11/24/2017 0 Comments Writing is an Act of Abundance - Join us for #5for5BrainDump - starts Monday, Nov. 27Writing is an act of abundance. You move your fingers on the keyboard, you allow your pencil to move across the page, the world becomes a better place.
Naturally this is even more true when we come from a place of consciousness, a space of awareness that each time we open to the messages we are meant to be speaking more widely, more largely, more openly, our energy is shifted higher and higher and we discover – so much. So much. When I write, my head clears. The weightiness of responsibility that says “dammit you have a deadline” becomes, “You know what? You’ve got this!” The ugliness of “I can’t believe I forgot again,” becomes, “I created this. I had this new thought. I remembered…. And because of that, I am stronger. Sometimes writing takes us down a dark road and fear is turned on. We stop believing writing is abundance because we briefly forget the dark woods are just a stop on our walk down life’s path. I know, that sounds trite and cliché because sometimes trite and cliché are given those titles because they are so ever present. One more thing, perhaps the most important: writing is an act of abundance because when I write my observations, feelings, desires and all that is so for me in that present moment, I allow more growth, more joy, more abundance in the next moments to join me.
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11/17/2017 0 Comments How are You a Messenger of Wonder?Today we continue with writing inspired by the Diane Ackerman Poem "Praise for My Destroyer"...
I offer myself as a messenger of wonder – How do I do this? I open my mouth. I open my mouth and I speak what is in front of me. I open my mouth and I speak the details of what is in front of me – the lines, the light, the way the lines and light reach back to me and fill my hand with energy that ignites my muse and makes my fingers push the keys that become these words and further the process in an infinite loop de loop when someone else lifts her or his or their chin and sees… oh, the plug.. oh the chord into the plug that makes the light turn on. The switch. I hear the click, I see the light turn on and suddenly I notice… And the a-ha’s flow because people say “I never saw it like that, I never thought of it like that, I never… until now and suddenly the plug becomes an object of wonder and curiosity and we appreciate those who created the plug and the lamp and our heartbeat joins their heartbeat and the collective heartbeat and…. In what ways am I currently a messenger of wonder? Here. Now. This. You. Look. Listen. Translate. Taste. Touch. Cry when you feel it, laugh when you feel it. Feel free and stand with it, allow yourself to hold onto that fearful moment with the same gentle tenderness as you hold onto a first kiss or a first bite of the most incredible taste ever (pesto, dark chocolate, pear brandy come to mind) and then….. recognize the divinity of that moment and…. How would I like to further my message of wonder in the world? Increase the people I interact with and who appreciate what I am up to… invite them in. Cherish their them-ness. Reflect this beauty of humanity so the static will be silence and the pure breath and tone and light and harmony and dissonance and choking and relaxing back into presence flows…. Right now, as a message of wonder in my world I choose to….continue. (Join us for #5for5BrainDump: Read the blog here for prompts and samples.) 11/16/2017 0 Comments Giving & Receiving with Abundant GraceI have spent too many holiday seasons in a bad mood.
I just wanted to put that out there before I went much further. It is the reality, unfortunately. I am – thankfully – more than able to make “it” better starting here and starting now. Lately I have been on a bit of a manifesting adventure. I used to be a quite accomplished manifesting queen. I would think something and bam, it would appear. I got a bit inflated about it even. One might say, anyway. Until that-crash-I-discuss-I-think-entirely-too-much. “Wait a second!” the other side of me says. “You had a lot of bad stuff happen due to no fault of your own, it would have slowed anyone else down so stop apologizing for it, please.” So let’s just put it like these: I’m sort of out of practice as a manifesting queen and I am more than ready to start having more miraculous holidays. When #5for5BrainDump begins we’ll be just out of Thanksgiving here in the United States, the holiday whose primary focus is gratitude, not shopping or sports in my world. Gratitude is an all-year-round gift and a marvelous teacher of abundance. It came to me like a slowly growing ringing of bells this morning: Giving and Receiving – the infinite loop de loop of abundance. THAT will be the foundation of our writing with love in community in the end of November and December. How exciting is this? The bells get louder. It is VERY exciting beloveds. More details (times, places, etc) are forthcoming. Please please please mark your calendar and even more importantly, set your intention to join us now. My Gift to You! A continually transforming life, continuing… with love breathed from me to you with great joy. It is such an honor, such a blessing. THANK YOU! 11/2/2017 0 Comments Yes, It Is a.... (fill in your blank & read mine here because) Writing Happens... when we Stay the Course with #5for5BrainDumpI could easily get lost running down the rabbit hole of “Where did I first hear the expression of “Staying the course” and why, after all these years, am I still saying it?
