Cocooning

“Cocoon ” Mixed Media, by Lisa Longworth

Sometimes do you feel your life change from “Cocoon to Butterfly”?  Can you feel something within yourself going through a subtle gestation process? Where changes are occurring, perhaps a new direction your life-yet it is unseen?

This morning I feel myself in a cocoon phase. Though my outer life and career is full, I sense within my inner world, a slow transformation occurring. Like an organic cocoon process, it is elusive and mysterious.  I trust my “Cocoon to Butterfly” process as I witnessing my life art unfolding.

Action to Inspire, Connect & Transform:

1. Do you sense a subtle part of your essential self gestating now?  2.  Do you have clarity about what it is?  3. Are you trusting the natural “Cocoon to Butterfly process of your life?

Circling for Thousands of Years

Love this poem…

I live my life in widening circles
that reach out across the world.
I may not complete this last one
but I give myself to it.
I circle around God,
around the primordial tower.

I’ve been circling for thousands of years
And I still don’t know:
am I a falcon,
a storm,
or a great song?

Rilke – 1909

Art Creates Balance

Jewelry Pendant, 1986, by Lisa Longworth

Today is the first day of fall. I feel the seasonal shift in my bones. In the last three days my body has called me to move more slowly, to rest often.

Last night while my husband was watching television downstairs, I was upstairs in my art studio and my office. I gazed for long periods of time at special objects on my walls and altars in my rooms, absorbing their numinous radiance. I felt the subtle power and love of these meaningfulness objects.

About 8 pm, the above art pendant I made for myself years ago, inspired me to get out my camera and take a picture for you. I created it as medicine for my own journey to help me live in balance. Last night I reflected on how this pendant still carries meaning for me today.

I wanted to share this window into my world with you. There is enormous passion for me to continually find a stronger bridge through writing and image to share this huge “River of Fire” burning within me. To Inspire, connect and transform others to shine as fully and brightly as possible in their lives. This fire burns in my heart, courses through my blood, and shoots through my spine like thunderbolts.

Making art creates balance for me. Manifesting this firy vertical transcendent ecstasy with the grounded horizontal world of form transforms my passion into peace. This continues to be my path. I allow myself to be fully alive, a living River of Fire burning bright. The creative process is my River of Water (life’s liquid love), balancing this form to exist peacefully in time and space.

I will share more about the specifics of this pendant later.

Love, Lisa

Action to Inspire, Connect & Transform:

1. Decide when you can take a 15 minute break in the next 24 hours and pencil it in your calendar. 2. Reflect on a beautiful place where you can be quiet and listen deeply to your essential self . Go there at the appointed time. 3. Ask: “How do I create balance? What are ways that I have done this in the past, or how I might do it in the future?  If you realize you need more balance, make an agreement to become more aware when you are off balance. Then use your own “art of balance medicine” on a daily basis.

Love Your Own “Soft Animal”

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.”
-Mary Oliver

 

 

Mary Oliver’s brilliant line, “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves” captures me this morning. In the last weeks, I have written about my profound experience last month at Shambhala in the Rocky Mountain’s of Colorado. Deeply connecting to the “soft animal” of both my body and the collective body of the 85 participants of the Story Field conference over 7 days, changed my life.

 

Yesterday I spoke on the phone for an hour with one of the participants, Rebecca Strong, MA. (More about her work at www.movementasmedicine.com ) We share a common commitment to “follow the deep wild within”, as Rebecca puts it. We discovered our common commitment to continually unwind and discharge old patterns. Allowing space for the “true divine” to have room.

Three weeks ago in Colorado I discovered more space to allow my “soft animal” to run wild and free. On the second morning of the conference, Rebecca witnessed my non verbal embodiment of this voice in our group. She was impacted by my expression on such a viseral level, she burst into tears, causing her to leave the conference room. Later during the break, she came up to me and shared her experience. Allowing myself room for this primal expression in our group, inspired us connect and become friends and allies.

 

As an artist, I love what I love. Artists need to be with other artists who recognize and understand them.

