the whole self

freecycling

2010-03-21T07:11:00.001Z

Awesome video of Danny Macaskill, freecycling in Edinburgh. Totally amazing.

what is dying to be born?

2010-03-20T07:38:00.003Z

This week I came across Lianne Raymond's website and a book What is Dying to be Born? that Lianne has created. (You can download it here). It pulled at me for a number of reasons. It's the kind of project that sits on my wishlist, just dying to be born. I have little book project ideas floating around in my head, just dying to be born. I loved Lianne's introduction where she says:

So pretending to be Elizabeth Gilbert overcome by her muse, I composed an email explaining my idea and asking my question and I sent it to every amazing, wise, wonderful woman I could think of. The only way I found the courage to hit the send button was by being fully prepared to receive no replies. For the idea to be a complete flop.

And then she goes on to say:

To my complete amazement and delight they responded. I mean, they responded.

I could just imagine the delight as the emails rolled in with their answers to her question. I know that feeling.

I read entries from women I already know of and entries from women who were new names to me. These are some that I especially loved.

Kelly McGonigal says of health care:

It's up to you to create a life that sustains you physically, mentally and socially. Yes, do everything you know you should do to take care of your health. Then give yourself permissino to do the thing that makes your heart sing, or that quiets the suffering in your mind.

Maya Stein writes about believe:

If anything, believe in your own strange loveliness
How your body, even as it stumbles, angles for light
The way you hold a dandelion with such
yearning and tenderness,
the whole world stops spinning.

Susan Wooldridge's topic is oneness:

Today by the creek I pretend I'm the Dalai Lama. I don't know enough to get it wrong. The robes, white and golden. The smile, serene, the walk like an animal I've never met, feline, perhaps. Persian, with a hint of bobcat.

I like the duality of the question. Language always intrigues me. Double entendres. An unusual use of words. The origin of language. The question can be what is dying to be born in the sense we use dying to mean can't wait. I'm dying to see that film. What can't wait to be born? Or you could read it as what is ending, expiring for something new to be born. Endings and new beginnings again. We have to lose something or give up something, declutter something in order to fill that space with something new. To let something or a part of us die for something new to be born. It's a constant cycle. Endings and beginnings. The old and the new. Round and round. It's called evolution.

pogo effect

2010-03-07T17:04:00.006Z

the little gem, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

My latest new toy is a Polaroid Pogo. It's a tiny photo printer with built in ink that prints photos onto 2" x 3" sheets that are sticky on the back. It's the coolest thing I've seen in a while. You can bluetooth photos from your mobile (done that) or plug in a USB cable and pictbridge from your digital camera. It gives photographs a slightly Polaroid effect and I just love it.

I've been printing random shots and been wowed by the results. The printer is not expensive (around £24 for the black finish version) and the sheets are around £10 for 70.

I'm sticking the prints in my journal. Going to use them on cards. Generally, I'm going to stick them everywhere!

my tree (again!), originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

We had a show and tell at work this week that resulted in a couple of colleagues dashing off to order their own Polaroid Pogo from Amazon. We're all wowed!

the antidote

2010-03-06T16:45:00.026Z

vitality man, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

Today I've been out with my camera. For the first time in a while. I took some portrait shots for vitalityman's website (coming soon). I'd decided on a location beforehand but it turned out to be even better than I had envisaged. I'd seen a bridge and some trees. A slightly grungy backdrop. But a few yards further along was a derelict school. Broken windows. Graffiti. It was perfect.

I had a happy half hour having fun with the camera, looking for shots, trying things out. John was an excellent subject who needed little direction and I was pleased with the shots I took. I especially liked the one above which was shot through the side of a rusty freight-type container to get the blurry edge.

It made me realise again - or at least reminded me - that photography is my antidote to those times in my life when things don't quite go to plan. I love photography. I could spend all day, every day, taking photographs. I never want it to end. It's a complete joy to me, whatever I'm photographing. Whether it's just me tinkering or portraits or events. It never ceases to thrill me. And when I get home and download everything, it always feels like magic.

Sometimes I have phases when I don't photograph as much as I should. Work commitments, life in general. And those are specifically the times when I should pick up my camera, go out somewhere and just keep clicking. That's my kind of therapy. Photo therapy.

go the distance

2010-02-13T15:50:00.000Z

Terence Mann in Field of Dreams:

There comes a time when all the cosmic tumblers have clicked into place and the universe opens itself up for a few seconds to show you what's possible.

there can be only one

2010-02-06T21:12:00.001Z

Ramirez in Highlander:

You have done well.
But it'll take time.
You are generations being born and dying.
You are at one with all living things.
Each man's thoughts and dreams are yours to know.
You have power beyond imagination.
Use it well, my friend.
Don't lose your head.

day 21/21: the source

2010-02-04T06:00:00.092Z

Welcome to Day 21 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Source: the point at which something springs into being or from which it derives or is obtained; the point of origin, such as a spring, of a stream or river; one that causes, creates, or initiates; a maker.

rainbows, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

Connecting to our Source is, in many ways, about finding our way home. Our Source is the divine part of us, something we know naturally as children, but in most cases, separate from as we grow older. Yet many of us crave that connection but don't necessarily know what we crave or how to find it.

The Source for you may be something different to what it is for me. You may call it by a different name. You may have a different philosophy about it. I define my view of life by what feels right to me and what works for me.

You may call Source by the name of God or Soul or Divine. I think it has to be what resonates with you. For me Source, or the creative divine, as I like to call it, is my highest self. It's a part of the Whole - my whole and a universal whole where we're all connected. By connecting to my creative divine, something transformative happens. I cease to worry about all the worldly things that might normally concern me and tune into an energy or force that puts me in alignment with who I really am.

The journey home is the journey to self and who we really are. And sometimes we hide that so well!

It's a journey of small steps.

Lao-tzu:

A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.

It's about getting our ducks in a row more and more often until we reach a point where we're being who we really are more of the time. It's quite a journey and each of our journeys is unique to us. If you're reading this, chances are that you're already on your own journey.

I believe we all have a mission to fulfil in this lifetime. Part of connecting to Source is about remembering what that mission is. The more often we connect, the more we start understanding what we are here to do. Synchronicities also start to occur and signposts appear in our path. I think that the heart of the mission is about being the best we can be and who we really are. It's about not hiding your light or talent under a bushel.

I Ching:

It is only when we have the courage to face things exactly as they are, without any self-deception or illusion, that a light will develop out of events, by which the path to success may be recognised.

Part of connecting to Source is recognising the shadow side of ourselves, the bits of ourselves that we don't especially like and try to hide. To be whole we need to learn to accept these elements of our self and acknowledge them so that we can move forward. We don't have to deny them but look for the gifts that they bring us on our journey. The biggest hurdle is accepting the shadow side as a part of us. In the foreword of our book today, Neale Donald Walsch writes:

I believe in living a life of utter visibility. That means complete transparency. Nothing hidden, nothing denied. Not even the part of myself that I didn't want to look at, much less acknowledge. If you agree with me that visibility is the key to authenticity, and that authenticity is the doorway to your True Self, you will thank Debbie Ford from the depth of your being for this book. For it will lead you right to that doorway, beyond which is found lasting joy, inner peace and a place of self-love so vast, you will at last find the room to unconditionally love others.

The journey to Source is really about coming full circle. It's returning to where we began, to our origin. We just don't really know that when we're on our way. It's only when we arrive that we know. Because it's then that we recognise home.

Marianne Williamson:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Be inspired: The journey is my home by Julie Jordan Scott just said it all when I saw the post headline appear in my Twitter feed. The journey to Source is our journey home.

