Have you ever dreamed of wearing neon red trout shoes to a party? Somehow it had not crossed your mind? What could inspire such an outlandish concept?

Poetry, for one thing. Yes, poetry.

My husband Bern wrote a poem to his sister some twenty years ago. She saved it and then forgot about it. A few months ago she ran across it and once again read the line that refers to “neon red trout shoes.”

The oddest things can be an epiphany for Linda, and this was a big one. She realized Bern absolutely had to have a pair of those shoes for his birthday this summer. Her husband Greg agreed and they embarked upon on online search for trout shoes.

It is astonishing how great a lack of trout shoes exists in the fashion world. The category is an overlooked niche for sure.

Undeterred, Linda decided she had to create the neon red trout shoes herself. She purchased a pair of Converse shoes in her own size as the test version. She explored materials and a variety of design concepts and then transformed the plain shoes into a spectacular pair of neon red trout shoes.

Inspired by the success of the initial experiment, she bought a much larger pair of Converse that would fit Bern and set about creating his birthday shoes.

Bern’s birthday party was held at the Beartooth Fly Fishing Lodge near town. Fortunately Bern’s brothers, sister, and other family members were here from all over the country so they were able to join our friends for the party.

Linda kept her own pair of trout shoes hidden until she gave Bern his present. The shoes were a total surprise as Bern did not even remember the poem that started the project.

Bern and Linda both posed wearing the fabulous footwear. The fishing guides who attended say they expect to see him on the river fly fishing in those shoes.

So, just out of curiosity, what might you offer for such an incredible pair of neon red trout shoes? Obviously Bern is not going to part with his special shoes, but it could be fun to hear what unique barter ideas you might have.

This post is part of the Problogger group writing project. You might have a great time exploring the other submissions!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Post from: Energies of Creation

Wildest Party Shoes Ever Created!

Rick, I would say that you and I are both by nature mentally driven. Anyone who is having an existential crisis and pauses to list a host of creative ideas certainly fits that category. Not that there is anything wrong with a host of creative ideas, I find them a blast myself.

However, the clue is that you are trying to think your way out of a hole created by thinking in the first place. Notice it getting deeper?

The mind is a great tool, but that is just what it is, a great tool. Handing the steering wheel of one’s life to a great tool has some severe drawbacks, which you have been noticing. The steering wheel really belongs in the hands of one’s own heart centered awareness.

Does this mean being squishy emotional? No. The heart accesses a wider range of information in a different manner than the mind. As such, it is in better position to choose a path that is holistically satisfying.

This does not mean the heart ignores the mind. The heart is informed by the mind as the mind does what it does well. But the heart is informed in other ways as well. The mind is only one tool, not the be all end all.

By now your mind may be looking around wondering where the heck this heart centered awareness is, or if this wacky lady is just talking through her hat.

Our culture is heavily slanted towards developing a mentally driven approach. Those with sharp minds easily embrace it. An integrated mental/emotional awareness is lost in the process.

Different things can hinder opening a heart centered awareness. Massive amounts of stored pain certainly hinder it. If one looks at one’s heart and sees a thorny thicket of pain, the first inclination is to slam the door shut on that direction.

Diving into the thorns can lead to wallowing in pain and misery, an unattractive path indeed.

Sometimes we just need a large machete. Leap into the thorns and go straight through them to experience and clear the stored pain. A gritty process, but one that leads us past the pain. What lies beyond is a grace filled heart centered awareness, to state the obvious here.

In other cases, the heart does not appear to be a thorny thicket of pain, but maybe is simply elusive altogether. No skills have been developed to work with it and it is missing in conscious action as a result.

In any event, get out the machete and deal with the thorny thicket if necessary. Then discover how the heart works and how to access the wisdom it can provide when retrieved from the thorns or the closet into which it has been stuffed.

Honor your mind but learn to keep it within its appropriate tasks. Honor your heart and learn to listen to it.