Each of us must take the time to listen and feel this “soft animal” within us and our world. Our survival as a species is dependent on this.

Action to Inspire, Connect & Transform:

1. Notice when you feel stress. Stop and Breathe. 2. Discover for yourself, if you are in your head or in your body. If you’re in your head, let your breath lead you into your “soft animal”. Then simply be in silence for a few seconds and feel your body. 3. Simply be with your body, quiet your mind and absorb the wisdom of the earth.

 

 

Listen to your Skin, Bones and Heart

“Freida’s Eyes” an original painting by Lisa Longworth

For two and a half hours yesterday morning, I sat in the living room of an amazing 85 year old women. We shared stories. We held each others hands in moments of great joy. We drank tea. She showed me art on the walls of her home in Point Loma where she has lived for the last 45 years.

As a small gift, I brought her two of my art cards with photographs of my paintings. The image above is one of them. Because she was most interested in this one “Frieda’s Eyes”, I will share about what the painting symbolizes for me.

This painting was created spontaneously with wild freedom outside of my linear logical mind. Upon reflecting its meaning with my friend yesterday, I spoke to her about what the image means to me today. This is what I said:

The central single eye represents a transcendent seeing that soars beyond the world of form, thus it has butterfly wings on each side of it. Above the central one eye are artist’s eyes (from a self portrait of Frieda Kahlo’s), a perspective that comes through seeing the beauty of form, the outer world of duality on earth.

Above the artist’s two eyes, (at the very top of this art card) is a single indigenous winged mask. For me it speaks to the one seeing that comes from a deep and profound connection to the earth’s wisdom. Seeing through the lenses of the elders and our ancient ancestors who walked the earth at the beginning of time.

For me at this time in both my life and our global life as a species, this perspective (seeing, feeling and listening to the depth of our ancient elders) is essential. Listening to the earth, as our very skin, bones and heart will guide us to be fully alive and on the path we are meant to walk.

Action to Inspire, Connect & Transform:

1. Look at your calendar and give yourself a 30 minute block of time in the next few days. 2. Go to your favorite place in nature (visit a tree, the ocean, a mountain top). 3. Simply be there, quiet your mind and absorb the wisdom of the earth.

Circulating Water

I love this photographs* of five hands holding a circle of water. For me, it captures our collective task in the 21st century, as human beings on planet earth. Together we must fully connect to the fluid circle of life. Personally letting intuition (symbolized by the water) guide us in our daily living. I see the water also representing the natural world on this planet, evolving billions of years ago from gift of H2O.

We each hold a precious connection to the waters of life in our own unique way. As I write these words in the predawn soft silence in my home, I can feel my heart pumping. In stillness I wait for authentic words to arise from my essential deeper voice. Five minutes pass and no sounds emerge. I only feel a warm radiant pulsation, the rising sun in of my heart.

I am deeply in love with the waters that circulate all of life. I am grateful to be alive in this glorious form, together with you. We are holding on to this precious water based life together. You and me, mostly water in the grand circle of life.

*P.S. I purchased this photograph from istock.com (A great inexpensive resource for images!)

One Seeing

This is a close up of a recent creation of mine, a 12″ by 12″ canvas entitled “Mystic Eye”

“The eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me. My eye and God’s eye are one eye, one seeing and one knowing and one loving” -Meister Eckhart

The one eye is the center, is what Meister Eckhart, (the 14th century theologian, philosopher and mystic), was referring to in his quote as the one eye that truly sees, knows and loves.

When I create art, I usually begin my process from an inner “seeing”. An image pops up in my internal screen as a vision. Then I am often overwhelmed with a passionate urge to birth what I see. So I step into my art studio and rely primarily on navigating my creative process through this “one seeing”.

In the late 70’s when my inner eye first opened, the experience was completely overwhelming. It took me years to integrate and stabilize this way of seeing in my daily life. Making art, lots of it, was how I first integrated this “seeing” into a form that I could share with other people and begin to find my place in the world. Then I spent the next couple of decades helping others both open their inner world and fully express it. Now almost 30 years later, my passion is to inspire, connect and transform our whole family, to live from this one seeing and knowing.