You might also enjoy The Journey Home.

Read: Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford was recommended as part of my Reiki Master course and was a book I used a lot over the following year. It has come uncomfortable truths in places but also gifts.

Do: Today is the last entry in 21 days. I hope that some of the posts have resonated with you and helped you on your own journey. If you wrote your intentions on day 1, take a look at them and see how they have manifested over the last three weeks. Also, consider what it means to you to be whole. What shadow elements of your self do you need to accept? I wish you much joy on your journey to your creative divine. Thank you for being a part of 21 days.

Jung:

Would you rather be whole or good?

day 20/21: creation and creative divine

2010-02-03T06:31:00.001Z

Welcome to Day 20 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Creative: having the quality or power of creating; resulting from originality of thought, expression, etc.; imaginative: creative writing; originative; productive.

self portrait, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

What do you create? Even if you don't create in an obvious way by being an artist or a writer or a dancer, we all create in some way. We all express a creative side of us. You might blog. Or be a great make up artist. You might do collage. You might bake fabulous cakes. Think about how you manifest your creative streak and the things that you do to create.

And then think about why you do those things.

I generally like making things. I like crafty stuff, collage, nice stationery, journaling. I love discovering something new that I can try. My head is fairly creative too. I need time to distill ideas and cogitate but I can get in a flow and have to write furiously to get everything down on paper.

My main creative outlet is my photography. There's a kind of alchemy involved in photography. Converting something I see to a little image stored in a box. I understand the principles of photography but I still like to be wowed by the fact that a picture I saw in my head converts to a photograph on my screen. It's a bit like magic. One of the big things I love about digital photography is that I can come home after a photo session and download everything immediately, see what I took, see what really worked. No waiting! I practically rush home with my camera. I've often plugged in the cable between the camera and my laptop before I've taken my coat off. I still get a buzz from photography. There's always an element of surprise. Will the shot that you think really worked be as good as you hoped? Or will some apparently simple shot glow around the edges?

I often wonder why I take photographs instead of painting, for example. (I can't paint, apart from walls!). Why did I gravitate towards photography and not pottery?

My Dad was a keen photographer. He bought me my first little film camera. I used it for years. A tiny box that was just brilliant. It travelled to lots of places and took lovely photographs. Later I graduated to a better film camera. And then finally my first digital camera. It was a Fuji and quite big. I had enormous fun with that and discovered the immediacy of digital. Gradually I moved up the scale and finally bought my beloved Nikon. I often still take my compact digital out with me, when I just want a simple approach. But I love my Nikon with its zoom lens.

I subscribe to the Jane Bown style of photography. Camera and natural light. I often just take one lens (generally my zoom) and use the available light. I like to be unencumbered by lots of kit and flash guns.

But, why do I like photography best? In some respects it's a hard question to answer. Photography gives me a buzz. It makes me happy. I just love taking photographs. Photography lets me forget about everything else around me. But mostly, and it's a relatively late discovery, it connects me to my creative divine.

I had no idea what was happening for a long time. I knew when I was running around town taking photographs of events that there was a moment when something kicked in and I was on auto pilot. The more I experienced this, the more I could sense the moment when it happened. It was as though things ceased to exist, I moved on to a different plane. A kind of urgency took over.

I can't pinpoint the time when I started to piece together what was happening. It was probably a number of events. Reading different books, learning about the concepts of Theta waves, hearing people speak about source. Gradually a jigsaw was being put together and I started to see my photography in a new light.

The point where I switch over to auto pilot was the point where all my ducks were in a row. I was in alignment with who I was supposed to be and what I was supposed to be doing. Photography was my form of meditation for connecting to my source, my real self and, as I like to call it, my creative divine.

In many respects it's not conventionally spiritual. It doesn't involve candles or silence. It doesn't involve acts of devotion. It involves total immersion in what I'm doing. 100% concentration on my camera. It frequently involves much mad running through side streets to get to where I know a photograph is unfolding. It's not really pretty or elegant! And yet it is spiritual. It's my kind of spiritual. It's about my spirit. It's about feeding my spirit in a way that brings me joy and fulfils me.

So, the question I want to ask today is what do you do that brings you the greatest joy?

Be inspired: Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on Flow. A TED Talk that was a synchronicitous discovery recently. Mihaly says:

... there are these seven conditions that seem to be there when a person is in flow. There's this focus that once it becomes intense, leads to a sense of ecstasy, a sense of clarity, you know exactly what you want to do from one moment to the other, you get immediate feedback. You know that what you need to do is possible to do, even though difficult, and sense of time disappears, you forget yourself, you feel part of something larger. And once those conditions are present, what you are doing becomes worth doing for its own sake.

Read: Creativity by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. I haven't read this one yet but it's on my wishlist and just the choice that came up today for this post. Flow and creative divine are inextricably linked so it seems like an appropriate recommendation.

Do: Ponder some of the questions asked in today's post. Why do you create in the way that you do? Why do you express your creativity in a particular way? How does it make you feel and what does your creativity bring to the world? Look for the ways in which you experience creative divine or flow through your creating.

day 19/21: play time (re-creation)

2010-02-02T06:00:00.002Z

Welcome to Day 19 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Recreation: refreshment in body or mind, as after work, by some form of play, amusement, or relaxation; any form of play, amusement, or relaxation used for this purpose, as games, sports, or hobbies.

whit walk, originally uploaded by silverpink.

I love plays on words. The way you can tinker with them. Recreation means something you do in your spare time. Re-creation means something slightly different but encapsulates what recreation is all about. It’s the time to recreate yourself. A little like renaissance or rebirth. To stop, pause, take a break, play, do something new and, in the process, perhaps experience an a-ha moment. Suddenly something that you’ve been labouring over starts to make sense and fall into place.

It’s tempting to work work work. To keep going with something even when you’re exhausted and depleted. The sensible thing would be to stop, go and do something else, go and play for a while. But we don’t and I’m the world’s biggest culprit. I’m driven to finish something and I have to keep going until I’ve done that, even though often this is self-defeating and carrying on working makes the process longer and doesn’t add value.

Play connects us to our childlike qualities, those of imagination, possibility and fun. Children know instinctively how to go with the flow, how to get into the zone. They want to do the things they love to do.

What matters now is an ebook published by Seth Godin last year. It's a series of single page entries by a whole range of guest writers. I like it because you can dip in and just read a page, be inspired, check out the author's website and learn something new along the way.

One of the entries is written by Joichi Ito and is titled Neoteny. A new word. Meaning the retention of childlike attributes in adulthood. The piece challenges us to focus less on work, the serious, the constant striving to produce and more on play and how it can guide us away from rigid frameworks and dogma.

Another post is about Adventure. Written by Robyn Waters who suggests fabulous things to pursue in the name of adventure:

Blaze a new trail. Dare to discover. Have some fun! Pursue a road less traveled. Quest for truth. Take a risk. Unleash your curiosity.

Adventure requires childlike qualities to experience the awe of the new, the excitement of discovery.

Derek Sivers writes about Passion and in a few brief paragraphs lays out some important thoughts about what we might believe about passion and purpose:

If you think you haven't found your passion yet, you're probably expecting it to be overwhelming.

Instead, just notice what excites you and what scares you on a small moment-to-moment level.

If you find yourself glued to Photoshop, playing around for hours, dive in deeper. Maybe that's your new calling.

The message very clearly is to do what excites you. In other words, what brings you joy. What connects you to that part of yourself that links you to creative divine.

Gumption is not a word I hear every day. I think there was a cleaning product called Gumption once! Initiative; resourcefulness; courage; spunk; guts. J C Hutchins is the author of Gumption. He talks about how we settle. For less than what we really want. How we accept things when we should pursue something different. How we paint ourselves into corners. And how we've forgotten goals we wanted to achieve way back when.

