Tag Archives: self love

MoonDance

29 Mar


A little project of mine since forever.
In the cycle of the moon, it is the First Quarter Moon.
half light half dark
Balanced
Poised…
a choice point.
Tomorrow, I will walk out into my world under a Gibbous Moon, ideally, with a sense of wonder, delight, desire and adventure.
The word commitment is often paired with the1st Quarter Moon and for me it’s becoming a conscious commitment to the practice of ‘getting my heart in the right place’ – opening up and out to the World.

I’m making a deal with myself today, that I will try to pull back on my knee-jerk fears when they come up, and exchange fear for blessing- seeing what is in front of me, the situation, the person, the thing, each event, as it IS. I bless what is; unconditionally.
In theory, this attention will help attend to my shadow, in the moment, as it presents itself.
My shadow side doesn’t respond well to the bright light of day, analysis or reason.
I’m practicing this unconditional self love, figuring that this too is a skill that can be learned. So, the practice. Swap fear for love. And the deal is, it’s just for a lunar week.
And, the picture is Telephoros. An important symbol for this half and half day. He’s Part of my Anam Cara picture- from ages ago. He’s speaking to me again, bringing a soft glow to all the hidden bits.
Link to my post about telephoros: https://janetbalboa.com/2014/09/11/dwarfs-illumination-and-knowing-that-everything-matters/

Mandala #38 Blue Lotus

2 Aug

Work in progress…
Expression.
Say 1) you’re open hearted, ready, in a ‘place’ or state of being where you feel so ready to give- but not sure exactly  what to give…
or conversely,
2) you have an idea of what you must do, but waver on exactly how to go about doing it…

heart open
-OR-
head full of ideas

Either way,  Expression is THE answer; the movement that initiates a new beginning for either of these modern stalemate positions.

…….and this is exactly the post modern, blockage point- our Voice. Our own individual expression. Our song. Our contribution to the expansion of humanity.


It’s also our voice, with a small ‘v’. We’re so tethered by the words we say to ourselves, the words in our heads.

Our hearts and minds are ready…

It’s our own inner voices that need our attention, our kindness, our compassionate listening:
‘Sit still and be quiet.
Who told you you could do that?
Put that down.
Who do you think you are?’

Replacing these old voices with updated expressions that better serve -who I am now- reseeds the ready compost of the past.

Start with the small voices.
Kindness here initiates the eventual blooming of the metaphorical blue lotus of self expression, located precisely at your throat chakra- the meeting ground of heart and head.


The Extraordinary state of being

11 Feb
silly frog/ janet balboa

I’m trying to be open, to be allowing, to be more about showing up experientially instead of intellectually or emotionally. Receiving and responding rather than judging and reacting.

I want to have tessellating, radiating thoughts that fill the world around me with joy, not add to despair. I think this is who I’m supposed to be. The essential me.

How’s that working for me? well? Ups and downs. Lots of days become hard; I get ground down into my past, longing for the ‘comfort’ of the way things were… I focus on experiences already spent; last year’s harvest; historical data… I keep dragging my past into the present moment, perpetuating my personal groundhog day of fear and disconnection. Wtf.

I flat-line; I rot in the stagnant waters of same old same old, I see that I am dying for something new, something real, some experience of being alive, addicted to the habits of my daily life, repeating the same choices, insanely hoping that something really BIG will grab me from the outside and make all the difference…

I ask myself, why I limit my potential, close off new possibilities, keep the magic at bay? I intellectually know better. But what is here, now, is far more subtle than intellect, here I am approaching the Soul. I don’t fully grasp my true creative super power, which is my being itself, me, being present, allows an opening between past and future – the stage upon which the Quantum Music of Life can flow into my divinely individualized consciousness.

I hold the tension between the past and future – I be in the only place I can ever be, here; now. The present moment, my precise location in space/time, the only space or time in which I can ever be located. I get this and I don’t get it. Cognitive dissonance… I know that this is a belief worth having, and I know the the cost is all my old beliefs. And they’re having a bit of a fuss to say the least. So there’s that.

This is what I’m working on. Not art per se, or classes or shows, but expansion of my consciousness. Getting my head wrapped around an understanding; a realization that is so gorgeously, deliciously, tantalizingly brand spanking new to me. This is the Source of those tessellating radiating energies. As old as the ancient of days, but so new to me in the sense that I resonate with it in a way that I never have before. Experientially.

and that’s new.

and that’s exciting.

That shit makes me want to get up in the morning… excited and ready for what will show up. That’s looking forward, not being in the future. That’s being fully grounded here; now, IN MY BODY. I know IT happens in the bodytemple of my localized consciousness. My feet on the ground, participating in my life, working on being present, fully participating in my life.

