Lara Vesta's Blog, page 10

Let the Beauty You Love Be What You Do

It is uncomfortable speaking out for women's bodies.

My edges are still pressed.  There is still secrecy and shame in speaking of the womb, of vaginal steams, of breasts.  But our bodies hold our stories, and without direct relationship, without affection and appreciation for our physical being, we will continue to live patterns of dis-ease, un-health.

Some body stories I've heard:  
"I only love my fingernails."  

"I have my grandmother's breasts and I was always told to cover them up or I would end up like her."  

"When I lose ten/twenty/fifty pounds I will be able to love myself better."  

"I liked the way I looked twenty years ago."  

"I wish I had her legs."  

"Women like that are more lovable than women like me."  

"He told me he would be more attracted to me if I were in better shape."  

These past weeks in Magnetize Studio we exorcized our old stories using ceremony and the Guidebook Story Showing process.  Some of the stories we carry don't belong to us.  Some of them are ingrained deep, thousands of years of self-hate leeching from our cells.  But it is amazing.  Amazing!  What we can do together, for each other, when we start visioning a story we can own.  A story we can love.  

The work of our lifetime is to make this story, to own and love this story, to change the patterns of lineage and leave a legacy of embodied joy for generations to come.

No mean feat.  

The how is easy:  love yourself in the moment, engage your senses, practice daily self-care.  

Be big in your life.

The how is hard.  In Spirited Business, stories are what always hold us back from achieving our vision.  Stories keep us stagnant and afraid, keep us rooted in the past, in shoulds.  When we retrain the stories, we retrain the energetic patterns of what is possible.  As we change our stories, we change our lives. Colors by my daughter, Rhea Madrone Magnetize Studio is happening again.  Starting in April we will begin the second of our three part cycle.  All of the current students are continuing and we are making room for more.  Because it is so much easier, more fun and essential to change our stories in community.  

It might not ever be comfortable, changing, stretching the edges, but it is the key to joy.

The world needs your gifts, and your discomfort is the price for a true, creative, full and satisfied life.

The title of this post comes from a favorite Rumi poem. As the world wakes, I wish it all to you:

Spring Giddiness

Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.
Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.
Don’t go back to sleep.
You must ask for what you really want.
Don’t go back to sleep.
People are going back and forth across the doorsill
where the two worlds touch.
The door is round and open.
Don’t go back to sleep.
I would love to kiss you.
The price of kissing is your life.
Now my loving is running toward my life shouting,
What a bargain, let’s buy it.

Daylight, full of small dancing particles
and the one great turning, our souls
are dancing with you, without feet, they dance.
Can you see them when I whisper in your ear?
All day and night, music,
a quiet, bright
reedsong. If it
fades, we fade.

How to be an artist (to remind myself) inspired by Wendell Berry

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself, I am large, I contain multitudes.”  --Walt Whitman

Go outside.

Light a flame somewhere, anywhere.

Listen.

I have something to tell you.

From now on you belong.

Are you surprised at this?

Feel it, feel into it.

You.  Belong.

Not just to your family and your friends,

But to all of your ancestors, everyone who ever lived before you.

All who are within you, who made you, whose rhythm is your rhythm, whose mysterious combinations, unique alchemies, all conspired to make you, you. 

How precious, that belonging.  How rich and rare and true. 

Here at last, the art. 

Here at last, you.

And you belong to this land. 

Wherever you are, exactly. 

This land where you walk now, it longs for you to know its name.  The names of its curves and veins, its rocks and depths, the names people gave it, and the people before them, but don’t stop there.  There are names and names and names before people, before places, before time could understand time…the world trembles for you to know this.  The trees, the plants, the animals, the earthworms, the waters, droplet and river, rain and stream, the winds, the difference between dawn and dusk.   They want you to know, they say all you must do is pay attention, it is not easy, though the names of things are easy.  They are simple names that contain infinite wealth. 

And why can’t you know this?  You are no less than any before you.  Your heart carries their grief, your senses hold the possibility of joy. For once, no matter who you are, what race, what color, what creed, what gender, what line, once in your lineage was an ancestor who lived with the land, maybe even this land, but if not this land, another.  That ancestor was not separate, was not alone.  (When you have a moment, thank your ancestor, the one who knew all of the names, the songs, the stories of a land.  In your cells, in the marrow of your bones, in the infinite cycles of air and water, maybe you can meet that ancestor and ask them to introduce you to the land.  Ask them to teach you the names.)

