Keep Pouring Out

What is waiting to come through me once I have really let it all go? Once I’ve made room for it? Have I made enough room yet? I am so ready for filling my cup, but I am not the Judge. I am not the one who says when it’s enough. I am the one who keeps letting go of control and who trusts that everything is in its right place.

Art & Fear goodies

by David Bayles

The hardest part of artmaking is living your life in such a way that your work gets done, over and over - and that means, among other things, finding a host of practices that are just plain useful. A piece of art is the surface expression of a life lived within productive patterns. They allow confidence and concentration. They allow not knowing. They allow the automatic and unarticulated to remain so. Once you have found the work you are meant to do, the particulars of any single piece don't matter all that much.

The 15 Commitments

For Conscious Leadership

Jim Dethmer

1. I commit to taking full responsibility for the circumstances of my life, and my physical, emotional, mental and spiritual wellbeing. I commit to support others to take full responsibility for their lives. 

2. I commit to growing in self-awareness. I commit to regarding every interaction as an opportunity to learn. I commit to curiosity as a path to rapid learning. 

3. I commit to feeling my feelings all the way through to completion. They come, and I locate them in my body then move, breathe and vocalize them so they release all the way through. 

4. I commit to saying what is true for me. I commit to being a person to whom others can express themselves with candor. 

5. I commit to ending gossip, talking directly to people with whom I have an issue or concern, and encouraging others to talk directly to people with whom they have an issue or concern. 

6. I commit to the masterful practice of integrity, including acknowledging all authentic feelings, expressing the unarguable truth and keeping my agreements. 

7. I commit to living in appreciation, fully opening to both receiving and giving appreciation. 

8. I commit to expressing my full magnificence, and to supporting and inspiring others to fully express their creativity and live in their zone of genius. 

9. I commit to creating a life of play, improvisation, and laughter. I commit to seeing all of life unfold easefully and effortlessly. I commit to maximizing my energy by honoring rest, renewal and rhythm. 

10. I commit to seeing that the opposite of my story is as true or truer than my original story. I recognize that I interpret the world around me and give my stories meaning. 

11. I commit to being the source of my security, control and approval.  

12. I commit to experiencing that I have enough of everything… including time, money, love, energy, space, resources, etc. 

13. I commit to seeing all people and circumstances as allies that are perfectly suited to help me learn the most important things for my growth. 

14. I commit to creating win for all solutions (win for me, win for the other person, win for the organization, and win for the whole) for whatever issues, problems, concerns, or opportunities life gives me.  

15. I commit to being the resolution or solution that is needed: seeing what is missing in the world as an invitation to become that which is required. 

Release A Belief

A "meditation" to release a belief no longer serving you,

by Amy Scher.

---

Even though I have this belief
that I'm unable to heal / I'm undeserving of healing, **
I acknowledge it's no longer working for me.

I give my subconscious full permission to help me clear it

From all of my cells, in all of my body,

permanently and completely.

I am now free to thank this old belief

for serving me in the past, when I really needed it.

I am now free to release all resistance to letting it go.

I am now free to release all ideas 

that I need this belief in order to stay safe

I am now free to release all ideas

that I need it for any reason at all.

I am now free to release all feelings

that I don't deserve to let it go.

I am now free to release all conscious

and subconscious causes for this belief.

I am now free to release all conscious 

and subconscious reasons for holding onto it.

I am now free to release all harmful patterns,

emotions and memories,

connected to this old outdated belief.

I am now free to release all generational or 

past life energies keeping it stuck.

All of my being is healing and clearing this energy NOW,

including any stress response stored in my cells.

Healing, healing, healing.

Clearing, clearing, clearing.

It is now time to install the new belief:

I can heal. I deserve to heal.

Installing, installing, installing.

Installing, installing, installing.

And so, it is done.