We are one living earth connected singing one great song. Let us fly together on wings of love!

Limerence

“Limerence is a state of mind sometimes referred to as “being in love” (as distinct from “loving” someone) and sometimes called infatuation. However, the term “infatuation” carries connotations of immaturity that “limerence” separates from the emotion.” -Wikapedia

The word limerence is playing in my psyche today. I wonder why…

When I think of limerance, the image above comes to mind ( A painting called Romeo and Juliet by Francesco Hayez). For me, it captures the feeling of being in love. Romeo with his right hand scooping Juliet closer to his body. Set in a gorgeous interior with an open window where their love can take wing and fly beyond interior structures into the open sky.

Then there is the kiss. Perhaps their first kiss.

I am thinking of the word “limerence” because I am in love with my friend Beauty.

Forever in love, this limerence shines from Beauty’s face.

Beauty, my Friend

“Nobody sees a flower really; it is so small. We haven’t time, and to see takes time – like to have a friend takes time.”
-Georgia O’Keeffe

My best friend is Beauty. Our most intimate conversations come while in nature. She is with me all the time though, her face popping up throughout my day in surprising ways.

Life is teaching me to be vigilant in the moment, listening and being lead by a still voice within. A balanced day for me may be 3 hours of productive linear activities (such as coordinating Floating Painting traveling events via email in my office) with 3 hours in the natural world.

I am giving myself the gift of “listening to the wind”, following spontaneous intuitive guidance-my deeper life force current. After “productive time” in the office, often I jump in my car, unsure of where I will go. I am always led though, in that open island of time, to intimacy with my beloved friend Beauty.

Yesterday before I saw her face, I found myself walking at the San Diego Zoo. Then there she was, in the form of a red flower. Transfixed in wonder, we conversed in 6 languages of love. Did I stand in front of her for 5 minutes or 2 hours? I’ll never know.

Love is showing me how to slow down. To take time for what really matters.

Being “Fresh Canvas”

Late yesterday morning, after jumping in the ocean and running on the beach, I had lunch at a new local restaurant,”Blueberry Hill”. Sally my waitress suddenly exclaimed, “You are so energetic and alive!” I mused on her comment as I was eating my hamburger and salad. A soft inner voice said, “Yes, being fully alive is most essential to living life”. Then my mind reflected on Gandhi statement, “My life is my message”. In that moment, I realized that my message is “Be fully Alive”.

I like expanding the idea of artistry beyond traditional concepts, to being an artist of your life. Life artistry. Years ago, I wrote my doctoral dissertation “Creative Process as a Spiritual Path” on this topic. Continuing to practice what I have preached has revealed a deeper truth for me. Beyond the ideas of spirituality, psychology, creativity or religious paths is the direct experience of simply being fully alive.

To me that is to witness life-unclouded by concepts or beliefs. It is to absorb the beauty and truth of the moment. I call this “Being Fresh Canvas”. I must surrender completely to this very moment. With a still mind, what exists for me is a blank canvas of all possibilities. When I have expanded my attention beyond mental chatter, the living art of life reveals itself- a deeply connected aliveness of vibrant colors, shapes and textures.

Be fully alive. Be the fresh canvas.

Together we are creating a masterpiece of whole new world beyond our wildest dreams.

Here’s a poem expressing the living art experience:

“Unharvested”
by Robert Frost

A scent of ripeness from over a wall.
And come to leave the routine road
And look for what made me stall,
There sure enough was an apple tree
That eased itself of its summer load,
And all but its trivial foliage free,
Now breathed as light as a lady’s fan.

 

For there had been an apple fall
As complete as the apple had given man.
The ground was one circle of solid red.

 

May something always go unharvested!
May much stay out of our stated plan,
Apples or something forgotten and left,
So smelling their sweetness would be no theft.