Paint With All That One Is

Where do you begin when you're not certain where to begin?

What calls when all your senses long for a calling?

Something to get you started to begin the next journey to lead you into the wonder that you know awaits.

Beginning can be the most difficult,

Daunting place to stand.

We've all felt this in degrees.

As artists,

Creators,

Inventors into the world where nothing existed before we set it there.

This beginning place is our wonder and our wound.

Welcome to Creative Meditations.

I'm Patricia Baldwin-Sagerberg and this is Before the Brush.

Today I'm taking you on a thought journey to begin in a place that I hope will set you down in the deep space of knowing where the original delight of creation resides still alongside all your years of experience and exploration to bring you back to that space of curiosity and wonder.

This space is the divine.

It is keening to speak as it only can through you.

At a certain age almost all the questions a person asks him or herself are really just about one thing.

How should I live my life?

Closing your eyes is a great place to begin to answer this question.

When we can let our vision draw in behind these darkened eyelids we start to recognize the lights that flicker and dance there.

I myself have experienced the wonder of the colors that tango behind my closed eyes.

I find that once these initial startling cascades calm I settle in.

Dropping from these newly closed eyelids to the nerves linking them to my brain these colors take on new meaning and delight.

I then can inhale deeply once more and follow these synapses down to my heart.

There in this heart resides the me I'm seeking.

A truer self,

A braver self,

A more expansive self who is ready to explore in ways my visible self does not easily dare.

Yet there's no stopping not here.

I spent time on this journey many times now so I know it is in my best interest to pick her up this heart self and bring her along as we together now continue traveling down to the get self.

The sacral center is where we're going hand in hand smiling anymore.

This is where I come across my original self the one created to live in intuition,

Wonder,

And insight.

I land here when I'm doing well.

I land here.

I let the recall of this self rise without caution.

I welcome her into this self of me that has come for a visit.

I can feel heart self next to me there holding my hand straightening up her spine and unfurling her folded wings ready to expand on this new fresh air infused space before us.

She remembers this self.

She is this self,

This brave self,

This intuitive self,

This self that is full and ripe and rich with the world that the vision self cannot quite perceive.

You see it too don't you?

The self behind the self you've been keening at the constraints of this vision self's wardrobe long stressing the seams of your chosen garment.

Now it is ready to shed these layers and come full alive.

You know it is right.

You know it is time and yet there is still hesitation.

How you ask?

How do you enter back into your vision self life with all its companions,

Relations,

Associations,

And suits in this new yet ancient original self form?

How do you become what you have always been without appearing as a whole new being unfit to fit into the cut of that old dress?

One step at a time my dear.

One footprint in front of the other.

Gently not with caution so much as trust.

Because you have seen her,

You have felt her,

You have known her to be the real deal.

Therefore also know you can trust.

It is what you have and what you have always had.

Yes it will hurt sometimes.

Yes you'll have days where you try to return eyes closed to this ride of revelation and will be unable to find the ticket booth.

That's not to say it's been taken away.

No it is only that is offering you a respite.

Perhaps a time to realize rejoicing.

Maybe simply stand firm and revel in what has arisen.

A day of listening and being.

This is only an opportunity to breathe in the air that surrounds you.

Everyone.

Like a daily blanket.

A day to fortify the trust that is needed so that you can stand up to the next day's challenges that are certainly to come.

Trust.

This is it here now.

You have seen light of this revelation.

Will you trust the bravery you are called to coat yourself in?

That it is the weathered canvas given to you to withstand the storms of this earth life with grace tenacity and faithfulness to begin?

This is what is offered.

I challenge you to take it up in courage.

The ride is yours alone to take.

Thomas Merton has said the only response is to go out from oneself with all that one is.

This only makes sense anymore.

It is the only truth.

Therefore let us pick up the brush.

Charcoal,

Pencil,

Pastel.

Put it to canvas.

Form it from this new space of reckoning and look forward not with expectation but with delight and wonder so that those eyes of our heart and our gut crinkle at the corners in joy at the self we are.

Before you is a blank canvas.

Let's go together on this journey now where we take along our mind self,

Our build-up layer self of experience and expertise,

Intellectual accumulations and life experience.

Let us grab the hand of that heart self there gently tenderly and dive right down to this center with a deep breath.

We embark.

One.

Two.

Three.

We stay here deep in the depths of this intuitive calling,

This space just humming there,

Speaking yet not with words,

With sensation.

Sensation that will become expression as our fingertips dance and tingle ready to expose and explore what these resonances have to say.

Feel this subtle hit of play,

Of teasing there calling you to just try,

Just indulge,

Just experiment.

Deep breath.

She has nothing but wonder,

Delight,

Truth and trust for you.

She is your ally,

Companion and above all the soul of you.

Open your eyes and with her firmly held in the grips of your paintbrush sweep color as it calls to you across the canvas.

Do not stop to let the mind self have a say,

Giggle if you must,

To deter his determination to get attention but keep going.

Spirit self there is still calling,

Still beckoning you to express.

Take up a second color,

Sweep and swirl as if sand upon a beach displaced by your toes deliciously dipping into its wet warmth.

Marks,

Lines,

Swirls,

Delight.

A third now.

Before intellect tries to take the reins and determine composition or color play dip that brush.

Dip it into the third color that calls and add it to the exuberance of expression that's playing across the surface before you.

Close your eyes once more.

No peeking,

No thinking.

Deep breath.

Deep sensation.

Deep resonance with what has been and what is there.

This is you.

This is your creation.

Where nothing before existed.

This is you.

There on paper,

On canvas,

Ripe to be expressed and explored.

You did this.

You are this.

You magnify the best of yourself in simply letting color call and expression beckon and exuberance rejoice.

Do it again.

Why not do it again?

Call up the self that has dipped and dove,

Swept and swirled here and ask her to spread her wings wide and play some more.

And when the stories evolved,

When the colors and marks have expressed and expanded to the edges,

Sigh,

Smile,

Release,

Rejoice.

Pin these expressions of you,

This deep you,

This trust in truth you.

Pin these to your wall.

Study them daily until the wonder of that self lives and breathes from their surface at every glance.

And you recall without effort the you you met there.

Take her up then,

This self who resides now and always and ask her to assist you in completing this story of your return to this you,

A truer expression of you,

Self.

See what comes and keep on inviting her in.

Thank you for coming along on this thought journey to engage and emanate your best creative self into the world.

It is what's needed.

It is what's required.

It is why you are here and there's so much more to reveal.

Enjoy.