Creative Expression

I am feeling joyful tonight. I have the evening to myself. It’s been a really full week and it’s lovely to complete it with some time to myself. While Marc and I were at Shoshoni Yoga Retreat three weeks ago they had an offering called sacred art. One of the available projects was rock painting. During the weekend I had three hours to paint 4 medium size river rocks in a way I felt really good about. Painting the rocks was a meditative experience for me.  I was less critical during my creative process and more accepting of what I created. I practiced mindfulness or awareness with acceptance as I let myself flow with the paintings. If I was more tech savvy I would include a picture of my rocks so you could see them. I am excited to have a new art form I felt good about. The more creative I allow myself to be, the more joy I feel in my life. I am grateful that expressing myself creatively is something I value and follow through with doing.
My daughter Monnya is a very creative being. When she and my grandsons were here for Spring break last week she created a garden in my front yard  using my statue of Ganesh (the Hindu god of creating and removing obstacles) as a focal point and included my beautiful rocks in it. Koa, my two year old grandson helped her. They created a lasting gift that brings me great joy and let’s me feel close to them whenever I look at my garden. Monnya is a dancer, artist and acrobat and very creative mother to her sons. She has been an inspiration to me about living creatively. I call what she creates, “the Monnya touch”. She brings a flair of creativity to whatever she does, whether it is creating a brunch or making racing car valentines that say Love Wins for Colt, my 4 year old grandson, to bring to pre-school.
 I rediscovered my creativity when Monnya was 16 and left home to study classical Indian dance in India. I decided to take a sculpture class to fill the emptiness I felt when she left. Since then creating sculpture pieces has brought me hours of challenge and satisfaction. I have watched myself grow from an obsessively critical sometimes paralyzed sculptor, to a place where I can listen to my sculpture pieces about how they want to be created. In the past, I have made nude sculptures and my current piece asked for clothes. I made her clothes. Her name is Joy Sacred Circle and she’s close to complete now. Maybe writing about Joy will inspire me to work on her soon.
I think it is important for anyone who wants to, to find an outlet to express themselves creatively. The opportunity is to focus on this creative outlet and enter the flow. The flow is a state of mind where the inner critic can go rest on the beach with a cool drink. It can be a timeless space of pure presence where we can lose ourselves as we know ourselves. Creative expression comes in all sorts of forms with varying levels of acceptance of the process and product. The lovely part is that you can’t do it wrong. Writing or cooking or gardening or singing or dancing, creative expression can be anything you let yourself be your own unique you while doing. Acknowledge yourself lavishly for whatever you allow yourself to do creatively merely for the act of doing it at all. Your soul will sing. My soul is singing writing this blog and imagining all of you giving yourselves the time and space to explore your own art forms and grinning. Thank you.