I want to experience the extraordinary, so I must become open to the extraordinary. I must be present to this moment, willing to expand beyond all that I am and welcome the unknown as the beautiful, mysterious lover who gathers me with wide arms full of comfort and receives my open breaking heart in exchange for the security of grace.

The willingness to experience grace, is the willingness to embrace the unknown, the willingness to create space for the radiance of pure potential to surge thru us with all the unicorn radiant beauty and exuberance of a newly formed universe. This is the power that longs to dance with us. The power of creation. Expression. What will my experience be when I am fully open to this way of experiencing belonging? idk. That’s what makes it scary AND exciting…idk. Yet setting my sails into the wind.

What I love most about teaching

15 Sep

Tools of the TradeWhen my student is beyond excited. When they have that look in their eyes. When I know that something clicked, an alignment occurred with their soul. We are together for an instant in this blissed out moment that feels like the entire universe exhaled an immense and satisfied ‘YES!’

Last week, Jim asked if he could take his picture home to work on. He was so excited to show his parents his work in progress. He’s been in class close to 16 weeks, developing his style; drawing, painting, penciling what he loves- reptiles, lizards and snakes. He is a walking encyclopedia on everything reptile. He is also a connoisseur of morning glories. His enthusiasm is contagious.

Recently, he’s adopted a new tool- Derwent Inktense Ink pencils. He uses an easel, inventing his style of working as he goes- experimenting with different papers, pencils, techniques…and last Thursday- BOOM! Lightning struck and he was hooked. The muse had him by the tail and it was just the coolest thing to witness. He grew exponentially, expanded beyond his old story of his ability and I was able to see THAT MOMENT.

‘Oh wow’ he said to himself, looking at his picture, his hands full of pencils and paintbrushes, ‘I love this. I love this.’

When class was over, as he’s walking out the door, I saw that he also had the case of the studio’s Derwent pencils. Around $150 worth of these amazing things, cradled to his chest.

So I’m like, ‘Er…you’re taking the pencils too?’ A bit hesitant to let these things walk out the door.

His face was absolutely shining, as he said so seriously – “Yes! I promise I’ll be careful with them. I promise! Is it ok if I borrow them, since no one else is using them?’

In that moment, I could see the monetary value of those pencils was absolutely nothing compared to the value that they had to him, this gifted 13-year-old artist who had just discovered an entire world of wonder and awe in a case of pencils. We had discussed the price of him buying the exact set earlier in class that day, so he knew what he was asking.

‘Yes.’ I said.

He didn’t even say thank you or goodbye, (which he does every time, because he’s a polite and gracious kid) he instead just turned and floated toward his mom, clutching the pencils and his drawing.

Is that not connection we’re all longing for? A direct pipeline to joy? This is what is sustainable. Find the things that expand you, that inspire you to become more of who you are. It’s not about ‘Am I ‘good’ at this or any other external marker. It’s about what fulfills you. And that is always an inside job. How do you find a way to let the radiance out? What is it that tickles your fancy, that you do just for the sheer delight of exploration and creativity?

‘Oh wow’ (you overhear your soul say), ‘I love this. I love this.’

And honestly, it feels exactly like the entire universe is exhaling an immense and satisfied ‘YES!’ -through you.

Ho’oponopono. Be Inspired.

13 Feb

Ho’oponopono.

It has the elegance of a mathematical equation, it’s cool water on a hot day; rain on a desert.

I’m sorry

Forgive me

Thank you

I love you

That’s it. That’s the ‘formula’. Start whispering it to yourself.

You’ll see you have a CHOICE:

  1. be eternally blind-sided by habitual reaction
  2. be eternal

The operating system is already here. Ho’oponopono is another beautiful way to position yourself to catch the big wave.

Change the World?

4 Dec

Can we change the world? Or is it our perspective that needs changing? I created this presentation to try to clarify for myself how my external world and internal world are elegantly fused and insanely intertwined. How change in ‘my’ world affects change in the ‘outside’ world…

As we change our mind, practice a higher vibration, fall in love with our intimate beautiful selves, I believe that the world will reflect our attitude right back to us. All things change when we do. 
I’ve used images and words to help shift conscious awareness from local to universal and back again. Let me know what you think. 
I’ve also included the meditation to be read at Slide 9 ( yep – old school- but what do you call it if not a ‘slide’?!) click the link at the very end for the meditation.

Please click the link below to watch my Change the World presentation:

https://www.canva.com/design/DADKNKM00T0/view

This was our discussion last night at class – a slide show on changing the world.