Guiding Principles

Trust the Motherly Giving Universe

- Life is a gift, live in the gratitude of what I receive

- I am never truly alone in my being

- Ask for answers and listen to receive them

- I am always supported in my decisions, no matter

- I am living in tandem with something greater

Living from my center / Higher Self

- Always coming back to myself, living from inside out

- This allows for living life through what I truly desire rather than what I think others want

Action over Thought

- Just do it. Don't think about it

- Action will breed more success than only thinking about something

- Thinking will create fear and anxiety of the future

- Action will show if something is right for me or not in time

Act from Love not Fear

- Love will make things more beautiful

- Allow others to love

Ultimate Self Compassion and Kindness

- Always be kind to myself, inside my thoughts, outside

- Treat myself as I would treat a friend

- Treat myself as a friend would treat me

- Everything I don't do and everything I do is OKAY

Life as Art and Beauty

- Remember to find beauty in all things and situations

- There is something to be created from everything around me

- Art is around me and WITHIN me, it wants out

Done is Better than Perfect

- Get messy and just get it out of me

- Get it done rather than get it perfect

- Perfection is my skewed perception of done

- Only way to learn from my past material

Service to Others

- All the personal work I do benefits others

- My alone time allows for growth

- Growth means I am more serving to community

- My service to others comes back around to me

- Others serve me equally

Healthy Body, Mind and Spirit

- To live a long life for retrospection and integration

- To support activities that allow me to thrive (dance, move, play)

- I can better express myself with a functioning vessel

- To support others through their struggles without my pain in the way

Ask What It Needs

 "Expectations based on the work itself are the most useful tool the artist possesses. What you need to know about the next piece is contained in the last piece. The place to learn about your materials is in the last use of your materials. The place to learn about your execution is in your execution. The best information about what you love is in your last contact with what you love. Put simply, your work is your guide: a complete, comprehensive, limitless reference book on your work. There is no other such book, and it is yours alone. It functions this way for no one else. Your fingerprints are all over your work, and you alone know how they got there. Your work tells you about your working methods, your discipline, your strengths and weaknesses, your habitual gestures, your willingness to embrace.

The lessons you are meant to learn are in your work. To see them, you need only look at the work clearly - without judgement, without need or fear, without wishes or hopes. Without emotional expectations. Ask your work what it needs, not what you need. Then set aside your fears and listen, the way a good parent listens to a child."

On Emotional Stability, Ambiguity, and New Versions of Me

What was it like, to be emotionally stable, to feel good in most - if not all - circumstances? How have I become this rollercoasting coaster of a woman? I had to open, had to crack, but could it be that now I am holding on to what has spilled out of me? Is it time to stop inspecting the contents that have left me and now investigate what is left at my core ... the lightness of my being?

It's as if I've trapped myself in a perpetual state of "opening", and the actual resulting space of openness has not been felt. Letting go of the transformative state is almost as hard as stepping into it. Maybe I haven't even experienced the new me post transformation.

So, how do I know when I've felt enough and must move on to equanimity? When do I start to focus elsewhere instead of on the pain and struggle? I've just learned how to feel anger, how to release frustration, how to see what I want and don't want, how to feel the spectrum of emotions. Seems easy to get addicted to these wild emotions. They're part of the HUMAN EXPERIENCE! and I've been missing out for decades until now! Although this is true, I don't want to become one who seeks drama with these new teachings.

I must realize I have learned everything from my teacher, and say goodbye. Now I can be the new version of myself: one who encompasses and expresses real emotion while also remaining steady, calm, and loving, specifically inwardly.

==

The ambiguity keeps me tied. It allows for one tiny crack of light to come through, one glimmer of hopeless romantic hope, underneath all of the hard layers I have built on top of my heart. No matter how much I deny it, there is constant wishful thinking, and that is because there has been absolutely no closure. Or perhaps there was, and it was not held to its truth. Am I the one who needs to close this door forever? is this even possible, would my soul allow itself to escape its confines of the prison I built around him?

==

The more time passes the less time passes between thoughts. After a good amount of time I am able to divert my attention of affection from he to me. It feels almost effortless, which is surprising as it is so unbearable when I relapse into one of my dreadful, heart-breaking episodes. They come on like a tidal wave with no warning. I think I've survived with no wounds or trauma to speak of, and yet, it remerges every time, showing its beastly head, showing me that locking it up and hiding it away never killed him. The only way to escape such tidal-wave-born beasts is if the cycle is broken, and to break such a cycle means to try something completely different. Something needs to be taken out of the equation completely. If he were never to return into my world, I would no doubt free the monster inside of me. But how do I come to make such a choice, to push someone I love so much far away from me, never to be seen again?