Only in your own healed and fully functioning heart will you find a sustaining motivation and direction for your life. Rick, I wish you well in the adventure of changing an unsatisfying pattern in your life. May you access your own deeper wisdom and joy in the process!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Post from: Energies of Creation

How to Get Unstuck from a Long Term Pattern in Life

My plein air painter friend was having a frustrating time by the lake. Everything that could go wrong with his painting simply went wrong, repeatedly.

In exasperation, he began to scrape the paint off the board yet again. One of the many geese in the area wandered up beside him but he busily continued scraping paint.

Imagine his surprise when the miffed goose bit him in the butt!

He turned and looked down at the goose. He rather liked the lines and color of the annoying creature.

He turned his full attention to the goose and began to paint it rather than the overworked landscape that had been distressing him. The goose refrained from any more biting.

This particular artist now has a whole series of relaxed and playful goose paintings underway.

I think this is a great example of how a new opportunity sometimes has to bite us in the butt to get our attention.

In my friend’s case, he ended up having fun with painting again. Now when he paints landscapes, they also have that playful spirit to them, which he had gradually lost until that day by the lake.

Maybe it would be good to just notice the geese without having to have one bite us in the butt. What interesting new geese are showing up in your life right now?

This post is included in the Carnival of Creative Growth, Personal Development Articles, and the Carnival of Self Mastery. Each includes other interesting article you may enjoy browsing, so have a look!

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Post from: Energies of Creation

Noticing Opportunity

Fires of Creation is my latest painting. As you can see, I did not wait until winter to paint my purple iris that bloomed so recently in the garden. Those luscious purples and the glowing inner light kept beckoning to me in mind’s eye. I simply had to paint the flower now.

After painting the roosters I find myself loosening up with flowers. You can see in the detail below how I chose to splatter paint along with my usual brushwork. I can get pretty enthusiastic about making the splatters, but it is not yet so extreme that raingear is recommended wear in the gallery while I am painting.

The splattering, by the way, has prevented me from cordial handshakes with people visiting the gallery. I get far more paint than usual on my hands with this process. Ah, well, I will do nearly anything to achieve that luminous glow of dawn in a flower!

This original painting in acrylic on canvas 30″ x 36″ and the limited edition giclee prints are available at RiverStone Gallery.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Post from: Energies of Creation

Fires of Creation

I never had the slightest desire to paint a rooster. Then one day I was standing in my friend’s greenhouse that is dug part way into the ground. At eye level I saw a grand rooster walk up to the window, the setting sun behind him illuminating his comb and wattles.

I gasped and knew I had to paint some roosters.

Fortunately for me, my friend has a flock of about 200 chickens with several different kinds of roosters to guard them as they forage. I happily hang out with them and have been doing rooster paintings as a result.

The first one is Mardi Gras Rooster, 40” x 40” acrylic on canvas. I am showing you a detail below so you can see that I have gotten a bit wild with the colors.

The next rooster is Bird of Fire 32” x 36” acrylic on canvas. He has a fabulous folded comb. And, I might add, a quite determined manner about him. Some people find him intimidating but others choose him as their favorite.

The final rooster is Blue Lightning Bird, a smaller acrylic painting on a 18” x 24” canvas. He is quite the dandy.

Since everyone is used to me painting large dramatic flowers, after we put Mardi Gras Rooster in the front window of the gallery, people started coming inside and asking me, “What’s up with the roosters?!?” But they are delighted, so all is well.

Art, like anything else, evolves with experience. All winter I knew a new look was incubating as I worked on a myriad of computer projects without painting. Sometimes we have to pause to allow something new in our lives to birth.

I have quite enjoyed the process of discovering what was brewing all that time. As in any new birth, there have been some pangs in the process, but this one has been fairly graceful. Having experienced a lot of turbulent growth in the past, I quite appreciate the manner of these paintings emerging.

Now I have begun my iris painting I mentioned in an earlier post. It, too, is a departure from the past as I am painting it more like the roosters. We will see how it turns out. It looks good so far.