Whew…three weeks since our last Monday night class. Snow days, Chicago film screenings, lots of happenings! 

Great to be together in the same space again  : ) 

Much love,

janet

Coming Home.

17 May

I often find myself completely ego-absorbed – driven to produce, create, take action… make stuff happen. I am great at ‘doing’.  Out of the necessity to find balance, I have inadvertently become great at inner stillness. Sitting. Contemplating. Absorbing. Processing. Imagining. Allowing my separated soul and body time to sit face to face, hand in hand and catch up with each other, blending back together.  Time to become whole; become One.

When I need to act, my action is balanced; centered, coming from harmony. From here, intuition, a sense of rightness and my feelings help shape and inform my proven ability and delight in taking action. Action now imbued with a sense of possibility, wonder, delight, adventure, and hope. So much different from the good old days, where my heavily armored ego, trotted off on its own, busily weighing up its narrow and self-obsessed options of fight or flight.

I applaud and commend my ego – all these years it has fought the battles for me, engaged, retreated, always ready, never complaining about the poor nourishment or dismal conditions it suffered through.  I thank you. I release you.

I imagine two thrones – one for my ego, where it now sits, resplendent in its strength, honor, and might. A beautiful, proud warrior. A warrior who has little use for armor or weaponry. A warrior skilled in the hard-won arts of diplomacy, compassion, poetry and self-love. Passionate. Alive. Whole.

The second throne occupied by the Queenly counterpart to this Warrior King- nurturing, encompassing, soothing, allowing. restoring. Cool water on a hot day. The Queen, my inner feminine, the ground of being on which my inner masculine acts. Reunited with her lover/husband. Wildly passionate, years of waiting collapse into this moment/ every moment. Fueling new life. New hope. New possibilities.

I intend a metaphor that allows me to express the feeling of my masculine and feminine natures functioning as one, as an equality, as a harmony. This does not mean that I do not fight, or do not pick up my weapons… it means that my fight and flight options have been infinitely expanded, tempered and balanced with a love, care and respect for myself, which transfers to all my brothers and sisters, unconditionally. I have infinite ability to respond. I am losing my ability to react. My ego is gratefully no longer running the show alone. My Warrior has returned with a Hero’s welcome.

It takes time to nurture this relationship with oneself – years of fighting, disagreeing, slogging it out on the battlefield of life. The day the Warrior returns, the day the Hero knows his glory days are over- is full of mixed emotions. Any sea change in life can suddenly find you washed up on a distant shore, ready to stop fighting, stop all the running; longing for home.

Coming home means learning to find new glory, new adventure in the person you have become, getting down to the business of living the life you find directly in front of you, to slowly but surely find that the life you have is exactly the life that was meant for you. You learn to meet yourself again and again, loving more and more who you see, battle scars, heartaches, regrets and all. Allowing the inner feminine to pick up the broken and aching pieces, cradle the inner child, comfort and soothe you into wholeness, until you can return to the field and not see a battle, but a life of blessing.

Mysteriously it is no longer about us, but about others, acquiring becomes less important than giving, fixing, understanding, mending, listening.  A new life unfolds. Full of the adventure and mystery of the unknown- in a world full of possibilities, anything can happen. Anything can surprise and delight. Nothing is locked down tight. Nothing is for certain. Except love. That is the only certainty;  the only possibility open.

I feel together now, in a way that I never could have imagined- heart and soul, body and spirit, mind and matter. The polarities have softened, lost definition. To the extent that I can envision myself as one, I can envision the earth and all creatures as one. There is no ‘other’, no thing to fight (except myself, which becomes silly.) I am done fighting. I have taken up residence where I have always belonged – in the House of Belonging. Allowing the Unameable Mystery of Love / God, /The Divine /my Higher Self /Being etc. to stock the pantry, turn down the covers, roll up the rug, and light the fire – anticipating those moments when I remember to return home.

Coming home becomes easier as I learn to accept myself, accept that I intimately belong. I am undoubtedly cared for. (Despite how I act and sometimes feel.) I am learning to live out of my new reality- less fear, more joy. I still catch myself, my ego poised for the fight; on red alert. But it’s more like a bad dream and in a few seconds I can wake myself up, grateful for the choice. Glad to find myself home, safe and warm in my own bed.

A dull person will suddenly become interesting…

29 Mar

Faeries-janetbalboa‘A dull person will suddenly become interesting…’ A writing prompt from The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood. I read it as I sit down to write this. I insert it in my post as the title. Trusting that it has shown up for a reason. I’m into magic like that. Coincidence you might say.

