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Divine Creativity

I write to hear my voice, because there are places of honesty and beauty that I go in my writing that I can't always go in my life, and I must. When I write, I let the parts of me that hold my breath, breathe. I write to let light into my being and let darkness out, to own myself, capturing the rythms of my cycles: journeys into the abyss, travels through glory. I write to allow myself to feel, climb inside my emotions and explore their reaches and textures, summon my tears, let them wash me hot and clean then drain me empty and free. I write myself alive and reborn, whole and holy, to experience myself transformed. I write because I hurt and because I love, and so I won't lose anything. And because I am lonely, sensual and spiritual, and I need to make contact with the divine, and writing for me is like touching: it is rubbing and rolling my body against the divine until my boundaries dissolve and I no longer know where I start and where I stop: I become part of the universal hum. I write to make myself eternal, leave a piece of me stained into the ethers. I write because I believe Goddess listens for the placs where we love and own ourselves. I write to keep myself company, keep myself honest, keep from watching TV. I write to keep my Muse intrigued. I write because I can't draw.

~Meredith Heller, 2003

Okay, so I didn't write that, but I wish I had, because it describes perfectly why I write, how I feel when I write. When I found this passage, (in my We'Moon Datebook, no less) I felt such a profound sense of understanding and community: other people out there feel this. Other people feel the divinity in writing. Other people become entranced, other people feel the physical surroundings melt away, the boundaries of the mind and self blow away. I guess I'm not so insane after all.

There is a kind of divinity in art, whether it be writing, photography, painting, dancing...there is something about art that lets our inner wild go. I pick up the pencil or lay my hands on the keyboard, and the world melts away, leaving nothing but words and a sense of not being individual, but being part of a wonderful, divine, collective whole--a beautiful tapestry, with everything in the universe woven in. It's not just for writing, either. Now, I know I'm not exactly what you would call a good dancer...anyone who saw me "dancing" at Concert on the Lawn last weekend know that for a fact!

But Great Mother, when that music begins, and the beat goes through my body, and the meaning and mood of the music washes over--it's as if something else takes over, something entirely me, and yet entirely foreign. It's the wild woman within, the la loba of every woman's soul, the wildness that is jumping around inside each of us, screaming and snarling to get out. But it's not a bad wildness--it's not an insane, negative wildness. It's a violent, passionate, creativity that has long since been repressed since we began being taught that imagination is bad, that we "must conform." It's that Wolf Woman (or Wolf Man, of course) that tears out when confronted with art--with the chance to be free of conformity and repetition! Anyone who has been so consumed with their art, be it music or dance or writing or painting or whatever---anyone who has been so consumed in their art that the world passes by and they don't notice anything but the universe they are creating at the tips of their fingers know what I mean. You know how your self seeps away and blends and molds with the universe around you--you know how the world is no longer so black and white when colors bleed into one another. There is divinity there. There is Sacredness. There is Beauty. There is Chaos, the kind of Chaos that births miniature miracles.

Go. Consume yourself with the divinity of art. Kiss your creator, whoever you view it as. Roll yourself in its essence. Give birth to some miracles. Unleash your la loba.

Driving Myself Spiritually Insane

What to do when you have no idea what to believe, and you have all these spiritual ideas and opinions and conflicting thoughts smashing into you?

Go spiritually spastic, I suppose.

But seriously, I have no idea what I'm doing. Sure, I've got my basic structure--"and it harm none, do as you will," nature is divine, celebrate the changing seasons, blah blah blah. All that great stuff that I've been practicing since I was 13. But I can't always believe in the same things, although some people seem to think I do.

To tell the absolute truth, I don't know what to believe. One minute one thing makes sense, the next minute something else does, and I have all these ideas and weird thoughts and ponderings and all of it makes sense but it all contradicts each other.

I suppose some would tell me, Becky, just don't even have a religion! Don't even be spiritual! Religion causes too many problems anyway!

But see, that's just not me. I need a spiritual life. I crave it. I might go as far to say that I can't even live without it. Without spirituality, my life seems so empty, so superficial, so ... well ... normal. *involuntary shudder* Without some kind of spirituality, it feels as though I'm wondering around aimlessly; I'm just going through the motions because nothing has any true meaning in it.

So, I need a spirituality, obviously, even if it's not a religion. But the problem is with spirituality, it's even more confusing than religion because nothing is set in stone! Nothing stays the same in spirituality. It grows. It evolves. There's no book telling you exactly what to believe or practice--it's you, metamorphasizing constantly. Which, now that I think about it, doesn't seem so bad...

What's so wrong with changing constantly? Change is the only constant. It's an oxymoron itself. Change is the only sure permament thing in this world. And best of all, change is mischievious. Change sneaks up on you and plays with you and laughs and guffaws and just in general tries its best to generate as much fun as possible, even if that "fun" tends to cause problems. But even problems are fun, in a twisted way. If it weren't for problems, we wouldn't have goals, and if we didn't have goals, we wouldn't be happy.