These rooster paintings and giclee prints from them are available at RiverStone Gallery.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Post from: Energies of Creation

Rooster Paintings

Then I met Mohanji. I thought we were going to have someone come set up a fire walk, and instead Mohanji came to share Agnihotra with us. I still have no desire to be someone’s disciple or to search out gurus, but I learned a lot spending time with this man. He genuinely exemplifies the qualities a guru is supposed to have. He is spiritually dedicated to his work and is a man of powerful humility and compassion.

Mohanji has an effective teaching style, which I watched in action in our group conversations at the Diamond J Ranch in the mornings before our CCT teacher trainings. I loved his way of correcting anyone who quit paying attention, the approach Gia calls Guru Smackdown.

He has a way of posing questions to make people think similar to the training I received from my father. However, unlike my father, Mohanji generally had one specific answer in mind that would be the only acceptable reply. I strongly suspect he sometimes would change that in mid-stream just to keep people off balance so new ideas could enter more easily.

But what puzzled me the most was his dedication to the Agnihotra ceremony itself. He will be the first to say that once you reach a certain level you do not even need it, but he completely shapes his life around this ceremony.

What can be accomplished by burning cow dung and ghee (clarified butter) at sunrise and sunset while chanting Sanskrit mantras that cannot be accomplished by meditation or other methods? Yet he is adamant that this ceremony is essential.

After attending his ceremonies I definitely felt their deep power. In fact, I could feel them even when I was not physically present for them and absorbed in other activities.

Some of the answer began to emerge at Yellowstone when we went to the edge of the caldera, our potential supervolcano lying in wait, and he performed a major healing fire ceremony there. Despite the lack of discipline in our group during the ceremony, it was still a potent ceremony nonetheless.

Discipline is a necessity for spiritual development or for mastery of anything really. As an artist this necessity is ever present for me. In jewelry designing I often work directly in wax with an alcohol lamp and dental tools, working with the cooling cycle after leaving the flame with the tool. This is a demanding technique few use, preferring the less precise but far easier electric wax pens.

Watching Mohanji tend the cow dung and ghee fire during his ceremonies reminded me of the jewelry work I have done with wax. After enough years of practice it becomes an effortless rhythm, and he certainly had mastered that rhythm with his fires. A couple of other people had their own fires and they lacked his degree of grace in handling the fire.

Tending the fire requires physical engagement with the process. It also requires an alert attentiveness. The mind is further engaged with the Sanskrit mantras. In my experience the mind definitely needs to be focused properly to keep it from causing trouble.

His explanations of the Sanskrit mantras also showed the emotional component of the process. They had a loving, compassionate, and sharing quality to them that surely would engage the emotions as one chanted the mantras.

The entire ceremonial process was intended as a spiritual practice, so the spiritual nature was fundamentally involved. Combining physical, mental, emotional, and mental energies into one precise endeavor is a powerful process indeed.

I see why he would immediately reject the idea that one could work with him by doing meditation instead of the fire ceremony at the specified sunrise and sunset times.

But however powerful it is to engage physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energies simultaneously, it is still a long slow process. I do not have thirty years to spend following that particular path, which is easily what it could take.

So the question that lingers for me is how I use what I have seen on my own path. How do I achieve that singular alignment of physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy in such a potent form? I have components of it from my art work and healing energy work but they are not integrated in that manner.

Just being in Mohanji’s prescence changed me. I found myself less resistant to changes I find unwelcome, such as the recent foolish destruction of some wonderful old trees because they cause a few snowdrifts in winter.

Likewise, seeing how he works with the Agnihotra ceremony also changed me. The process continues to work through me, so I am waiting to see what crystallizes from the time I spent with him combined with the CCT teacher explorations of healing energy at the ranch.

Post from: Energies of Creation

The Unexpected Guru

So please select your finest writing and submit for the next edition! In the meantime, please enjoy this selection of work on a variety of topics.