I’ve spent the last couple days in the dirt weeding gardens, and finally, I think, winning a perennial battle I’ve had with the long grasses that keep popping up unwanted through my lilies. Unannounced, I drift into a state of being where my doing arises out of what needs to be done next and nothing more. Thoughts arise, are acted on and then dissolve. I am me, but also larger, more conscious than me. This is what I imagine people in deep prayer, meditation, or the athletic ‘zone’ experience. I feel this when I’m drawing as well. No attachment to thoughts/things = bliss. I feel connected to whatever IS, without a need to define it, bottle it or claim myself sole dispenser of it. I am honored and delighted by its Presence. This is a nice space to be in, this space of just being. I could, in fact, happily stay here forever, as Eckhart Tolle must have felt sitting on his bench for weeks, just amazed by the lovely spectacle of life. As much as I try to, I can’t stay in this frame of mind. As I leave the garden, my ordinary experience of time returns and I find myself slowly separating from heart wide open Presence to the pale cramped residency in my head.  As I return, I’m just in time to hear the voice in my head say ‘…and I’m telling you, day dreaming will get you nowhere. This bliss is childish, non-productive – it’s time spent with the faeries!’

My little inner critic, who makes up for dullness with vigilance, who hates everything I do and feels compelled to inform me how rotten it is/I am is eager to share his view. I’m not as attached to this voice as I once was, and curiously, I find it often gives me many far more interesting things to wonder about. In this case, faeries in general and more specifically, Irish fairy tales.

In which we find that one day spent with the fairy folk is the equivalent to the passing of 100 years in human time. Hang out with the faeries at your own considerable risk. I think of another 100 years’ period – the length of time Sleeping Beauty slept after she pricked her dainty yet cursed finger on the spindle. (The humble spindle, the women’s wand, a woman’s highly regarded possession, considered a symbol of contemplation, and of woman’s powerful gift to the family; the art of weaving being equivalent in import to men’s heroic warring in the ancient world) That aside, her father, The King, had all the spindles in the land burned, while in Ireland, the Sidhe, the once mighty people of the Goddess Danu, have been relegated to whimsical faeries who dwell in the Irish Otherworld.

And so, happily ever after, never again can this idle fairy dream-time threaten our reasonable existence.

Whatever.

Walt Disney spoke of the Magic Moment; that eternal second when your heart stands still in absolute wonder and awe. Joyce called it aesthetic arrest. Campbell called it Bliss. You feel it when you’re in love. Religions fight for the right to get you in touch with it. Millions of meditating man and woman hours, currencies worldwide and vast amounts of energy are spent on developing mindfulness. Awareness and Enlightenment are pursued hotly as worthy goals. Creatives search after the Muse and creativity almost religiously. And yet this Mystery, this place of bliss, of Eternity, where time stands still, this space is embracing us, holding us every moment of every day. It isn’t a goal or a destination or an attitude.  It’s just the natural state of being. It just is. Which leads me to wonder…what would happen if my inner critic, who works a lot of overtime, were joined by my inner feminine?

I feel the hundred years ending. The beloved is waking up. She doesn’t look so happy.

And suddenly, magically – you might say ‘in the twinkling of an eye’ –  I sense that my exceedingly dull inner voice is about to become very, very interesting.

 

 

 

the face of a mermaid

16 May

And it worked…. again. Thank God. So now I can heave a sigh of relief, and lay off the coffee a little, because if I mess up the fish, only their momma’s gonna know. You mess up a human face-well, that’s a little more problematic. I ended up using a different photo reference, rather than my daughter, because the picture I wanted to use was hard to see enough detail. This picture is for an Odyssey of the Mind fund-raiser. One of my students, Olivia, suggested it. Once it’s finished, I’ll  scan it into Photoshop and ultimately it will go into a poster via InDesign. I’ll add words to it…etc.

My mom, Sharon to you, stopped by this morning, observed  my progress and just said “she looks so sad…”

Yeah…

Sad or introspective? I would imagine modern mermaids theoretically get pretty introspective/angry as we systematically overfish and otherwise destroy their habitat. I just read COD, a biography of the fish that changed the world, by Mark Kurlansky, so I’m a bit touchy about this subject. It’s worth reading. I hear his other books are just as good.

COD is a delightful read, quirky, interesting and unbelievable in the portrayal of how shortsighted yet optimistic we humans can be. Not knocking anyone- it’s just overwhelming to consider what we are doing to our planet.

Self love. The only solution. So easy to say, so hard to do.

More on that another day. Costco calls. And daughter #2’s final term paper…

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