Here is an exercise:  when you feel sad or anxious, when you feel angry or dejected or ugly or broke or inadequate, walk in the world.  Throw your phone away.  Lock your computer.  Resist the urge to watch TV, to go to the store and buy something.  Resist the urge to medicate with the trappings of modernity, with the very essence of your separateness.  Abandon your house, your job, your car and walk in a place without people.  Tell your sorrows to the stones, pull hair from your head, lint from your pockets, that half a sandwich you were too heart sore to eat, place your offering on the earth with your tears.  Then walk and listen, watch and wait.  Sometimes one day is not enough, sometimes you must return again and again, but then a hawk will fly circles and you will read in the ellipses a song.  Then you will know you have had a place here all along. 

The price of contentment is devotion. 

Remember this.

The world wants you.  Yes.  It needs, you, it loves you.  Each cell of the web that is the earth, the universe, wishes for you.   And because of the love of the world, because you are part of this belonging, this beauty, you must begin your work.  The work of your heart.  The work of art.

Begin it every day, new.  Don’t make your beginning based on money, on things, on the fear that saturates each step outside the norm.  Continue to walk, place the offering, return home and begin to let the world speak through you.  Remember, you are the offering, your life is the gift, you have a gift.  Many gifts, and your work is to share them.  This is everyone’s work.  To allow their gift, to share them.

Tending your gift is, of course, not the only work.  There is the work of bread.  The work of sustenance and satisfaction and winter stores and planting seeds, the work of new garden plants by the window and house tending and kin work and child rearing.  And this work will run you if you let it, will eclipse your longings will obscure your gift.  You will start with the litany, “I don’t have time,” which becomes the excuse.  This is why you must begin every day with honoring the art first. 

Remember, you are part of everything.  Don’t worry, don’t judge, don’t think about how others see what you create.  Let it take you.  Let the world take you.  This life might be the only one, you may one day whisper into the empty ears of your descendants, you may shine out into a soulless depth, you may beyond this life slip into a gentleness like the light of every star, so far away nothing can touch you, nothing can burn.  But here is the secret hope:  before this life ends, you become in the making of whatever you can make—art, books, music, poetry, embroidery, wood bowls, carvings, gardens, sculptures, food—the world. 

You already are.  You are the world, you are the tiniest mosses on the stones, you are the heaving molten core, you are the imperfectly perfect between that is paradox, a desiccated ancient corpse, a newborn infant blindly seeking warmth.  You are an infinite expression.  You have only to open yourself, and let the world move.

(The title of this piece comes from Wendell Berry’s poem How to be a poet (to remind myself), it first appeared in The Jefferson Monthly magazine January 2015 edition.)

The Road of Trials: Yes, it is a Test

This week I've been called to talk about sinkholes.

You know, the obstacles that show up the minute we decide to change our lives?

For me these have taken the form of the following:
Family Drama
Financial Setbacks
Friends With Problems
Unexpected Delays
Professional Challenges--usually concerning the work I truly no longer want to do but am afraid to leave

Anything resonant yet? I've worked enough with transition now to recognize a pattern.  When we say yes to the work of our heart, when we answer what Joseph Campbell calls the Call to Advenure, we cross the threshold from the familiar world into the unknown.  And it is there that we face a kind of initiation, for the familiar world will keep pulling at us, and we must confront each obstacle as it comes.

Or we could give up.  There's a lot of talk in the so-called spiritual circles about ease.  "When it's right it should be easy."  Yes?  But ease is different than alignment.  When we are in alignment with our purpose, when we are in alignment with spirit, sometimes we have to clean up whatever is not in alignment.  We will be tested.  Our prayers will be answered.  And sometimes it might not be easy at all, if we don't live up to what we said we intended to do, we might get our ass kicked by the Call to Adventure.

We might get it kicked until we truly answer the call.

I have had my ass kicked many times on my path.  And I've watched some clients try to have it both ways, the past and the present.  The day job and the vision.  The security of the known, and the leap into the unknown.  

But in order to live the life we've imagined, we have to let go of anything that distracts us from our true intention.  And that sometimes looks like leaving the life raft behind. Sometimes it means saying no. Commitment Yes, this is a test.  Don't you think it's odd that the minute you say you want to support yourself your partner loses their job?  

Or what about when you claim to want to write a novel, but you don't have the time, you suddenly break your ankle and get a leave of absence.  