Declare war on passivity. Hush the inner voice that insists you're over the hill, past your prime, unworthy of attaining those dreams. Disbelief is now the enemy, as is the notion of settling. Get hungry - hyena hungry. Get fired up. Find your backbone, and your wings.

Flap 'em. It's the only way you'll be able to fly.

Children can fly. They flap their arms and they're flying. As a child I had an imaginary horse. Somehow I got him to school every day in my Dad's car. I tethered him up in the playground on the railings by a pale blue door. At playtime a friend and I would ride our horses around the playground. At night we took them home again with us. I think mine slept in my bedroom.

Imagination is not dissimilar to visualisation. It's imagining how we would like our life to look. It's creating a picture in our heads of what we want so that the universe can go away and work on it for us, helping us to manifest what we want in our lives.

Play and imagination go together. Play engages a part of the brain that triggers our creative energy. You can't play if you're wondering how you look. Play is about having fun, being a little bit mischievous, taking a vacation from work and doing something that is far removed from being serious.

John Wayne:

Tomorrow is the most important thing in life. Comes into us at midnight very clean. It's perfect when it arrives and it puts itself in our hands. It hopes we've learned something from yesterday.

Be inspired: Some ideas to bring our your inner child by Mirri Rocks.

Consider a retreat. I've signed up for Jennifer Louden's 2010 Virtual Retreat this month. Some time to step away from the work and spend some time resting and re-creating.

Read: Inspiration Sandwich by SARK. Lovely colourful, luscious books. Anything by SARK encourages our childlike qualities and for us to play. SARK has lots of inspiration on her website too.

Do: Look for opportunities to watch children playing. Think back to when you were a child and the activities that you loved. Recapture the feeling. I vividly remember a ball game played in my street with friends and parents. The light was fading but we didn't want to stop. What sort of things do you love to do and never really want to stop?

Robert Frost:

Something we were withholding made us weak, until we found it was ourselves.

an early christmas

2010-02-01T07:14:00.001Z

day 18/21: being self-ish

2010-02-01T06:00:00.061Z

Welcome to Day 18 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Self: the total, essential, or particular being of a person; the individual; the essential qualities distinguishing one person from another; individuality; one's consciousness of one's own being or identity; the ego.

starbucks and notebook, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

Sri Sathya Sai Baba:

Devotional singing induces in you a desire for experiencing the truth, to glimpse the beauty that is God, to taste the bliss that is the Self. It encourages man to dive into himself and be genuinely his real Self.

The word selfish has negative connotations:

concerned excessively or exclusively with oneself: seeking or concentrating on one's own advantage, pleasure, or well-being without regard for others.

It implies actions to the detriment of others. I prefer the term self-ish. I think it puts a different slant on things. It's putting the focus on your self in a way that is in your best interests and those of the people you know. It's somewhere in the middle of selfish and selfless. It's the halfway house.

Robert S Pirsig:

Finally you understand that the real motorcycle you’re working on is yourself. (Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance)

Not only is being self-ish important because it enables us to be of use to others in the best way, but being self-ish is important to our own consciousness. It's too easy to become swamped with should do and must to the extent that we lose sight of what we are here to do. Whether you know it or not, tied up in your life is your purpose, and part of your mission is to excavate that purpose - for your own benefit but also to benefit others.

Your purpose is unique to you. To identify your purpose is to find the thing that makes you happy, brings you the greatest joy and makes you feel fulfilled.

Recently I've discovered Andre Rieu. He is a musician and, with his classical orchestra, he plays concerts to packed venues all over the world. They're extravaganzas with dancers and ice skaters, horse drawn carriages but what sets them apart from traditional concerts is the joy and enthusiasm that Andre brings. He says:

My dream is to make the whole of classical music accessible for everyone.

The concerts are uplifting, people dance in the aisles, the orchestra members fool around and people join in. It's the most amazing thing I've seen in a long time. And I hope that I can go to one of the concerts and dance in the aisle.

Andre Rieu is undoubtedly a man with a purpose. To make people happy with his music. I'm sure all the people who attend one of his concerts are profoundly affected by the experience. It's simply about joy.

Years ago when I was about 9 I used to watch Arthur of the Britons starring Oliver Tobias. It probably triggered my interest in Arthurian legend or maybe just confirmed it. These days I'm fascinated by the holy grail. When I went to the Mother Meera Darshan recently at The Monastery I found it hard sitting still in silence and started jotting things that popped into my head on to one of the little index cards I keep in my bag. Sentences kept floating in and I felt I had to write them down. One of the phrases was:

the holy grail is not what you think it is.

Traditionally, the holy grail is symbolised by an object, often a chalice. I suspect, like the Hindu legend of divinity, that the holy grail is more of a red herring to distract us from our own personal quests for the holy grail. For me, the quest for the holy grail is about discovering our own versions of creative divine.

Be inspired: In the post Learning to be Self-ish we're asked the question What do I need to feel grounded, clear, present, content, and safe? to help us identify our needs and what it takes to be our self.

A different perspective on Patti Digh's essay Put your own mask on first which illustrates why sometimes we need to be self-ish.

Read: The Way of the Wizard by Deepak Chopra contains 20 spiritual lessons for creating the life you want, tied in with the legend of Merlin and King Arthur. (You can see why I bought it!). Each section has a lesson, understanding the lesson and living with the lesson. My favourite chapter is the last one The Seven Steps of Alchemy because this explores the quest for the holy grail.

The quest that brings the Grail as its prize is not a journey of the kind ignorant knights crave to mount. It is an inner journey, a quest of transformation.

Do: Today I'm going to recommend Julia Cameron's morning pages. They're a great way of digging deep and doing some excavation of your own. My form of morning pages often involves a cafe, a latte and my notebook. I just sit and write my own stream of consciousness. Give it a try.

day 17/21: follow your bliss

2010-01-31T06:00:00.070Z

Welcome to Day 17 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Joy: the emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying; elation; a source or cause of keen pleasure or delight; a state of happiness or felicity.

auctioneering, originally uploaded by the.whole.self, photo by John Holland.

Erica Jong:

Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.

Today's photo is a picture of me. It was taken last year on a day spent running around with my camera and it captured so perfectly how much I loved what I was doing. It was a day of me following my bliss, doing what I love the most, doing something that comes naturally to me and something that connects me to my creative divine.

Joseph Campbell:

Follow your bliss and the universe will open doors for you where there were only walls.

Magical things occur when you follow your bliss and when you send out your intention to do just that. Synchronicities happen. People suddenly appear to help you, offering you opportunities that you didn't imagine could present themselves. This is all to affirm that you're on the right track.

Joseph Campbell:

The way to find out about your happiness is to keep your mind on those moments when you really ARE happy - not excited, not just thrilled, but deeply happy. This requires a little bit of self- analysis. What is it that makes you happy? Stay with it, no matter what people tell you. This is what I call, Following Your Bliss. If you do follow your bliss, you put yourself on a kind of track that has been there all the while, waiting for you. And the life that you ought to be living, is the one you ARE living. Wherever you are, if you are following your bliss, you are enjoying that refreshment, that life within you, all the time. When you can see that, you begin to meet people who are in the field of your bliss, and they open doors for you. I say, follow your bliss and don't be afraid, and doors will open where you didn't know they were going to be.

It can be so different when you're going against the grain. Everything is so much harder. I call it, pushing a rock up a hill, because that's how it feels. Nothing flows. Generally my insides are yelling to me that the situation is not right. But following my bliss is so utterly different. It's much more like being on auto pilot. One way to describe it, is that something takes over. That's the creative divine.