Was it “Dead Poet’s Society”? I google quotes and I see carpe diem and seize the day and a bunch of Thoreau and Whitman and no stay the course and I realize I can lose time searching AND I may choose instead to……follow my own prompt so… Today I will choose to stay the course” because I believe wholeheartedly the world is waiting for our words. The world is waiting for me to finish my projects and launch them well. Not to launch them with attachment but to launch them with all the vigor I have available to me. There are women sitting in their living rooms wondering what they might do differently. “How may my child be helped?” They watch their five-year-old son struggle and then hold him close and he has no problems or issues at home. The administrators tell her she’s a bad parent. There is clucking of tongues when she walks by even though these same people praise her for the parent she is with her daughters. She stops smiling. Fear sits above her eyebrows. She sequesters herself at home so she won’t feel compelled to make excuses. The day comes when she discovers autism and her mother confesses she had suspected it (and hadn’t told the now crying mother-daughter). I will choose to stay the course when I look at photos of me from then and the photos of me from now – still scared when the school calls in the morning – yet filled with years of successes. That flicker of fear doesn’t evaporate. I’ve just learned how to negotiate it better. (Most of the time, anyway.) The world is waiting for our words of instruction, of hope, of dreams left in the dank cellar and dreams brought into the light of day. It is a wonderful world – I won’t search that quote right now either because I need YOU to be reading this sooner rather than later. Secondary prompt: One way I will stay the course with my writing is… 1.Review the content I have and read the first draft aloud. Set aside a time and space where I may do that reflectively as well as critically. (And another way is…) 2.Create space to google for appropriate quotes and stretch out tips and stories accordingly. (and another way is…) 3.Keep other mini-writing-projects at the ready so I may finish this one AND be filled in the moment with other projects. I am NOT a one-at-a-time writer and I know this may block me because I try to do like others and somehow make myself wrong. Once again I forgot to set my timer – which is sort of a block metaphor in and of itself. I won’t get tangled in that though, I will move on to publishing because - The world is waiting for our words of instruction, of hope, of dreams left in the dank cellar and dreams brought into the light of day. It is a wonderful world. 10/31/2017 0 Comments I Choose to Engage With.... Day 2 #5for5BrainDump Writing A Mind is NOT a vessel to be filled, it is a fire to be....Now I choose to be engaged by….my work, my precious life work – what I can control is my output, my willingness to step into this precise moment and create something of meaning that compels others to be more clear and more exhilarated with and by their own experiences.
Earlier I chose to be engaged by the process of decluttering. I made a trip to the dump – a sort of ritual for me with my friend, Cameron. We go to the dump almost weekly. I’ve been wanting to get rid of a lot of stuff that is no longer necessary or is in disrepair. Today I looked at what I was throwing away and I thought, “This is what my depression looks like. This is my depression made into form,” and in throwing it away and no longer allowing it to have space in my life, I felt a calm fall onto my shoulders. It was like when I get a massage, the gentle touch and the lifting of worries out of my body via conscious human interaction. We laughed on the way to the dump, my hands slightly scaly and we laughed more when we saw a historical marker seeming to mark nothing, anywhere and on my way to photographing it I thought I would stumble and then THAT could be marker. “Normal people don’t do this,” I giggled. “I can see it now! I called out to Cameron as I took a photo. “The new historical marker will say ‘this is the spot where the woman taking a photo of the historical marker to nowhere died trying to get back to the car.” Instead of saying “normal people don’t do this’ with disdain, I said it with laughter and joy. Perhaps even a trace or two of holiness might be seen. As we drove away from the dump I felt lighter, my hands felt dryer and scalier and I realized in giving up this broken, weary, not useful “stuff” which had taken on the physical form of my depression, I was also letting go of what was broken, weary and not useful in me anymore. I had removed items that were important and that had been forgotten in the interim. All was well. All is well. I am continuing to choose to engage. Choose to engage. 10/30/2017 0 Comments Now, I allow - invite - engage - (Video provided for you to write along with us).
Now I allow myself to feel my way into my response I keep blustering into forgetting. I need to start over because I forgot my timer.
(Took a moment to get a cup of coffee and re-set timer) I allow myself to be transparent again. Really, really truthful and clear because I find when I am transparent I am free. I have nothing to lose and as Janis Joplin reminds us (well in the Julie version) freedom stands or freedom means there’s nothing less to lose. Things have not been easy this year. Things have sucked much of the time. I have kept a smile on my face most of the time and I have allowed myself to pull back and pull away. I am allowing myself to use language differently – getting away from the should and needs and lack based language I fell into unconsciously. November is about recreating from love and abundance rather than fear and lack and neediness. “What if they leave me? What if they hate me? What if something bad happens and I need help and I’ve alienated everyone by being so full-on-flat-out myself?” I can get intellectually it is distorted thinking that people will abandon me if I am fully myself but I can point to times when it has happened over and over again and that base fear of abandonment is a doozy! I remember Katherine’s wedding nine days ago and I was dancing and singing like when I was a young girl. I had so much fun and I didn’t care what people thought. I remember one flash of a moment when I cared: I caught the eye of a member of Katherine’s new family – my new family – when I was singing and dancing in a way some might think unbecoming of the mother-of-the-bride and deep within me fear popped in, evil weasel like. I smiled at it, winked, and kept dancing singing and laughing with my friends. Wasn’t wearing shoes, wasn’t at all dolled up beyond my normal self-face and I had the time of my life. #MoreofThatPlease Now I allow myself to continue to write into the #moreofthatplease. This week and beyond. I am grateful for dear, life-long friends and family. I am grateful to the people who show up for me when I facilitate writing programs. I am grateful for coffee and actually drinking it without it going cold. I am grateful for my cell phone. I am grateful I asked for what I hoped for and I got it… even belated it was good still. I am grateful my neighbor “Dilated Dad” was thrown in jail. I pray he stays there.
I'm preparing for next week's #5for5BrainDump session. Day One's theme is ALLOWING and I poked around my own writing for prompt inspiration. I found a bit of writing that included a one-page-autobiography that was included in a college course. I picked it up and allowed myself to fall back into the narrative partially because I wanted to work out some of the niggling emotions that turn up and secondarily, to see how this concept may apply across genre. |
Julie Jordan Scottis the founder and creator of 5For5BrainDump. She has been inspiring artistic rebirth since 1999. Archives
December 2021
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