Or when you say you want to change, that you won't repeat your old patterns of the past, that something must absolutely shift, it does?  Often in challenging ways, ways that force us to confront old demons, release our fear, to take chances and GROW.

You are listened to, and when you make a statement the world is looking for your commitment.  The universe asks:  Are you really going to make a shift?  Is this a declaration of freedom? Or is this just more talk, soon to be swallowed by excuses and sob stories?

Circumstance is the universal litmus test for self-sabotage.  I've started warning my clients in advance of our first sessions:

When you make this commitment, you are telling the universe you are ready to do whatever it takes.  And because you are bringing your life into alignment with your dreams, it can get rocky and scary for a while as things reorder.  But don't give up, challenges don't ever mean you should give up.  Challenges mean keep on, you are     doing something right.  There is always some destruction in creation.  Prepare for this."

Intro to Wreck this Journal by Keri Smith I have lived through a lot of chaos in the last ten years.
I have been challenged again and again to "forget safety, live where you fear to live" (Rumi).
When I began my journey toward sovereignty in 2005, I found this stone in the river near my home in Cottage Grove: It has remained on my altar ever since.  
Through divorce and displacement.
Through long distance parenting and single parenting and home-of-my-own-less-ness.
Through seven moves.
Through job change and career change and economic insecurity.
Through custody negotiations and legal wrangling.
Through ending old relationships.
Through beginning new ones, and partnering and blending a family and remarrying.
Through leaving an old dream and beginning a new one.
Through homeschooling and autism advocacy.
Through years of illness, diagnosis and a return to health.
Through Moon Divas.
Through writing and publishing a book, and making art and making myself an artist through the making of art.
Through creation of a business in multiple incarnations.

All the way through, to here.

My life is no more difficult or special than anyone else's.  We all are in transition, and the transitions are often multiple, overlapping...this is the cycle of the hero's journey, this multiplicity, with each transition--large and small--beginning in separation from the known, initiation on the road of trials.  What makes all the difference to the efficacy and acceptance of transition is will.  The will to trust the unknown.  The will to meet the trials.  The will to take risks.  The will to let go.

And believe me, there are many days where my will is puny, where I'm tired, dispirited, I want to give up.
Then I light my candles.  I pray.  For the will to keep the path.

I know now that along the road of trials, there are helpers and mentors.  There are keepers of wisdom and keys to the kingdom that acknowledge our core.  

And I know that the trials are temporary, and essential and there are other phases to behold that allow for oneness, integration, emergence and peace.

For when we answer the call to adventure, we live into our authentic lives, our purpose.  We become who we are.

Love to the process--

Elen of The Ways

Part One:  Fear and Doubt Last spring I drew a picture of Elen of the Ways, the ancient reindeer goddess of northern Europe.  Elen originates from the earliest human migrations, from the time when we followed the herds.  Descendants of Elen's people still practice this tradition.  In Scandinavia they are the Sami, in America the Inuit, in Mongolia, the Dukha.

The reindeer aren't domesticated.  They are wild.  To follow them is to know the seasons, to work intimately with the animals.  Somewhere in our common human history we all have an ancestor who lived in this way, who followed the tracks and moved with the seasons, whose lives were forged on the integrity of their relationships.  Whose survival depended on their interrelationship with all that lived.  

This is a teaching of Elen:  relationship, interdependence, seasonal attunement.

Here is another:  Reindeer are the only corvids where females have antlers.  During the archeological boom of the 19th century, many of the horned figurines recovered were assumed to be male in origin.  In fact, it is now believed many of the paintings and art through pre-history actually represent women. Reconstruction of the female shaman's headdress from the Bad Durrenburg dig by Karol Schauer. Her bones are believed to be between 9,000 and 8,600 years old. I drew Elen with the idea of illustrating an article for publication.  The initial sketch was a composite of several photographs of a woman with horns in my usual black and white pen and ink.  But when I submitted it to the editor she said she wanted to see it in color.  

(Rein)deer in headlights:  I don't work in color.

I started coloring the leaves on the project and instantly hated my work.  It was all wrong.  Every time I tried to approach it I felt fear.  I liked the drawing.  Coloring was going to mess it up.  I could tell.

So I locked her away, let her sit in a folder for months.  Until two weeks ago. Part Two:  Ass in the Chair As a largely self-taught artist, I have to confront my fear at every stage.

This is where spirit comes in.  This is what makes art sacred.

This is the offering.