Deepak Chopra:

If you want to reach a state of bliss, then go beyond your ego and the internal dialogue. Make a decision to relinquish the need to control, the need to be approved, and the need to judge. Those are the three things the ego is doing all the time. It's very important to be aware of them every time they come up.

I've known the phrase follow your bliss for a long time but it's only been in the process of researching this post that I discovered it was attributed to Joseph Campbell.

It constantly amazes me as I delve further into creative divine how so many others have written about the same thing, just using different terminology and references. Experiencing creative divine is confirmation that you're aligned with your purpose, aligned with being the self you really want to be. Following your bliss is exactly the same. It's about transcending the ego and going straight to your source.

Joseph Campbell:

Now, I came to this idea of bliss because in Sanskrit, which is the great spiritual language of the world, there are three terms that represent the brink, the jumping-off place to the ocean of transcendence: sat-chit-ananda. The word "Sat" means being. "Chit" means consciousness. "Ananda" means bliss or rapture. I thought, "I don't know whether my consciousness is proper consciousness or not; I don't know whether what I know of my being is my proper being or not; but I do know where my rapture is. So let me hang on to rapture, and that will bring me both my consciousness and my being." I think it worked.

Following your bliss is perhaps the first step in connecting to your source, your creative divine. The simple truth is, we are here to be happy. That's quite a difficult concept to grasp when life experience is often the reverse. But that's the truth and one we need to embrace if we wish to manifest our dreams.

Margaret Young:

Often people attempt to live their lives backwards, they try to have more things or more money in order to do more of what they want so that they will be happier. The way it actually works is the reverse. You must first be who you really are then do what you need to do in order to have what you want.

Be inspired: The Law of Least Effort by Deepak Chopra talks about the moment, the point at which you're in alignment with what you should be doing:

If you embrace the present and become one with it, and merge with it, you will experience a fire, a glow, a sparkle of ecstasy throbbing in every living sentient being. As you begin to experience this exultation of spirit in everything that is alive, as you become intimate with it, joy will be born within you, and you will drop the terrible burdens and encumbrances of defensiveness, resentment, and hurtfulness. Only then will you become lighthearted, carefree, joyous, and free.

Read: How much joy can you stand? by Suzanne Falter-Barns. This is a great little book that challenges you to start the creative work you dream of completing. With essays about struggle, trust and, of course, the divine, Suzanne adds a Try this ... section at the end of each chapter to inspire you to get your creative juices flowing.

Suzanne Falter-Barns:

... the creative process is a lifeblood we all share - a fundamental human property with millions of applications. It is essential to accomplishing anything in life that's uniquely your own; it is the engine that drives your dreams.

Do: How would your life look if it reflected the real you? What would your dream be? What gives you the greatest joy in your life and how can you incorporate more of that into today?

Jelaila Starr:

All that is required is to do what brings you joy

day 16/21: I am

2010-01-30T06:00:00.037Z

Welcome to Day 16 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

I am: I AM Presence. The I AM THAT I AM; the individualized Presence of God focused for each individual soul. The God-identity of the individual; the Divine Monad; the individual Source. The origin of the soul focused in the planes of Spirit just above the physical form; the personification of the God Flame for the individual.

the monastery, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

I've been fascinated by the phrase the I am for some time. I always believed that the divine was a part of us rather than something separate. Reading the Hindu legend about divinity a long time ago confirmed what I had grown to believe and made complete sense.

I am are the two words that start affirmations. And that's no coincidence. An affirmation is affirming something about yourself, perhaps something you've forgotten along the way. An affirmation is just re-membering who you really are.

In the same way, the I am is about you. It's about that part of you that is divine. It's all about the creative divine, your soul, your source, whatever you prefer to call it.

The I am presence describes the divine part of your self. The way you express your creative divine in the unique, individual way that only you can.

The I am presence is also known as the Monad:

Monads are individual sparks of the Creator. This divine spark, also called spirit, is our true identity. The monad, or spiritual spark, decided with its free choice that it wanted to experience a denser form of the material universe than it was living in.

I think you could also call the I am the creative divine. It comes from the same source and its goal is to reconnect us to the truest part of ourselves.

I was planning to write about meditation today. And I am are the two words that Deepak Chopra recommended we use when we meditate. I find meditating on my own quite hard. My mind wants to be dancing off thinking about all manner of things.

Alan Watts:

We could say that meditation doesn't have a reason or doesn't have a purpose. In this respect it's unlike almost all other things we do except perhaps making music and dancing. When we make music we don't do it in order to reach a certain point, such as the end of the composition. If that were the purpose of music then obviously the fastest players would be the best. Also, when we are dancing we are not aiming to arrive at a particular place on the floor as in a journey. When we dance, the journey itself is the point, as when we play music the playing itself is the point. And exactly the same thing is true in meditation. Meditation is the discovery that the point of life is always arrived at in the immediate moment.

First of all, Deepak suggests thinking about all the things we have to be grateful for as a way to bypass our ego and connect to our source. To help us, Deepak recommends repeating the words I am when we're meditating as a way of focusing the mind. And, of course, as I've discussed above I am has a lot of power.

It does help!

I find meditating easier when I'm in a small group or when I'm listening to a meditation recording on my iPod. But the best way of meditating for me is just to take my camera out for a walk, spend some time outside, in solitude and just wait until that switch flicks and I'm in the zone, in the flow. That's my favourite way.

Bruce Lee:

Empty your mind, be formless, shapeless - like water. Now you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup, you put water into a bottle, it becomes the bottle, you put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

Be inspired: You could join the 28 day mediation challenge or dip in and read some of the posts that resonate with you. You might like to watch Meditation in Action by The Sakyong, Jamgön Mipham Rinpoche.

Deepak Chopra has recently launched Stress Free, an iPhone/iPod Touch app. You can download some of the meditations separately.

Read: The Miracle of Mindfulness by Thich Nhat Hanh.

Thich Nhat Hanh explains how to acquire the skills of mindfulness. Once we have these skills, we can slow our lives down and discover how to live in the moment - even simple acts like washing the dishes or drinking a cup of tea may be transformed into acts of meditation.

Do: Meditate. First, think of things in your life that you are grateful for. Connect to your source. Write your list if you wish or just think of the things in your head. When you've done that, just repeat the words I am as a mantra. Try to do this for a few minutes initially and notice how you feel. Write a few lines in your journal about your meditation experience.

The Soul Mantra:

I am the Soul,
I am the Light Divine,
I am Love,
I am Will,
I am Fixed and Perfect Design.

day 15/21: being grateful

2010-01-29T06:00:00.137Z

Welcome to Day 15 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Gratitude: the state of being grateful; warm and friendly feeling toward a benefactor; kindness awakened by a favor received; thankfulness.

the park, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

Gerald Good:

If you want to turn your life around, try thankfulness. It will change your life mightily.

Gratitude is a little bit like Pollyanna's the glad game. It's about looking around at what you have in your life and counting your blessings.

Sarah Ban Breathnach:

You simply will not be the same person two months from now after consciously giving thanks each day for the abundance that exists in your life. And you will have set in motion an ancient spiritual law: the more you have and are grateful for, the more will be given you.

Being consciously grateful for things in your life not only helps build awareness of all the good things around us but also paves the way to abundance. By acknowledging what we have, we expand what comes into our lives. Neale Donald Walsch uses the word appreciate as an alternative to gratitude in the context of appreciating everything we have, and says that appreciate means to enlarge, increase, or expand. Being in a state of gratitude draws more good things to us. It's like a magnet. Like attracts like. So when we are grateful for what we have, we're cultivating a positive attitude and attract positive things back to us.

