I found myself alone on a high mountaintop, surrounded by sheets of rippling white fire. I was alone with the divine, the solitary path of the soul no one else can walk for another. I felt my spirit begin to soften, a surprising gentleness in this colossal furnace.

I have been casting gold and silver all week, for many years in fact, and never realized the metal might feel softness as the heat consumes its form. The intensity of the burning would seem to override softness, but that is not so.

The gold first is bathed in the light of the torch, changing color but not form. It grows red and then gradually loses its shape as it slumps into a glowing yellow molten mass. That molten mass becomes more brilliant, and then flows and moves like quicksilver.

When the torch is removed, the molten, easy flowing metal is centrifugally thrown into a prepared flask, a cavity that creates the new transformed shape the metal will cool and hold.

But now I know from within the divine fire itself that the spirit softens as form begins to burn away.

I offered everything I love the most to this all-consuming fire. This was no casual surrender, not my earlier surrender of that which I love to divine service. Divine service can leave the forms intact, but this required total surrender.

I yielded all that I love and silently watched as it grew incandescent in the fire and the forms dissolved in the light, changing forevermore, the old forms never to be seen again.

The fire, too, was consuming me. I became running quicksilver, a new creation of spirit, my form still only known to the divine heart.

The true meaning of Pluto in Capricorn caught me. Pluto is annihilation or transformation and frequently combines them in unimaginable power. Capricorn is traditional structure and form.

I am annihilated and I am transformed into a new form not yet created, a form still held secret in the molten fire, a gift from the divine heart itself.

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Surrender to the Divine

While the weather remains mild, I know winter is coming. The garden is filled with small poppy seedlings that will not survive the winter. I look at their green leaves peeking through the litter of mulch and wish I could see the flowers they promise in their full glory.

But, as I said, winter is coming. I shall have to wait through the snows and wind for new seedlings, ones that were not as precipitous as these, to see the next season of poppies.

So I shall undoubtedly paint poppies this winter. I think I must come by this great enthusiasm for poppies quite naturally.

You see, my grandfather, Otto Lanshaw, painted the scene at the top of this article. That is the original Lanshaw homestead in Michigan as it looked when my mother was a little girl growing up in the poppies.

I also grew up there, but the poppies were mostly gone by then, overcome by the grasses and thistles. Sometimes a valiant little plant would burst forth with a determined bloom, but only occasionally.

I have more than made up for their loss by growing thousands of them every summer here in Montana. These delicate blossoms open at dawn and show their incredible fresh colors for a short time before the breezes take the petals wandering.

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Poppies Yesterday and Tomorrow

Errant pixels strolled across my computer screen and vaporized without a trace, perhaps taking a few stray html tags with them. Notes on assorted scraps of paper teetered beside the monitor, threatening to slide onto the keyboard or floor.

Sometimes this room has been so crowded I felt more like I wore it than entered it. The current level of chaos has made it an ill-fitting garment indeed.

But, at long last, the rebuild of the RiverStone Gallery website is up and running. I sit here in the litter left behind, feeling both exhausted and relieved.

More than 200 pages complete with slideshows of artwork, cross links, a brand new attached blog, page redirects, and god knows what all are online at last. The process of creating them took so long I forgot I might someday emerge from it all back into real life.

A light dusting of snow on the ground announces that fall has disappeared during the project. So I sit, as the shortened day slips into night far too quickly, and wonder what I will do next.

Chasing gremlins with a broom through the website took two or three weeks before their havoc subsided. I have dreamed of html in my sleep.

Perhaps tonight I will dream of cold snow against a black sky, and in the morning pick up a paintbrush dipped in deep red paint.

Post from: Energies of Creation

After the Massive Project

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.

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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.

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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.

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Carnival of Creative Growth #29