.

Similarly, I invite you to color your world with your own primary favorite colors. As you go to work today or take a walk at Sunset, pay attention to seeing colors deeply, especially your favorite hues and tones. Breathe these colors in; project them out and about you.

The very process of focusing on color and form can bring forth your artistic sensibilities. This can help you to harmonize with your environment and to heighten your every day life experience.

So, take note! Allow your Artist archetype Ally to accompany you, helping direct your attention to the Beauty beneath the otherwise drab-appearing normalcy of the world all around you.

See?

 There is a New World for you to enter, daily!

images from pixabay.com

I welcome your insights, comments, and stories! HAPPY MOTHERS DAY, and Better endings to you!

The Artist’s Passion

Why have so many well-known artists been plagued with depression or addictive personalities? Sometimes the strain of living with artistic sensibilities in a world that may seem better suited to pragmatism or materialistic reality can lead one to feel isolated, an outsider, never “fitting in” with normative expectations. Some might say if this is not a necessary outlook for an artist, it may at least seem helpful for the artist to be true to her/his own unique viewpoint.

Painters, writers, musicians, dancers, actors and others who center their lives around their Art contribute so much of beauty and insight so that others might grow from  absorbing the Artist’s perspective.  They fulfill an immeasurably valuable human service in this capacity.

Each of us also contains within our Psyche our own ARTIST persona Archetype, which is informed by the history of Artists we have known.  As such, the ‘melancholy’ aspect we might culturally attribute to Artists in general can also affect the development or inhibition of our own artistic nature.

As all Archetypes have both positive, light-bearing or Strength facets as well as potential Shadow forms, let’s celebrate the ARTIST in others and in ourselves this month by embracing the totality of the ARTIST Archetype.

Think of one artist whose art (whether by painting, sculpture, music, dance, photography, writing or other forms) has been influential to your thinking or to your appreciation of life. What about this person allowed his or her art to reach such a heightened level as to become shared worldwide (if it is)? For example, on Sunday I mentioned Vincent Van Gogh, whose life certainly exemplifies the dynamic tension of “an artist”; his outlook helps us all to perceive life beneath the mere surfaces, striking at the vibrancy and passion of perception.  Whatever other factors may have been influential, such as possibly lead in the paint he used, Vincent ultimately sacrificed his very life for the sake of his artistic passions.

A better ending envisioning for an Artist’s solitary life might allow for his or her sensibilities to be embraced rather than marginalized. Integrating one’s artistic tendencies with other archetypal outlooks may also be beneficial.  Be that as it may, for now let’s just accept and appreciate the artists in our own lives, in our Culture, in our Selves!

images are from pixabay.com

I invite YOUR Comments and Stories!

Your Artistic Vein

May is associated with the Archetype of the ARTIST. We each have artistic tendencies, whether or not we have developed these talents for our profession or as hobbies.

Your Inner Artist brings a sensitivity to form, color, texture, vibrancy, and style.  S/he helps you to appreciate symmetry, balance, and holistic design.

Certain sorts of life experience may evoke or stimulate your ARTIST Archetype Ally. For me, spending time at an art museum or strolling through an art show allows my ARTIST to surface, center stage.

I love the sense of heightened appreciation of light, beauty, and form that infuses my senses when I step out from a museum after having absorbed myself in the artworks inside.

When I was first in college in Buffalo, New York, the Albright-Knox art museum was just across the street from the campus.  For most of the time I was there, the museum hosted an Impressionists Hall that included one particular original painting by Vincent Van Gogh called “The Old Mill.” I had read Vincent, by Joost Poldermans, and I was (still am) fascinated by Van Gogh’s brilliant art. I became mesmerized by this one painting every time I visited the exhibit. There was a bench opposite from the painting, and I would sit literally for hours in front of this dynamic, folksy tableau of color, texture, and human passion. I would journal about the painting or about life. I would watch the museum patrons as they approached, viewed, and left or stood to discuss Vincent’s work.

images from pixabay.com

(Notice in this one how the clouds are reaching forward like a hand over the landscape!)

I felt that the color of the rivulet flowing across the scene in “The Old Mill” painting mirrored Vincent’s own eyes of blue, placing his presence as centrally positioned, eternally embedded in the Southern French landscape portrayed.

This week, I invite you to give yourself an Artist’s Date, such as Julia Cameron describes in her excellent book, The Artist’s Way. This is  a time out, a chance for you to do something differently and pay attention to your environment. Maybe it is taking a walk along a lake, or a different road home. Or, simply engage in art in some form for its own sake. In fact, I encourage you to read and engage with the exercises in The Artist’s Way all this month.

I welcome your Comments and invite your Stories about your relationship with your own ARTIST Ally.