Rabbi Harold Kushner:

Can you see the holiness in those things you take for granted–a paved road or a washing machine? If you concentrate on finding what is good in every situation, you will discover that your life will suddenly be filled with gratitude, a feeling that nurtures the soul.

Gratitude is another of those seemingly simple practices but it is one of the keys to creative divine.

Shakti Gawain:

Whatever our individual troubles and challenges may be, it’s important to pause every now and then to appreciate all that we have, on every level. We need to literally “count our blessings,” give thanks for them, allow ourselves to enjoy them, and relish the experience of prosperity we already have.

Before you start a creative endeavour (or indeed before you start anything), think about what you have to be grateful for. It can be the simplest of things. A single wild flower in a vase. Water in the tap. Family, friends. A nice home. A happy day.

Ralph Marston:

What if you gave someone a gift, and they neglected to thank you for it-would you be likely to give them another? Life is the same way. In order to attract more of the blessings that life has to offer, you must truly appreciate what you already have.

Deepak Chopra talked about gratitude when he spoke last September at the Bridgewater Hall. I knew about gratitude journals and writing down five things every day that you were thankful for. But I hadn't appreciated that there was more to gratitude than that. The act of thinking about the things you are grateful for triggers a process within that changes your state of mind and enables you to connect to your creative divine. As with all connections to the creative divine, it pushes your self to one side, it gets the ego out of the way so that you're aligning with your source.

Deepak says that when you're being grateful and thinking about or writing your gratitude list, you can only be coming from one place - your source. That was quite a revelation. Such a simple way to create the connection to creative divine. Deepak also recommended consciously focusing on gratitude before meditation - more on that tomorrow.

Marelisa Fábrega:

Gratitude should not be just a reaction to getting what you want, but an all-the-time gratitude, the kind where you notice the little things and where you constantly look for the good, even in unpleasant situations. Start bringing gratitude to your experiences, instead of waiting for a positive experience in order to feel grateful.

Today try to look at all the circumstances in your life through the filter of gratitude. Even the situations that you're not entirely happy about. See where you can be grateful for the gifts that they bring with them. And look at all the small things you have to appreciate. Why do you feel grateful for them? As you think about the many things you are grateful for, see how this affects you and how it creates that connection to your source.

Buddha:

To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.

Be inspired: The gratitude log website enables you to log your five things and tweet them to your Twitter account. Reading other people's lists gives you inspiration for writing your own.

You can also keep your own Gratitude Journal using Carla White's iPhone/iPod Touch app.

Read: Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach is a daybook with entries for each day of the year. I always like daybooks although I rarely read the days in sequence but like to dip in and out, opening pages at random and using the book a little like a divining tool! February 3rd and 4th talk about your authentic self which is all about creative divine and how the authentic self is the Soul made visible. There's also Something More: Excavating your Authentic Self.

Do: If you don't already keep a gratitude journal, why not start one? Writing down your five things before you go to sleep is often a good time to look back over your day. Sarah Ban Breathnach has some hints for keeping a gratitude journal and Cheryl Richardson also has some suggestions that might help. See how your gratitude journal creates a shift in you.

Marcus Aurelius:

Take full account of the excellencies which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.

Lee Bower:

Gift of giving
Remembrance of all that is good
A touchstone of global transformation
Transition of greatness
In acts of kindness
True wealth and abundance
Unyielding compassion
Divine clarity
Everlasting commitment to appreciation

week 3/21 days: creative divine

2010-01-28T20:04:00.005Z

Martha Graham:

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired".

Welcome to Week 3 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

21 days is a daily practice, a series of posts over three weeks. One week each for mind, body and spirit. Starting on 15th January, following a New Moon Solar Eclipse, each day will bring a different theme to consider.

Why not join me for 21 days and explore practices to put the soul into creativity.

Week 3 - spirit
1 - being grateful
2 - I am
3 - follow your bliss
4 - being self-ish
5 - play time (re-creation)
6 - creation and creative divine
7 - the source

Click here to sign up and receive email updates about 21 days.

day 14/21: your body as a temple

2010-01-28T06:00:00.028Z

Welcome to Day 14 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Temple: Something regarded as having within it a divine presence; a building, usually of imposing size, etc., serving the public or an organization in some special way.

derbyshire days, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

B.K.S. Iyengar:

The body is your temple. Keep it pure and clean for the soul to reside in.

Achieving a balance between mind, body and spirit enables us to get into flow more easily. The simple act of going outside and walking pays dividends. You're exercising your physical body and creating a channel between the body, the mind and the soul. You're moving towards alignment and attuning the three different elements. Exercise of any kind creates a necessary sense of well-being within us. We're consciously nurturing our bodies and giving them care and attention. I suppose exercise is a meditation for the body.

C.S. Lewis:

You don't have a soul. You are a Soul. You have a body.

Wayne Dyer:

Begin to see yourself as a soul with a body rather than a body with a soul.

For anyone on a journey to experience their creative divine I think there comes a natural point when they recognise a need to synchronise the mind body spirit, to create a harmony of purpose between the three elements and to devote an equal amount of time to nurturing each one. The journey to creative divine is all about self-awareness and the greater that awareness becomes, the more something inside you will prompt you to focus on the areas of yourself that you might neglect.

Creative divine is about meeting yourself as a whole. A whole that is in line with your purpose and working towards the same goal. It follows logically therefore that we need to give as much attention to mind and body as the spirit.

Wayne Dyer:

Take some time for your health. Consider that the number one health problem in America seems to be obesity. How can you feel inspired and live in simplicity if you’re gorging on excessive amounts of food and eliminating the exercise that the body craves? Recall that your body is a sacred temple where you reside for this lifetime, so make some time every single day for exercising it. Even if you can only manage a walk around the block, just do it. Similarly, keep the words portion control uppermost in your consciousness—your stomach is the size of your fist, not a wheelbarrow! Respect your sacred temple and simplify your life by being an exerciser and a sensible eater. I promise that you’ll feel inspired if you act on this today!

I was a big fan of Eartha Kitt and was lucky enough to see her perform live at the Shaftesbury Theatre in London. I was even more fortunate to have my cheap student tickets exchanged for front row seats. Eartha was awesome. She was so different, totally unique and sang her songs with pure emotion. I remember a moment when she had to stop because the memories associated with the song were so strong. It was a powerful performance and, I suppose, with the benefit of hindsight, the power came from Eartha's own connection to her creative divine. She was doing what she was meant to do and it was electric.

Whenever there was a piece about her in the paper I always read it and at some point I learned that she was a big walker too. She would wear wrist and ankle weights and walk. I remember reading too that she would touch her toes every day to ensure that she could do that throughout her life. So simple but so effective.

Look at ways of nurturing your sacred temple. Perhaps a massage, some yoga, a walk in the park, some R&R, eating good food. You'll know instinctively what your body needs. It's just a question of listening and then acting on what you hear. Why not start today?

Buddha:

To keep the body in good health is a duty, otherwise we shall not be able to keep our mind strong and clear.

Be inspired: 10 ways to practice nurturing your intention by Wayne Dyer is one of those very useful lists that contains so much information. I read a lot of Wayne Dyer's writings simply because so much resonates with me and he also talks a lot about source. This is the section about your body:

Step 6: Respect your body! You've been provided with a perfect body to house your inner invisible being for a few brief moments in eternity. Regardless of its size, shape, color or any imagined infirmities, it's a perfect creation for the purpose that you were intended here for. You don't need to work at getting healthy; health is something you already have if you don't disturb it. You may have disturbed your healthy body by overfeeding it, under exercising it and over stimulating it with toxins or drugs that make it sick, fatigued, jumpy, anxious, depressed, bloated, ornery or an endless list of maladies. You can begin the fulfillment of this intention to live a life of self-respect by honoring the temple that houses you. You know what to do. You don't need another diet, workout manual or personal trainer. Go within, listen to your body and treat it with all of the dignity and love that your self-respect demands.