In graduate school I had a writing mentor who said that talent is distributed unevenly.  We all have some, some have more than others.  But what we all can access to at any time, with or without talent, he said, is the work.

We can put our ass in the chair and work.

If we work, consistently and persistently, we will get better (though he would flay me for those two adverbs in one sentence, I'm sure).  Writing, he said, is 10% talent and 90% ass in the chair.

With those odds, we all stand a chance at making something worthwhile.  If we do the work.

I can't tell you how many times I have doubted myself and my work.  How many times I have avoided the work, avoided the chair.  Doubt is a given.  One of my favorite quotes is by Agnes De Mille, the dancer and choreographer.  She says:

“Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little. The artist never entirely knows. We guess. We may be wrong, but we take leap after leap in the dark.”

We are not supposed to know how.

We are supposed to leap. Part Three:  Courage and Trust I started coloring Elen again because of a series of synchronistic events around reindeer.  Yes, it is that time of year, but these were images, textures, and dreams related more to the nomadic reindeer herders of the globe than Rudolph.

And because the reindeer would not let me be, I began to color Elen.  Without expectation, opening with ceremony each morning and letting spirit guide my hand.  

The more I colored, without thought, without worrying about the outcome, the more her image came to life.

The result is below.  

I love her.  Not just for what she is, but for what she represents to me:  the ability again and again to leap into the dark.

Where do you hide your creativity?

Where do you long to make without judgment?

Where do you need to take a risk, large or small, to challenge yourself, to put your ass in the chair and make something?

I invite you to ask Elen of the Ways for guidance on your path.  Notice, there is not just one way, but many.  Not just one path, but all.

May we meet in the between.

May you find all you seek, already before you, within you.

May you put your ass in that blessed chair and love your work.

On Being Spiritually Organized...

I have a persistent sense of inadequacy.
And I know I'm not alone in this, that some of you might relate?
There is a voice inside me ready to chide and demean at every turn.  
It says:
Who do you think you are?
It says:
You need to be realistic about this.
It says:
My way or the highway.

A decent part of my spiritual practice has been spent with this voice.  I focus my intention on Not listening.
Not listening is not the same as ignoring.
Not listening means I do not take inside the promptings of this external voice.
I don't believe its stories.
There are deeper promptings to adhere to.
Ones brought into alignment by prayer.
Ones that are joyful to follow.
Ones that present the fruits of my labors and fill me with trust.
These promptings are my own spiritual organization, and it is the most powerful tool I have to Not Listen to the external voices that demean and question.

An example:
I'm pretty sure I've written about spiritual organization before.  The external voice says that I should write something that will make me money.  The inner prompting says that even if I've blogged about it before, someone needs to hear it again.  Even if that someone is only me.

So I listen to the inner prompting.  I am spiritually organized.  I trust myself to be guided.  And when I feel open, I leap, knowing it is never wrong. Becfola and the Snarling Horde by Arthur Rackham. Faith, when beset... I joked earlier in the week that I should put a clause in my client contracts:  All things in good time.

And, it's true.  When I follow my inner promptings (like this past week where I was called to make art instead of completing a project that was due) inevitably things work out in my favor.  

The client calls in sick, or changes their mind, or is inspired in new directions. Or a new commission comes through precisely on the topic I was drawing.  Or ... The results are pretty fantastic, because when I listen to the inner promptings cool stuff happens.  Synergy.  Synchronicity.  Magic.

When I have a stress response and try to hold myself to other's more suitable standards, listen to the external voice that tells me I'm irresponsible or unprofessional if I don't follow through with each commitment as planned, I end up feeling a lot like Becfola above, besieged, beset.  It is almost always for naught, too, because the client still changes their mind, and then I am left with a palm to forehead and a day's lost time.

I know this happens to everyone, but we creatives and spiritually focussed folk are particularly vulnerable.  Ditto anyone in transition--the same litmus for vulnerability is appropriate here.  We are taught to distrust our inner promptings and must begin actively, without delay, to reclaim the territory of our faith.  Faith in ourselves, in the patterns and plans of universal weaving.  In each other. Enough.  Trust Yourself. This is the most complex maxim I know: trust yourself.  But it is ultimately the key to joy, to days full of what you love, to positive affirming relationships and work that is real.

When you are complicated by circumstance, or undone by forgetting, how does it change things to operate in the flow?  To allow for the imperfections of your spiritual organization?