Creative Projects

Gia Combs-Ramirez (the new host for upcoming editions) presents Ten Days with a Guru. This article begins a series on the challenging process of including a guru and fire ceremonies in an altogether different group training.

Lexi Sundell (current host about to take a breather) presents Purple Iris and Paintings. She discusses growing the iris as inspiration for paintings, showing an image of the blooms.

dpendzich presents Character Animation Basics – Simple Animation Concepts saying, “Read my article and learn about character animation.”

Creative Personal Growth

Amanda Moore presents 106 Organizations That Are Changing the World - Are you helping?. The title is self explanatory.

David B. Bohl presents 5 Signs You?re a Pleaser and What to Do About It saying, “Wanting to be a well-liked becomes a problem when we put so much emphasis on how others view us, that we lose sight of our own identities and what’s really in our best interest.”

Scott.Goolsby presents Why Journaling Rocks my Socks saying, “Benefits of journaling.”

Mitesh presents A child in You!!. Short and to the point.

Gary Evans presents Case Study of a Manifestation That Won’t Work. He dissects a failed process.

Creative Thinking

David Godot presents Boost Your Creativity For Good With This Long-Term Strategy saying, “This article describes a long-term strategy for boosting creativity and developing a habit for creative thinking.” This article makes some good points but overlooks the fact that alcohol only causes people think they are coming up with brilliant new ideas instead of actually helping them do so.

Many thanks to the writers who submitted to this edition. Please link back to this page to help promote readership for everyone. Stumbling, Digging, etc. are most welcome as well.

For the next edition submit your blog article using our carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: carnival of creative growth, blog carnival, creativity, personal growth, group growth, business growth, creative thinking.

Post from: Energies of Creation

Carnival of Creative Growth #29

Spring is late and confused in Montana this year. Everything is about a month behind normal, if anything can be said to be normal these days. However, my purple irises are in peak bloom now.

The tubers were a gift from an artist friend. He had not divided his iris in years so they quit blooming from overcrowding. As he shaped up his property to put it on the market, he ended up with a large surplus of this particular iris and I was the lucky recipient.

This is the first year they have been enthusiastic about blooming here and I am ecstatic. I want to paint more of them and now I have a yard full of the beauties!

The light was lovely on them this morning. We had high thin clouds providing a variety of lighting conditions. I thoroughly enjoyed photographing the flowers from all sorts of angles.

On cold January days I will use these photos to remember the garden as I prepare to paint my irises. Slideshows of several hundred glorious iris will be the perfect launch for those winter paintings.

You can view Fires of Creation, a new painting from this variety of iris.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Post from: Energies of Creation

Purple Iris and Paintings

So please enjoy reading the following articles chosen for their quality and variety. See you again in a couple of days!

Creative Business Growth

Howard Ditkoff presents Josiah Leming: Brilliant, Haunting Music & Web 2.0 Drive American Idol Castoff’s Prototypical Success Story, saying, “Despite his exclusion from American Idol’s Top 24, Josiah Leming’s brilliant, emotional songs and touching backstory have moved thousands. The teenage dropout, who lived in his car for a year, is a prime example of how revolutionary “bottom-up” forces and technologies - such as Web 2.0 and e-commerce - are challenging traditional hierarchical models of talent discovery and promotion.

Creative Personal Growth

Anmol Mehta presents Learn How to Meditate | Beginner’s Meditation Class, saying, “Learn how to meditate from this popular online class, offered for free on the Mastery of Meditation website.”

Lexi Sundell presents Commitment to Soul Purpose, discussing the process involved in surrender to soul purpose and the aftermath.

Charles H. Green presents How to Increase Trust by Getting Off Your “S” saying, “Self-orientation can be the biggest obstacle to happiness and good relations with others, because when you start thinking of other people first, you tend to do the right thing instinctively.”