Read: Rejuvenate! It's never too late by Eartha Kitt, the book is described as the purrrfect guide to staying mentally and physically healthy and vital. Eartha's perspective on looking after our physical well-being. Sassy and insightful.

Do: Can you touch your toes? I love this simple indicator of the state of my body. Make touching your toes a daily practice. Even if you can't yet reach down. Reach as far as you can. Take a few moments to write in your journal today. Tune into your body and listen to what it needs. Write down what comes to you and see if you can incorporate some of the ideas into your daily life.

Henry David Thoreau:

Good for the body is the work of the body, good for the soul the work of the soul, and good for either the work of the other.

day 13/21: R&R

2010-01-27T06:35:00.002Z

Welcome to Day 13 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Rest: to cease motion, work, or activity; to lie down, especially to sleep; to be at peace or ease; be tranquil; to be, become, or remain temporarily still, quiet, or inactive.

the monastery, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

R&R generally refers to rest and relaxation. But it can also include:

rock and rock
read and review
rules and regulations
repair and return
rest and rehabilitation
rest and recovery

I like rest and relaxation. I think it's an important element of the creative life. It's so tempting to keep going, to work at every available moment but it starts to have a detrimental effect. The freshness is lost. The enthusiasm becomes a little less. The concept of the whole self is about balance. Not only in all three areas of mind body spirit but in work and rest too. In the same way that athletes cannot train day in, day out, we cannot work without rest.

About.com:

Most athletes know that getting enough rest after exercise is essential to high-level performance, but many still over train and feel guilty when they take a day off. The body repairs and strengthens itself in the time between workouts, and continuous training can actually weaken the strongest athletes.

To maintain a high-level performance we need to take time off. The rest strengthens us and when we get back to the work, it's with a new approach and new ideas.

Rest is not something that comes easily to me. Relaxation is even harder. I always have so many things I want to do. I want to get started now. I have creative projects queuing up for me to work on and my natural impulse is to work on them at every free moment. But often that's counter productive.

If I'm honest I always know when I'm pushing my limits, when I'm trying to do too much and when I'm tired and should just stop a while. Rest revitalises you but also gives you vital time away from your creative project so that you can come back to it later, refreshed and more inspired. It's in the periods of rest that we are more likely to experience those eureka moments.

Today take a few moments to rest and relax. Do nothing.

John Lubbock:

Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under the trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time.

Be inspired: Streaming Relaxation is something I discovered recently. You can listen to waves crashing on the shore line and watch a slideshow of photographs of beaches or trees or sky.

Read: the Little Book of Calm by Paul Wilson is one of those tiny little books (I love small books) that has brief ideas on each page to inspire you to relax.

Paul Wilson:

Put your feet up: There's more to the simple act of putting your feet up than improved circulation. It quickly leads to feelings of relaxation.

Do: Today's prompt is to do nothing. Rest. Relax. Chill out. If you can't have a day of rest today, try to schedule some rest time when you can, perhaps at the weekend. Even if it's just for an hour, have some time when you are simply doing nothing. Afterwards make a list in your journal of favourite activities that you like to do to relax so that you have a list of things to do to choose from next time you want to take some time out.

Ralph Marston:

Rest when you're weary. Refresh and renew yourself, your body, your mind, your spirit. Then get back to work.

white hot authenticity

2010-01-26T20:11:00.002Z

Seven and a half minutes of Danielle LaPorte. Simple, punchy, all about authenticity. Books, quotes and insight. So much creative divine. Check it out!

day 12/21: nurture in nature

2010-01-26T06:00:00.124Z

Welcome to Day 12 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Nurture: to feed and protect: to support and encourage; something that nourishes; nourishment.

a day in the lakes, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

Brian Koslow:

If you nurture your mind, body, and spirit, your time will expand. You will gain a new perspective that will allow you to accomplish much more.

In sole to soul we went outside. Today we continue that theme.

I'm always at my happiest when I'm outdoors. Especially in late Autumn and Winter when the days are short. I like to see daylight. From a photography point of view the light at this time of the year creates the most amazing effects and you just never know what you're going to get. The park is always top of my list of places to go. It's local. It's huge so I can walk and walk. But it's also somewhere I can immerse myself in nature.

John Fowles:

In some mysterious way woods have never seemed to me to be static things. In physical terms, I move through them; yet in metaphysical ones, they seem to move through me.

Last September I went to Derbyshire which was utterly idyllic. I stayed in a tiny village. Most of the houses in the village were farmhouses and the associated land was all farmland. Each morning I went for a walk to explore and walked past fields at the side of the road full of sheep or cows. It was such a different lifestyle. I discovered a field of baby bulls and cows and started to visit them each morning. A row of about ten of them would line up and look at me intently. The more daring let me stroke them on their noses. It was quite magical.

Henry David Thoreau:

Nature is full of genius, full of the divinity; so that not a snowflake escapes its fashioning hand.

All around that area were more tiny villages, acres of fields and farmland. Just an hour away from home yet a completely different pace of life. I loved every minute of it and I hanker to go back there.

George Washington Carver:

I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.

The weekend after Derbyshire I went to listen to Deepak Chopra speak. Among many other things he talked about atoms and how we are continually exchanging atoms with everything around us. When we're out in nature we're exchanging atoms with all the trees and plants so that they become a part of us and we are a part of them. Deepak tells us that we are all part of the whole. We originate from the same place. Being in nature allows us to experience the oneness of everything around us.

Deepak Chopra:

If you observe nature at work, you will see that least effort is expended. Grass doesn't try to grow, it just grows. Fish don't try to swim, they just swim. Flowers don't try to bloom, they bloom. Birds don't try to fly, they fly. This is their intrinsic nature.

Nature is our template for creation. Whether what we want to create is art, writing or photography, or the life we envision for ourselves, nature shows us how to connect to our creative divine. Everything in nature just is. In the same way, for us to create we need to just be.

Richard Bach:

Imagine the universe beautiful and just and perfect. Then be sure of one thing: The Is has imagined it quite a bit better than you have. The original sin is to limit the Is. Don't.

Be inspired: Off the Rails, Elspeth Thompson's blog where Elspeth talks about the conversion of a railway carriage into a home and eco living.

Read: The Wonderful Weekend Book by Elspeth Thompson. I love this book. It has an old fashioned feel to it going back to the days when people spent more time outdoors occupied in simple activities. It has a real charm and so many wonderful ideas of things to do at the weekend instead of rushing about putting ticks on a to do list.

Do: Choose something in nature like a flower, a plant, an animal. Observe it for a while noticing how it lives every moment just being. What can you learn from observing nature to help you connect to your creative divine?

Lao Tzu:

Be careful what you water your dreams with. Water them with worry and fear and you will produce weeds that choke the life from your dream. Water them with optimism and solutions and you will cultivate success. Always be on the lookout for ways to turn a problem into an opportunity for success. Always be on the lookout for ways to nurture your dream.

e.e. cummings:

I thank you God for this most amazing day, for the leaping greenly spirits of trees, and for the blue dream of sky and for everything which is natural, which is infinite, which is yes.

the questions and the answers

2010-01-25T18:48:00.000Z

Rainer Maria Rilke:

Have patience with everything
unresolved in your heart and try to
love the questions themselves, as if they
were locked rooms, or books
written in a very foreign language.
Don't search for the answers,
which could not be given to you
now, because you would not be
able to live them. And the point
is to live everything. Live the
questions now. Perhaps then, someday
far in the future, you will gradually,
without even noticing it, live
your way into the answer.

day 10/21: sole to soul

2010-01-24T06:00:00.014Z

Welcome to Day 10 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Walk: to advance or travel on foot at a moderate speed or pace; proceed by steps.

nostell priory, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

Raymond Inmon:

If you are seeking creative ideas, go out walking. Angels whisper to a man when he goes for a walk.