Forgot the folder?  Maybe we aren't meant to work on that project today.  Neglected to email the person?  I'm sure the timing wasn't ripe.  I'm reading a draft manuscript that is wonderful on just this topic, and I'll be sure to mention the book when it is published, because it is chaining the way I think about my own perceptions, my inner and outer voices.  The core premise:  we must attune to our inner knowing, we must take heed.

This is how I work best:  listening to the flow of a will larger than mine, a pattern wider than me.  It takes practice, but it is always there, waiting for us to love and accept ourselves, to believe in the patterns and our part in it enough, to take a risk in authenticity, to dip in.

Here is an offering:  a free thirteen days of supported self-care.  Come, swim.
Love--

Slowing Down, Seeing

View from my window this morning: leaf, branch, grass, through ice. This is the view through my window today.
Ice coats the glass.  Outside an east wind has swept the grass of leaves.  They collect, along with ice and broken branches, along the fence line.
Classes were canceled.
My children, all home.
Appointments rescheduled.
The winter storm that holds us is less ferocious than predicted.
And even though it feels natural, this stillness, this pause at the center of life, it also makes me feel anxious.
We live at the speed of digital life.  It is difficult, slowing down. The Lost Teachings of the North draft deck, with the North card visible. Slowness is the pace of winter.  Harvest complete, the beds turned under, larder full, firewood stacked.  In my childhood, winter meant evenings by candlelight, a pantry of gleaming jars, the matted coat of my horse, thick wool of sheep.  It meant wandering red cheeked through the blowing wind and wet, returning home to warmth.

There are rhythms that live within us.  Rhythms of place, rhythms of ancestry.  What does this time ask of you?  What does this place request?

As the nights lengthen, the dark deepens, the cold and rains set in, what do you look forward to?  What traditions do you seek?  What does your soul long for?
Slowness does not come easily to me.  My nature is air, quick motion, rapid thought, inspiration, conversation, fiery heat, rushing water, careening wind.  But without slowness, I am imbalanced, become dried and emptied, a husk, brittle.  An empty well.

I have to find and feel slowness, stillness in earth.  In stones, In trees.  In the deep roots of plants.  To take it into myself often requires sitting for a long time, observation, becoming what Mary Oliver calls the rich lens of attention.

For it takes practice to remember that slowness is in me.  That the rhythm of the winter, the low hum of rain, the dark, the story, is in my blood as well.  

Art is slow.  Writing is slow.  It takes patience, dedication, each line, each work.  This winter I am completing a long-term art commission, The Lost Teachings of the North.  The cards above are nearly done, just two more to scan and add. The project was begun last year in the midst of my homeschool/child intensity months, so the completion feels like an emergence.  Even in the midst of all that frenzy, I worked bit by bit on something.  

And, in line with the rhythms of the world, my work will be complete in the darkest days, and publication will take place with the return of the light. An artist I love who embodies slow attention to life: Tasha Tudor Slowness is spirited business.  Believing that a process is taking place even without doing.  That the walk in the ice storm you inexplicably lengthen,  the breath you consciously inhale, the half hour spent staring out the window at the crows dancing in the yard, that these matter as much as any human list of productivity.

In fact, I believe, they matter more.  Life wants us to live, to play, to participate.  To be with, we must rest in the moment.  We must move less, to draw our own attention.

By the way, writing this post reminds me of my dear friend, writer and teacher Kyle Lang, who once taught an entire Freshman seminar class based on the book, In Praise of Slowness by Carl Honere (this is a link to Honore's TED talk about the culture of speed).  Kyle, today is for you.

And you, and you, and you, fellow watchers, fellow lenses, lovers of days without measure.  May it unfold, may it be.  In beauty.

Because Your Life is a Sacred Art

Bindrune, from the Lost Teachings Deck Dear companions on the path--
This year marks a milestone for me, a completion that I don't ever anticipate, and that makes it so much more wonderful.

I finally feel comfortable in what I am doing, offering.  I finally claim, wholly, my eccentricities, my errors, my imperfections.  I finally trust my intuition.  I finally have confidence in what it is I am saying...or, at least what it is I am trying to say.

There is a home here.  If you know me, you know that home is one of my themes.  (We all have themes that guide our lives, repeat in our creative work...what are your themes?)  Most of us live in transit, never comfortable in our own skin, trying always to get somewhere else.  Thinner, richer, more stable, more powerful, more beautiful, more more more.  We question constantly, are vigilant in our self-denial, our criticism, we wear our old stories like a shell, a mask, hiding the beauty we are.