Sheila Danzig presents Fact and Fantasy: What is Distance Learning?with some cautions about online degrees.

Gary Evans presents Love Music? Listen To Music That Loves You. He discusses Emoto’s work with water in the context of music.

SteveW presents Facing a terminal illness - Three Life Lessons from Randy Pausch. Be sure to take the time to watch the video in this one!

Alex Blackwell presents 23 Heartfelt Reasons I Will Always be Faithful to My Wife

David B. Bohl presents How to Change Your Life ? Instead of Letting Life Change You saying, “Instead of making conscious choices, you may discover that you’re living a life shaped primarily by change rather than by choice.”

Creative Projects

Gia Combs-Ramirez presents What’s Going to Happen Between Now and 2012? She offers an intuitive energy reading of the coming years.

Michael Snyder presents Radical Depopulation Of The Earth - The Solution To Mankind’s Problems?. He examines an argument supported in surprising quarters.

Creative Thinking

A.Lee presents The Artist’s Mother saying, “In a spirit of honoring motherhood, this article looks at how artists have depicted both their own mothers as well as the archetypal mother. Beautifully illustrated with work by world-famous artists: Picasso, Van Gogh, Hockney, Haring, etc.”

Metaliphe presents The Artist’s Way and We Are All Artists saying, “How is consciousness expanded? How do we become something more tomorrow than we are today? How do we tap into feelings, thoughts, inspirations, and dreams that previously were unavailable to us?”

Many thanks to the writers who submitted to this edition. Please link back to this page to help promote readership for everyone. Stumbling, Digging, etc. are most welcome as well.

For the next edition submit your blog article using our carnival submission form. Past posts can be found on our blog carnival index page.

Technorati tags: carnival of creative growth, blog carnival, creativity, personal growth, group growth, business growth, creative thinking.

Post from: Energies of Creation

Carnival of Creative Growth #28

One of the biggest struggles you can encounter is the process of reaching this decision to surrender to a higher purpose, to your own soul purpose. This is not an easy matter for anyone.

In the course of human evolution we develop ourselves, usually gradually. After developing a solid and effective ego to handle the necessities of living a physical life, the soul is delighted. Now it is time to do what we came here to do in the first place.

The ego, however, is perfectly content to continue without handing over the steering wheel. The ego really thinks it is in charge and this illusion starts the battle of all battles. The inner battle may appear to be external struggles with other people, as it is projected outward into life.

To the developed ego, surrender to the soul is death pure and simple, so the resistance is total. The soul does not surrender to the ego, so this battle may continue for a long and increasingly painful time.

Eventually the denial of the ego does give way to the beautiful and life affirming surrender to the soul purpose. It is not the fearsome death the ego expected, but truly a birth into a new level of life.

It is easy to assume that once surrender has occurred, all is well going forward with soul purpose. Won’t that bring a path of roses and joy?

But what birth is without its pangs and difficulties? What birth does not signify a new beginning, a new cycle of learning?

This particular new beginning turns life upside down and inside out. Longstanding relationships may fall away. The line of work may change completely. Everything is thrown up into the air and comes back down in unknown and unexpected patterns.

These changes are a death of the former way of life indeed. Sometimes the outer reality does not actually appear to change a great deal, but the inner changes are as enormous and transforming as though every external detail had turned into its opposite.

Navigating this set of challenges is demanding. You get to practice surrender on a continual basis. It is not as though we surrender once and it is done forever. It is more a matter of learning to flow with surrender continuously.

As with riding a bicycle, it is hardest at first and then becomes effortless grace. Most of us who have chosen surrender to our soul purpose are unevenly finding our way to the effortless grace stage.

What are your experiences with this process? What would you like to share with others? What questions would you like to ask?

This post is concludes the Change of Being Series begun on Earth Day. The prior posts were Self Responsibility and The Unvarnished Truth.

Copyright © Lexi Sundell 2008. All Rights Reserved.

Post from: Energies of Creation

Commitment to Soul Purpose