One of my favourite things is going to the park. I started going to the park so that I could take photographs. I took thousands of shots in different seasons. It was a great opportunity to try things with my camera. Experiment with slow shutter speeds or black and white. Over time I realised that the park was having an effect on me too. Deep in the park you can't hear the noise of the traffic - that's why they call the park your sanctuary from the city. You can see for miles from the top of the Temple. You can walk for miles and always see something new.

I like to go to the park on my own because I use the time to think, contemplate projects I'm working on, take photographs and I believe some time of solitude away from the demands of daily life is of great benefit.

I rarely want to leave the park. Even when I've been there for several hours it never seems quite long enough.

While I was researching this post I discovered someone I'd never heard of before - John Muir.

John Muir was a man whose life was nothing short of inspirational. His writings are clear, vibrant and full of prophetic wisdom – he was one of the first to realise that all species are interconnected and “hitched together”. He developed a deep, spiritual connection with the land as he walked thousands of miles, from Alaska to Florida.

He was born in Scotland and moved to America as a child. His epiphany came when he was injured and lost his sight temporarily. He regained his vision a month later and wrote:

This affliction has driven me to the sweet fields. God has to nearly kill us sometimes, to teach us lessons.

He experienced his own light at the end of the tunnel and made a resolution to remain true to himself. He walked thousands of miles in his lifetime, devoting himself to protecting the natural environment. He was instrumental in the creation of Yosemite National Park and is known now as an influential naturalist and conservationist.

Beatrix Potter was another ardent conservationist who bought land and farms in the Lake District to protect the area from development. After her death nearly all the land was left to the National Trust. A combination of Beatrix's vision and love of the Lake District has ensured that this area remains unspoiled.

Both John Muir and Beatrix Potter did a fair bit of walking in their lifetimes!

Bruce Chatwin:

I haven't got any special religion this morning. My God is the God of Walkers. If you walk hard enough, you probably don't need any other god.

Julia Cameron advocates walking. She talks about using it to move into our bodies. I often find that walking sparks ideas. And I think that's a combination of being outside, in nature, and the physical process of walking.

Julia Cameron writes:

As we go within, we discover that we are not alone there. The loneliness we fear finding in art is actually the loneliness of disconnecting ourselves from our creativity and our creator. As we try our hand literally at the making of something, we do meet our maker.

I love what Julia Cameron writes about Native Americans and Aborigines - how they each have used walking to pursue vision quests or to go walkabout. We're in good company as we use walking to inspire us. William Wordsworth was another great walker.

The act of walking slows us down. After a working week when everything happens at break neck speed and we try to fit more and more into our days, walking forces us to slow the pace. It stills the mind, it quietens all those voices within that seek to be heard so that we can hear the quiet voice that's waiting for its moment.

St Augustine:

Solvitur ambulando.

Be inspired: If you've not seen Miss Potter, I'm going to recommend it as today's inspiration. Not only do you get to see some of the Lake District (one of my favourite places) but it's also about loss and creativity. I wonder whether loss was a catalyst for the subsequent life that Beatrix Potter led.

Read: Walking in this World by Julia Cameron adds a weekly walk to the kit bag of tools included in The Artist's Way.

Do: Today, why not go for a walk? Somewhere in nature, where you can see trees, where the air is fresh and you can walk for about an hour. Just go with the flow. Take a camera if you feel inspired to do that and take photographs of something new. When you come home write in your journal what you discovered by walking.

John Muir:

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.

day 11/21: neglect

2010-01-24T06:00:00.013Z

Welcome to Day 11 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Neglect: to pay no attention or too little attention to; disregard or slight; to be remiss in the care or treatment of.

savour the taste, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

Neglect cropped up in an earlier post, a balancing act and I mentioned Cheryl Richardson's book The Art of Extreme Self-Care in the black bag exercise.

Extreme self-care seems like a radical concept but it's often just the appropriate response for what Cheryl Richardson describes as deprivation.

Cheryl worked with a man called Thomas Leonard who advocated making pleasure a priority.

Cheryl Richardson:

It meant leaving work in the middle of the day to get out into nature, enjoying a great massage once a week, and developing daily habits that made me feel happy and nurtured, including listening to the music I loved, drinking my favourite tea, or re-ordering fresh flowers for my office.

One of the biggest obstacles to extreme self-care is time, the lack of it or simply not prioritising and making time. When you're already juggling more balls than you can cope with, adding something else to the mix seems impossible.

So, it's at this point that we return to decluttering. Not the physical black bin bag decluttering but the psychic RAM decluttering. Clearing things out of our heads, reducing our commitments, looking at what we really want to do.

One of my favourite steps in Getting Things Done is writing everything down. I think David Allen was the one who coined the term psychic RAM, meaning the memory in your head that retains all the facts and figures you carry around with you. Writing everything down essentially creates a download from your head on to paper. What you write down are all the things you have on your to do list. Your work commitments, things to do at home, projects that you want to be able to do, someday maybe projects. Just keep writing until you've committed it all to paper. This decluttering of the head has the same emotional impact as the black bin bag exercise. It lightens the load.

Once you have everything written down it's time to return to extreme self-care. In Cheryl's process she looked at where she was making sacrifices in her life. Where she was bending over backwards to please others at the expense of her own dreams and goals:

If you want to live an authentic, meaningful life, you need to master that art of disappointing and upsetting others, hurting feelings, and living with the reality that some people just won't like you. It may not be easy, but it's essential if you want your life to reflect your deepest desires, values and needs.

This is very much the key to creative divine. It's following your true North, it's keeping your eyes on that compass point and listening to your inner guidance. Fulfilling your purpose is about doing what brings you the greatest joy, and experiencing that joy is experiencing creative divine.

Cheryl Richardson discovered the impact that self-care had on her own coaching clients :

Their lives changed dramatically - it was as if they became more aligned with a divine energy or force that opened doors to support their highest good.

It all comes back to putting your own mask on first. Until you take care of yourself, you can never take care of others in the way that they would like.

The other word that Cheryl Richardson uses is deprivation. When I first read it, deprivation seemed like such a strong word. But, as you read on, you see why she uses it. Deprivation is linked to doing too much. Over committing on your schedule, being in relationships where you do all the giving, not making your own needs a priority, or being constantly available to others. This is where decluttering comes in again - what do you need to jettison to enable you to meet your needs. Are there items on your calendar that you could let go?

Cheryl advocates writing in a notebook each time you feel overwhelmed, stressed, tired or burdened and at the same time ask yourself what it is that you want or need, what do you feel deprived of or what do you need to do less of.

I would add to that - what would your life feel like if you were in touch with your creative divine, aligned with your purpose and heading towards your true North?

Be inspired: You can read the introduction to Cheryl Richardson's book The Art of Extreme Self-Care and read how Cheryl came to include extreme self-care in her life, and her recommendations on how you can iclude it in your own.

Read: Getting Things Done by David Allen is a book I highly recommend for getting organised. It's a way of working that is easy to incorporate into your life. You can read an overview of the process here.