Finding home in yourself is better than falling in love.  In fact, it is the only thing that makes true love possible.  The Moon Divas mantra, Love Your Body, Love Your Story, Love Your Life, is the essence of purposeful direction.  We are not here to deny our calling, to sabotage our beautiful bodies with hatred and despair, to repress our deepest longings.  Our love, self-love, is a root.  It nourishes each cell with creative possibility.  It is fundamental.

And it takes time.  Practice. Capitalism doesn't thrive on self-love and contentment.  Neither does patriarchy, racism, violence and hatred.  We carry stories in our bodies, in our cells, that don't belong to us, stories from structures, entities, lineages that we did not create.  Each new transition, each choice to align with our own true north, cracks open those cellular stories.  This is the vulnerability--we must open open open, to dissipate the story.  It is hard work, better done in community, better supported than alone.
Gather Goddess from the Wild Women Society Magnetize Your Vision This winter, in the depths of darkest dark, the solstice time, I am beginning my first foray into facilitation for a long time.  It feels amazing.  We are meeting in a spacious, gorgeous art studio in NE Portland to craft a project using the power of the collective and individual attention.  Together for twelve weeks we will move our dreams, our creative projects--businesses, artwork, books, any tangible heart-work we wish to make material--from vision to profit.

The Magnetize! Studio class is a synergy, a merging of what I love and believe in:  our creative potential, self-love, self-care, story showing and crafting of new stories to live and dream by.  Because life is a sacred art, we create (I know this as I know each freckle on my hand, my lover's smell, the story of my scars) the world.  I once saw a bumper sticker that said something like:

"Those who deny their own dreams won't support yours."

What magic is possible when we devote twelve weeks in community to the creation, gestation and fulfillment of a dream?

What becomes tangible when we surround ourselves with people who are taking risks, feeling the fear, doing it anyway?

What happens when we make a community that says:  I can, I want to, I will?
North, from the Winds of the World Tree in the Lost Teachings Deck This Month...A Challenge This month I'm proposing a challenge for us all:

Find a way to create the community that supports your heart's desire.  Take supported action in the direction of your dreams and help another--or a group of others--do the same.

How?  Well, in The Moon Divas Guidebook there are suggestions for creating Sister Circles, and the activities of the book are intended for use in community.   Get a free Guidebook and bring some friends together.  Share the love, the joy, the process...

Or, if you are Portland, Oregon local you can check out Magnetize! Studio.  The class is approaching full, so apply today if you are interested in taking the journey from dark to light, from vision to profit, in an inspired, creative community.

Life is a sacred art, we must live in the rhythm of creation.

Everything is spirited business, the business of spirit is what we are all here for.  What is trying to come through you now?  How can you honor the unique gift that is ever, only, yours?  

Let me know if I can help!  Email me, comment on this post or join the Moon Divas Community on Facebook.  Let's make the world (wide, welcome, content, full of love, a home) together.

What will you be? Questions for invocation.

From Baba Yaga by Tin Can Forest One of my favorite seasonal traditions centers around Halloween.  It is, as far as I know, invented to reclaim meaning in an ancient celebration.

Many years ago, I decided that my Halloween costume must be more than dressing up, more than fooling the fairies.  It was an opportunity to embody what I wanted in my life, what I was becoming.  It was a means toward invocation.

Since that time, I have always seen this time of year as a way to articulate what qualities I wish to bring forward in the months to come.  (This process is articulated in a different form in the Inviting the Goddess to Play section of The Moon Divas Guidebook.)

I choose the elements of my costume from what I find, on the street, in my home.  This is part of the creative journey, allowing image and intuition to inform the making.

Often my costumes are centered around a particular story, especially fairy tales or myths.  Often the story will be sitting with me for much of the year, an undercurrent.  When I begin the costume collection process, the first question I have to ask is:  Who am I in the story?

It's not as obvious as it sounds.  For often, the character who is least appealing is the greatest teacher. Vasalisa the Brave Enter Baba Yaga This story has been with me for years.  
I have told it and illustrated it.
I have dreamed of the Baba, the grandmother.
If you don't know it, there is an excellent version in Starhawk's book Circle Round.  You can read a variation of it online here.

I identified at first with the protagonist, Vasalisa the Brave, for obvious reasons.

But this year I have been drawn to Baba Yaga.  The fierce independence of her, the potent teaching.  The alignment with the natural cycles of the world, the source of hearth fire. Baba Yaga artist unknown Sometimes what we need to embody isn't pretty.  And there is a freedom in that.  When we move beyond the beautiful, sexy expectations of others we can claim our power. Baba Yaga by Allen Douglas So what does this have to do with Spirited Business?

