What is my question today? What pattern do I see?What potential challenges and obstacles do I face this week and month (things I don’t enjoy, don’t know how to approach, or feel blocked on)? How can I best meet these challenges?
What do I need (tools, information, allies) to help me on my path?
1. Physical synergy: Concentrate on my feet as they touch the ground, the feel of my muscles, my breathing, my surroundings, the breeze, the sky. Ask: What is the wholeness I am missing? Continue this for 1-2 blocks.
2. Heart synergy: Turn a corner, and focus on my tender heart. Feel it soften and open. Ask: What is the unity I am seeking? Continue this for 1-2 blocks.
3. Mindfulness: Turn another corner, and pay attention to my thoughts. Make an effort to open my mind to the ambiguity of the moment, and my life. Ask: What is the question I am asking? Continue this for 1-2 blocks.
4. Spiritual synergy: Turn the last corner, and (holding on to the awareness I've raised) speak a prayer out loud as I’m moving; feel the power and energy move through me. Say, “Spirit of Love-Light-Creation, I remember thee. Amen.”
I'm reading Starhawk's book, The Earth Path (2004), which is all about how to connect to nature. I'm in the middle of Chapter 3, The Sacred: Earth-Centered Values, where she outlines her framework for her earth-based spirituality.
- Foster cooperative and interdependent relationships, like trees with their fungi.
- Be diverse and complex enough to have resilience (but only as diverse as the community can support).
- Provide abundant but sustainable resources and energy (only spend what you can replenish).
- Share the abundance equally.
- Allow dynamic freedom and creativity - let members of the community evolve and express their potential.
- Be open, caring, and receptive, like the soil to the seed.
When the time comes to act on one of my priorities I hope to be able to focus my full attention on this one undertaking, and lean in to it with excitement and curiosity. I use the notion of "leaning in" as a body-mind-heart training. It's a kind of "Inner Synergy,", when all the parts of you are firing together and create a bigger bang.
- a list of specific intentions, and a backwards calendar
- plenty of daily time scheduled for art explorations, as well as defined projects
- a weekly 3-day mini-art retreat, with a daily reading and art meditation
- plans for a focus group
- evaluation of my efforts every Sunday
I intend to plan, test, and teach a series of art explorations that heal the conditions of self-focus and overwhelm, and ground an individual in the earth, because this draws on my strengths as an artist and teacher, and promises me a uniquely proactive response to climate change. I may also end up with some art of my own that gives a voice to nature.
Planning, testing, and teaching a series of art explorations will be fun and challenging - I will use my strengths as a researcher, planner, writer, artist, and teacher. I'll need to find some test subjects.
Learning to heal self-focus and overwhelm means that I will get to heal myself as well, and have great equanimity, integrity, and compassion for nature.
I may or may not end up with some art of my own that gives a voice to nature - and pleases me - but part of healing self focus is that I needn't care about that...
Share, teach, inspire, research, explore, create, heal, ground
3. 3. Next, list some core values that prompt this mission:
Unity with Nature, Purpose, Witness, Integrity, Love, Creativity, Truth
4. Turn these sentences, verbs, and values into a haiku, an unrhymed poetic form consisting of 17 syllables arranged in three lines of 5, 7, and 5 syllables respectively (or a Cinquain, which is five lines, with 2, 4, 6, 8, and 2 syllables), that gets to the core of my mission, and gives me a framework for my actions.
- First, center and relax each part of my body; count from 10 to 1, then open a connection to Spirit. Feel a soft warmth begin to grow and spread through me, until I am radiating quiet energy.
- Second, create a clear, detailed picture in my mind, as though the objective has been reached. Paint a vivid mental image of exactly how it looks and feels to lead my community in making healing art - and put as much positive energy into the image as possible.
- Lastly, affirm that this is what I want with a short positive phrase in the present tense; for example, "I share my strengths to heal our ills".
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