Am I right?

Yes, I quite believe I am.

I want LIFE to be my spirituality--the "Divine Wow" that is life, the constantly changing and constantly mischievious and difficult and inspiring and beautiful thing that is life. (If you've ever read Pronoia is the Antidote to Paranoia by Rob Brezsny, you can see that I'm highly inspired by it.)

I love that I solved my problem while I typed. It's like my fingers took over and BAM--problem solved. How's that life for you?

Becky, away~
*wooshes out like superman*

I know, I know...

...I'm absolutely terrible at this blogging thing. I admit it. And when you attach it to something like, say, a 365 project or a 1001 project, or basically anything with "project" on the end of it---I suck even worse. At the beginning of the project I've got my camera in one hand, a notebook in the other, screaming (internally, of course) "HECKYES!!! LET'S DO THIS! WOOOOOO!" And then, after a week--or two, if I'm really determined--I start missing days, thinking, "ahhhh, it's okay, I'll just put up two tomorrow." And then eventually I don't post at all. I don't know, maybe I have commitment issues. Or maybe I could blame it on the fact that I'm a Gemini, so I'm naturally ADD while not actually being ADD, so I get bored with stuff fairly fast...which doesn't necessarily have to be a bad thing.

But moving along, I think I'm just going to quit doing this whole "project" thing. I think, by attaching the word "project" to it, it reminds me of schoolwork, which automatically turns me completely off. I mean, it's the summer people. Who wants to be reminded of school?

So, basically, what I'm going to do from now on, is just blog when I feel like it. No commitment. No projects.

9/1001

The beach.

I've never really resonated with it in the way some of my friends do, how it makes them feel. But every so often, I just need to escape the chaos that is my home and spend some time alone, and this beach is where I come to do just that. Quiet, secluded, and beautiful, it's the perfect place to sit and close your eyes, pretending you're miles away. If you walk up the river there a bit, there's a big waterfall with a pool at the bottom that's perfect for swimming in. Like I said, it's the perfect place to escape to. And that's exactly what I did today. When I came away from it, I felt so much better than I did before. It's as if that beach simply sucks the sadness, stress, and negativity out of you, leaving nothing but calm.

8/1001

This says "Blessed Be" in runes, in case you don't know. :)

On saturday, I went to an intuitive fair in a town near mine. The fair's name was "Wonderfully Wicked," and it was by a metaphysical store that's amazing. Just sayin'.

But anyway, it was great. I love intuitive faires. In my every day life, I can't talk about the things I believe, my views, my opinions in spirituality. I can't talk about spiritual experiences. But at intuitive faires, it's a place I can talk freely. Words such as magick, goddess, manifest, totems, guides, and astral are all casually-used terms. These faires make me feel so comfortable---I can talk freely, and other people understand what I'm talking about. It's amazing. Wonderful.

Wonderfully Wicked was a relatively small faire, but it was fun all the same. There were the standard tarot readers, rune readers, and intuitive painters, as well as energy healing and other such practices. I wasn't able to do much since I didn't bring my money, but that's okay, because I mainly came to the faire to bring my friend, who is interested in intuitive things, but doesn't have much a chance to get in to it because her family is against it, so I'm her ride/alibi to events such as this.

One funny thing about this faire---I met a boy who [thankfully] doesn't live in the same town as me, but drove a couple hundred miles just for the faire. He looked like a nice, normal, teen male witch, despite the plain, obvious silver pentacle around his neck. Unfortunately, "nice, normal, teen male witch" didn't really describe him well. He believed in dragons (not the spiritual kind of dragons, but physical, fire-breathing monster dragons like those in fairy tales), bragged about his pet dragon, and how he "owns every dragonology book every published." I nodded my head, said dragonology was interesting, pretended to agree with everything he said, then promptly left. I was standing there wanting so bad to say "dragons aren't real, pull your head out of your ass and grow up," but I used my self-control. I prefer to let people like that learn their own lessons. I don't need to shove my opinions down their throat.

But anyway~ intuitive faires are wonderful. ("wonderfully wicked," hehe) I loves them. Even if I meet rather...odd people at them :)

7/1001

Ok, I know that these next three entries are late, but you'll have to bear with me. I can't blog every single day.

This...is a couch.

Well, no duh...you already know that. This entry really isn't actually about the couch. It just happens to be a couch in a cafe that I hang out in with my buddies after work. No one really calls it by its actual name, since its actual name sucks, so we all just call it "the cafe." I took a nap on this couch. Bad idea to take naps in the cafe. People tickle you. And put whipped cream on your face.

I suppose the cafe hasn't impacted me in a deeply personal level. It's just a place to sit down and relax. Until someone draws on your face with a marker. >>