Do: I like Cheryl's idea of writing in your notebook the occasions when you feel that you are depriving yourself of something you need. This might not be a one day task. I would recommend initially sitting down and writing a list of items that immediately spring to mind and, over the course of the next few days, add to that list. Then, ask yourself, is there anything on that list that you need to change? Where are you lacking extreme self-care?

day 9/21: a balancing act

2010-01-23T13:53:00.003Z

Welcome to Day 9 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Balance: a state of equilibrium or equipoise.

sport relief, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

Stephen R. Covey:

Wisdom is your perspective on life, your sense of balance, your understanding of how the various parts and principles apply and relate to each other. It embraces judgment, discernment, comprehension. It is a gestalt or oneness, and integrated wholeness.

I like checklists. Especially for areas of my life that I want to streamline, work on or grow. A checklist is a visible reminder of things that I want to do. And, more importantly, what I have actually done!

At Up Up Creative's Etsy shop you can buy a feelgood list. The beauty of the list is that you customise it to what you need. I had one created for me and keep a tiny version in my notebook so that I can tick off items on my list. It's a nice reminder to keep me on track.

A few things on my list:

eat whole foods
spend time outside
photograph something new
walk in the park
laugh with Elvis

The priority in self-care is self. So easy to neglect. So easy to put at the back of the queue. But far too important to leave until last. Put your own mask on first is a post by Patti Digh that I continually reference.

Patti Digh:

What I did hear clearly for the first time on that flight with Emma was the following instruction: “in case the oxygen mask falls from the compartment above your head, put your own oxygen mask on first and then help others around you.”
Put your own mask on first.
It was as if I had never heard that instruction before.
Because if you don’t, you’ll be of no use to others around you who might need your help. There are only 17 seconds of consciousness when the oxygen fails on a plane. Seventeen seconds and then you’re of no use to anyone.

It's a powerful reminder that until we take care of ourselves first, we're of no use to anyone.

Euripides:

The best and safest thing is to keep a balance in your life, acknowledge the great powers around us and in us. If you can do that, and live that way, you are really a wise man.

Be inspired: Life Balance was one of the first apps I downloaded for my Palm and more recently I downloaded the iPhone/iPod Touch version. It's a tool I like to use. There's a desktop version as well that synchronises with your iPhone/iPod version. The idea of Life Balance is to prompt you to create the balance that you want to achieve.

Robert Fulghum:

Be aware of wonder. Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.

Read: The Woman's Comfort Book by Jennifer Louden is a book I've had for some time. Its subtitle is a self-nurturing guide for restoring balance in your life.

Jennifer Louden:

We are goaded into devaluing self-nurturing. We either end up believing we don't deserve self-care or, if we do, that it must be the last thing on our mighty list of Things To Do.

Do: Make your own self-care checklist. This list might be a useful starting point. Jennifer Louden suggests that this list helps to identify where your basic needs are not being met and how to fulfil them. When do you not put yourself first?

Brian Tracy:

Just as your car runs more smoothly and requires less energy to go faster and farther when the wheels are in perfect alignment, you perform better when your thoughts, feelings, emotions, goals, and values are in balance.

day 8/21: your body as a divining tool

2010-01-22T06:00:00.112Z

Welcome to Day 8 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

Divining: To know by inspiration, intuition, or reflection.

girl, originally uploaded by the.whole.self.

In order to embrace the whole self we need to incorporate all three elements of mind body spirit. I find mind and spirit relatively easy to focus on. The body aspect is often more difficult. Logic is credible. We think things through and reach a conclusion and direct our lives accordingly. But we often neglect our gut feelings, our instinct, our hunches.

Llewelyn Powers:

A trembling in the bones may carry a more convincing testimony than the dry documented deductions of the brain.

A couple of years ago I accepted a job even though, at the second interview, I had a niggle about it. My gut told me that it was wrong but my head weighed it all up and I accepted the job. After the first day I knew I had made a mistake and seven weeks later I resigned. It was an important lesson. My niggle was quite minor but if I'd listened to that still small voice I would have made a different decision.

John G. Whittier:

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.

In some ways getting it wrong is important. Unless we get it wrong we don't have an opportunity to recognise the gut feeling, our intuition at work. I imagine that the intuitive feeling differs for us all and we need to read the signs in our own way. Mine manifests as a knot in my stomach. This feeling helps me read other people as well. Do you get a good vibe from someone or a bad vibe? It's all to do with vibrations.

Everything vibrates at a different rate. Everyone does too. It's like a radio frequency. You tend to be drawn to people who vibrate at similar rates to you because you're tuning in to the same frequency. As you continue on your journey of self-discovery you may find that some people who you have known for some time move out of your path. This is often because your vibration has changed as you change and you're no longer in tune with other people's vibration. Some people will go out of your life but you will attract new, like-minded people in.

We're all made up of the three elements of mind body spirit and to be in balance we need to attend to each of those areas of ourselves. To connect with our creative divine we need to be in tune with our bodies too. Our body is like our compass. It gives us feedback when we are on track and, more importantly, when we're not. It's the physical manifestation of what our soul is communicating to us. In extreme cases, the manifestations can result in illness. Often I'll be stopped in my tracks with a dose of flu and it's frequently a message that something in my life is out of kilter and I need to pay attention. Listening to our bodies more in different circumstances tells us a lot about situations in which we find ourselves.

When I'm out with my camera and I've switched into the flow, I'm in the zone, it's my body that gives me feedback. I always feel that my source lies somewhere in the region of my solar plexus. When I'm looking for a shot, the decision to click the shutter comes from that place. It happens instinctively. It's a fusion of creative divine, my head and my heart, all working together. And when I get the shot I want I feel a little flurry of excitement in my stomach. It's that response that tells us when we are on the right track.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow:

If the mind, that rules the body, ever so far forgets itself as to trample on its slave, the slave is never generous enough to forgive the injury, but will rise and smite the oppressor.

Be inspired: This is an interesting post about how we can absorb the energy of others and tools to help deal with that. A good example of how to work with our intuition and feedback from our body.

Read: Reinventing the body, resurrecting the soul is the latest book by Deepak Chopra. I was lucky to be able to hear Deepak speak about his book in Manchester. It was enlightening and brought together so many strands of information. It fascinates me that so many people talk about the source or soul or creative divine in their own ways but yet the fundamental concepts are all the same.

Deepak Chopra:

... everything the soul does is translated into a process in the body. You literally cannot have a body without the soul. This is the forgotten miracle. Each of us is a soul made flesh.

Do: Think about how others can impact on your energy levels. When you visit different friends how do they each make you feel? Do they drain you or energise you? What are your gut feelings? Also, a good tuning in exercise is to sit quietly for ten minutes, relax and, starting at the feet, work your way up your body, seeing how each part of your body feels and what it's trying to tell you.

Henry David Thoreau:

Every man is the builder of a Temple called his body, nor can he get off by hammering marble instead.

week 2/21 days: creative divine

2010-01-21T18:00:00.038Z

Martha Graham:

Practice means to perform, over and over again in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire. Practice is a means of inviting the perfection desired".

Welcome to Week 2 of 21 days. A series of 21 daily posts to provide inspiration to connect to your source, prompts for journaling and contemplation, as well as a few little surprises along the way. I hope you'll join us. Click here to read more about 21 days: creative divine.

21 days is a daily practice, a series of posts over three weeks. One week each for mind, body and spirit. Starting on 15th January, following a New Moon Solar Eclipse, each day will bring a different theme to consider.

Why not join me for 21 days and explore practices to put the soul into creativity.

Week 2 - body
1 - your body as a divining tool
2 - a balancing act
3 - sole to soul
4 - neglect
5 - nurture in nature
6 - R&R
7 - your body as a temple

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