Art is hard. It dishes up as much fear and disappointment as it does inspiration and love. But not for those who have found lightness in creating- something I am still seeking.
What I have done extremely well is to choose my guides: Among them, my Art2Life mentor Nicholas Wilton, whose latest lesson for me, the book The War of Art, was delivered to my doorstep at the exact moment I was condemning myself to the art hack heap, (whose author maintains that Hitler, a one-time art student, found it easier to start WWII than to be an artist. Ever see a painting by Hitler? Exactly), and Elizabeth Gilbert, in her book Big Magic, provided me with this: "What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, just because you think it's sacred. What IS sacred is the time that you spend working on a project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life."
I have finally found important keys to more satisfaction as an artist: A more loving relationship with myself in which all of my feelings and expression are welcome. To release my attachment to the results and to paint with the intention of how I want to feel while doing it. To love what I create because I created it.
I see even more clearly that as in art so as in life. That my unconscious identification with my shadows and my belief in my limitations creates a life that is defined by them. That holding the tension of my true desires invites the resources of the quantum field, a creative force that is vastly more resourced than the confines of my problem-focused mind. To release my need to control “how” and to submit to the hand of the Divine that flows through mine when I do. That I am it’s creation, created to create what desires to be created through me. That when I love the creator, I love what the creator creates. That the Divine creator and I are one.
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