do what now?

Poking my toes in the waters of SURRENDER the last couple of days. What is it? What does it feel like? And I found myself bumping up against all the negative connotations of surrender:

give up
give in
being down
and out
failing
losing
succumbing to a loss of control.

So I tried to turn that last one around:

give up control
open
relinquish
cleanse
trust
faith
peace

I find myself ricocheting around in a box between attempting to be open to the process and the possibilities and wanting PROOF NOW. I realized how many times I say to myself "But how will I KNOW?"

So I wrote down these words ...

Be at peace.
Trust the truth inside the mystery.
Allow the answers to appear.

Surrender. Supplication. Trust.

Oh trust. Why are you such a mountain? And what do I do about my fear of heights?!

"Thirty days has September ..."

How often I say that ... and how profound these last 30 days have been. Lots and lots of soulwork this month. A table that I can't really eat at any more as its covered in magazine clippings. An ever growing stack of tattered magazines. (I tried to resist that copy of Simple Living I really did, but there I stood in the check out line for so long that I couldn't help myself! :) Two volumes of vision books that are radically changing my relationship with myself ... which changes everything else.

Between my visioning "homework" and this stupid cold that's been hanging around for two weeks now I haven't had a lot of energy for writing here. But I want to try and change that in October. Things to process, and the call keep coming to me to find words. So we'll see how that goes.

On this journey.

I was driving to Trader Joe's this afternoon and there's a stretch of road where the elevated highway curves, and as I looked out all I could see was sky and clouds. I felt in that moment a bit rootless. Weightless. Untethered.

It's not unlike how I am feeling as I start to work through this month of visioning joy. It's only day 2 and the soul work is giving me so much to sift through. So many "feels" as my friends might put it!

We were asked to name our vision books, and I struggled with that. I had words that I liked, that I was drawn to and I kept gluing them down thinking I'd found the right combination. And then I'd think some more, and cut and paste some more. But finally my book has a name.

A garden of effortless love tattoos. 

And yes. It's like that. The soul work here, and in the previous classes feels like pressing love into my skin. Like every kind word from myself, or from my fellow joy sisters is a balm to soothe old wounds. Well, or sometimes a saucy slap on the rump to get me moving!! 

Working intuitively this way isn't easy. It's twisty and frankly confusing sometimes. And things tend to spill out that you either never expected or didn't think you we're ready for. But I'm finding that for me, it's crucial to find the feeling first. Then the process is more like finding your way home. 

September is going to bring wonderful scary brilliant things. I can feel it. 

I wonder what they will be? 

shifting sands

I came home from work yesterday beat down by life. Over tired, under-slept, dogged by anxiety and fear and a with a whole bunch of mean girls yapping in my head. (Today has been bad too, but in different ways.)

In an attempt to shift my energy, I grabbed the two pieces of junk mail that comprised my mail -- a clothing catalog, and a snazzy publication from my college degree program alumni society. I sat down at my kitchen table, my little joy nook, with those magazines and my current journal and asked "what do I need to hear?"

Then I went through the two magazines ripping out any words that spoke to me. Whatever caught my eye. Whatever I thought might answer my question. 

I started doing these found poems using words cut out of magazines recently during Hannah Marcotti's JoyUP and they always inspire me. (Some day remind me to share my manifesto that brought me back to this practice!) After a bit of tearing and cutting I ended up with twelve words or phrases on the table and then I tossed the magazines into the recycling and sat down to see what I could make out of the words. 

I try not to think about this process a whole lot while I'm working.  Sometimes words just seem to cling to one another. This one wasn't a clear as some of the other ones I've done, but in the end I came up with this:

The rooftop image was completely me listening to my intuition. I'm still not wholely sure what it means. Something about the windows is my best guess. But it wanted to be on the page and who was I to argue?! (And hopefully I'll find something to put in that seal that I colored over to block out the words that weren't relevant.)

The title is Re: thinking and the text reads:

Insights

are

effortless beautiful gifts, 

radiant,

colorful,

fluid,

sensations.

Here {hear}

the next step.

You will lead the way...

The "are" and the "{hear}" I added with letter stickers to make things flow better. Otherwise I used every word I cut out. Sometimes I don't. Again I try to listen to the voice in my head.

Which turns out to be the answer to the question I started with "What do I need to hear?"

MYSELF. I will lead the way. A little love note to myself asking for more quiet time. More room to hear what is inside myself. 

I don't always want to listen. I don't always like what's inside my head. But its clear that I've got to find more time to sift through the bad, and encourage the good stuff to come out. But damn is that scary!! I know that some of my anxiety lately is thanks to all this soulwork I've been doing. It's jogging things loose that have been kept caged for a long time and so its a bit of a wilderness in my head right now. And so I listen.

Hear the next step....

Send breadcrumbs, okay???