One of the primary things I have seen uniting all attempting to set a fire from their own creative spark--be it a business, a project, a book or work of art, is that a huge part of it is embodying the fullness and goodness of the vision.  It is, in short, about faking it.  Or, to put it another way, pretending.  Of course you know what you are doing, of course you are on the right path.  You feel the fear and doubt, and do it anyway.  With moxie.  And verve.

So what qualities will you embody in this season?  Who are you in the stories of your life?  What is your invocation to invention?

Where do you embrace your power and take flight?
Baba Yaga by Hrana Janto

What are You Working For?

I love the Central Library in downtown Portland.

Whenever I am entertaining a question about my life I find my way there, immerse in the stacks and check out everything that calls to me.  Then I practice stichomancy (all of my former students know this word), literally:  divination from the lines.  I choose a book, stick my finger in the pages, and open to my answer.

Yes, I live my life this way.  It is interpretive, inexact, and definitely led.  I also take cues from fortunes I find on the sidewalk, from tarot and rune readings, from symbols and serendipity.  It is a participatory process with the Divine:  you speak to me, I listen, I ask of you, I listen.  It's a dance, and sometimes there are missteps or misinterpretations, but the more I have co-clarified my purpose, the easier it is to keep a rhythm.
This is the thing about the mystery.

We must participate.  We must co-create.  We must find our channel, our path, our point of alignment.  And when we lose it, we must find it again.

"Whatever do you mean here?"  (Something a former professor wrote in my margins once...)

The last time I was in the Central Library it was early summer.  My year of homeschooling had just ended, and I was trying to reengage with my business for the first time in a year.  I wandered into the business book section--a true yawner of a library corner...even the colors are all wan or "professionalized" as black, white, grey and dirty red.  No glossy action adventure or romance here.  

I started to pull every book I could find on women in business.  Most made me want to weep with boredom.  Some incensed my feminism (Boardroom Dominatrix?).  But I've learned to follow my instincts.

One of the books I pulled sounded terrible, The Secrets of Six Figure Women.  But I ended up reading it from cover to cover.  It was a little dated, but spiritual, compassionate, and clear about something I desperately needed in my work:  a specific exacting purpose.   You Must Work for More This year I have watched two of my Celebrant colleagues wander into fame through dedication to a cause.  

Both have committed themselves and their Celebrant practices to marriage equity.  And by having a direct and clear purpose:  to offer their skills and voices in the service of this goal, their businesses have grown past capacity.  

I support marriage equity.  I support many causes.  I work for many things, and for years I had many sayings about what I was working for:  to help people, to help people fall in love with the world, to help people tell their stories, to help people find their unique voice, to heal the world, to heal women....on and on.

The writer in me shakes her head.  
She knows generalities get us nowhere.
Anton Chekhov said, "Don't tell me the moon is shining.  Show me the glint of light on broken glass."

We need concrete physical details to define our sense of purpose.  We need visions filled with specificity.  And our purpose must be more than this, it must be personal as well.

My two Celebrant colleagues are personally invested in marriage equity.  One is gay.  The other loves love. She lives to celebrate the love of everyone, because it increases her own.

Purpose is not selfless, it cannot be.  Selflessness (Self-less-ness) literally means you are devoted to other's needs and interests but not your own.  It is a doctrine written by a self-debasing culture, by centuries of repression and hatred, control, coercion, limitation.  When we put ourselves outside of our purpose, we deny spirit.  We deny our right to the very things we want for others.  Like healing, justice and love. What I Found So I had to ask myself what I am working for.

And the answer has surprised me.  Ultimately, I am working for three things:

Autonomy:  personal independence from the systems and structures that leech my life force and prevent creation.  Autonomy means self law, so I make up the rules for my life.  I choose how I spend each day, where I put my energy, and my standards are crafted in the moment according to how I feel.  In short, autonomy means my life belongs to me.   I have been fighting for autonomy as long as I can remember:  the freedom to choose, the ability to say yes--or no.  And it is my hope that by risking my life--my worth, my reputation, my stability--for autonomy, I can help others actualize their own self-law.

Sovereignty:  authority, power.  Not that kind of power, silly.  Inner power, divine power, the power of connection to all life that tells us this is exactly where we are meant to be.  A sense of vast authority, guiding and loving your day, your step.  My sovereignty bends to no one.  I have lived in many places where I lacked or doubted my power, where I was afraid to express my uniqueness.  I especially work for sovereignty on behalf of children, who, for varying reasons, all have been challenged to be powerful and stand up for their rights in their young lives.  We must be powerful, we must claim our true power and put it to use.  This is what I work for.

The Land:  I love this earth with all of my heart.  I sing to it, I touch it like a lover, I have keened when I felt hatred or apathy or hurt toward this incredible complex of infinite non-humanness.  I work for the land, I serve the land.  I serve the land in me, the minerals and elements that make up my human body.  I love my body and treat it well, I love my home and keep it well.  Every patch of dirt I live on is sacred to me, and beneath it all is the blessed sacred heart of something much much older and bigger than I can ever know.  I make for the land, I create for the land, I tell stories for the land, I have spoken up and out to protect and save the land.  My work is as much about connecting people (clients, readers, viewers, myself) to places and bodies and stories and lives than anything else.  Ultimately I work for what will claim me, as the land claims us all in the end.

Whenever I am weary, whenever I have a difficult interaction, or feel I have lost my way, I can remember what I work for and ground into the paradoxical largeness-specificity of these three elements.  I can feel their resonance in my life and the lives of all around me.  I know, whatever I do, if I work for these, I am in alignment.

I would love to know what you work for...

Here's an exercise I used to give my college students:

What do you love most in this world (write it down)?

What would you change about this world (write it!)?

At the intersection of what we love and what we would change lies our work.

And, to take it a step further, to keep us self-full instead of self-less (only a full cup can offer), how does this intersection reflect in your own life?  What work feeds your spirit, heals your soul, and fills your cup as well?

Love--

The Oh My God Moment

One of the reasons I love my current work is because it is collaborative.

I co-create with clients.  I support the birth of their dreams.  How amazing is that?

The dreams are diverse:  art, literature, music, intuitive readings, death assistance, along the path--sometimes in the first meeting, sometimes in the third--everyone has an "Oh my God" moment.

"Oh my God, this is really happening."
"Oh my God, there it is."
"Oh my God, I can't believe it."

Followed by giddy laughter, high fives, and celebration.

Really, every time.

This is the energy of creation, that fuel, the fire of setting pen to paper, brush to canvas and making something imagined come to life.  This is the essence of Spirited Business work:  we create a platform for the dream, we make it visible, do the work of birth.  Oh my God.

(**a note...the word God may stand in for any sort of divinity or oath you can imagine.  I use it here as an example, as it is what I hear most, and believe that when spoken in earnest gratitude it becomes a sort of invocation.  Especially when followed by a Thank You.) Make it.  Nourish it. Oh my God is awesome.  I felt it when I completed the first draft of The Moon Divas Guidebook, again when I held the published copies in my hands nearly two years ago, and at least a dozen times since then.  The oh my God formula is remarkably simple:

Make your dream.  
Release it to the world.  
Nourish and refine until it can live on its own.

But you know what?  Each time I released my dream, I wished for witness.  We are communal creatures, we are genetically programmed for celebration.

And when we share our dreams, our successes, we inspire other people to do the same.   Oh my God is contagious. When was your last best kiss? Believing in yourself is a challenge.

Creating the life of your dreams a challenge.

Having the courage to tell other people about what you are doing is more than a challenge.  It is the essential hurdle, the final leap into the great unknown.

When was the last time you felt possible?  When was the last time you took decisive action in the direction of your dreams?  When was the last time you shared in a community with the same intention and decisive action?

This, my loves, is why I'm hosting The Hive in Portland this Saturday.  A place to connect, play, believe and celebrate our work together.

When was your last oh my God moment?  Mine was yesterday, when I helped my client publish her book.  And the day before when another client realized what services she would offer.  And the day before that when another client took her first commissioned project.  It is a mixture of excitement, fear, awe and opening.  It is exhilarating to witness and extraordinary to midwife.  It is life, large, full and whole.

And then, comes the work of sustaining the dream.  Next week I'll explore the other way we support each other:  through no-bullshit accountability to pursuit of the possible.

If you live local, I hope to see you at The Hive Saturday night.  If you are afar, join The Hive on Facebook and stay tuned.  I think a virtual gathering is on its way come November...

Wishing you the biggest dreams, the best creations--
L

**another note:  images used are all examples of inventive income strategies...our topic for The Hive this month...