Drive!

It's not all about ambition, or maybe it is? Yet, only if it comes from a place that is soulfully centered and spiritually aligned. Join me in this recording of the Live session from May 31 where we talk through the differences, and aim to rejoin ourselves to the best ambition, as set from within, from the beginning.

Transcript

Welcome everybody. This is Before the Brush and we're here today to kind of jump off of where we were last time. Theme was purpose versus purposeful and this is kind of you know it plays right along with it but before we get into it there's gonna be four major points I'm going to try to hit upon. My notes are extensive I've just jotted down ideas when I get a theme in my head I then jot down ideas and always end up with too much information or too many directions so we'll see how I go. But this is Before the Brush and my purpose in creating this space was to is to explore the importance of being present to your soul to your spirit before you pick up that paintbrush or play in the clay or solder those that metal. The point is behind it all and the reason for being here for me is to splunker that space so that we present create into the world the most harmonious and worthwhile bit of addition to this perfect already perfect planet. I'm Patricia Baldwin Segerbrook and by trade I'm an encaustic artist. I paint abstractly. As always on the insight timer if it is possible to do donations that is lovely it's a great expression of reciprocity so thank you for that. All right business out of the way we're here to talk about Drive. Drive I think is a huge thing right now maybe just in my life because I have four adult children adult males and our culture as as a whole in the I'm in the United States our culture is all about Drive all about ambition all about next better bigger and well yes I'm talking about that. What I really want to get into is as I've already said that soulful place that what ambition looks like what Drive looks like when it is more authentically nurtured. I don't stand on too many soapboxes and I'm definitely not the the rebel in the world but I would definitely stand on the soapbox that is our current culture's propensity towards towards that. Listen to the externals and drive the way they tell you to drive. I would stand on a soapbox against that. Unfortunately I think we're in a place where we're making that shift we're making that transition to allowing children and cultures as a whole to begin to resonate with that more internal spirit voice first before we present into the world but as I just said we're in the transition point and the transition point is always super clunky. There's no comfort in it and we're all individually and collectively wondering what that is going on. That's why disruption happens. Disruption is a necessary ingredient in a perfect world. Wait that didn't work. It's a necessary ingredient in living. Disruption causes us to investigate comfort. It moves us from that comfort zone to go to a deeper place of authenticity of showing up of creating the way we are intended to create of living the way we are designed to live. So we are in the transition of follow the design and shifting into the age of Aquarius where it is more the soulful spiritual individual promptings trust centers that will rise and become that new collective become that new cultural norm. As I said it's clunky but here we are you're supposed to we should all be blessed to get to be a part of this process part of the process at this point in the process. Alright before I get into it too thickly I want to give you something to think about as I as I talk that is that caveat from last time. I told you last live was about purpose versus purposeful if you didn't get to be here and I'm sorry I don't have the place this came from I think I subjugated some information and therefore this quote is my own. Your purpose is not what you do it is the thing that happens in others when you do what you do. Your purpose is not what you do it is the thing that happens in others when you do what you do. That resonated with me because I can create a heck of a lot of art and I can share a huge amount of content through teaching art but sometimes it never feels as if it's purposeful as if it is hitting home as it is serving any purpose and it is only when I get that it is only when I first responded from that internal space and exhibit it into the world that I get that feedback from that external space and that is the what I'm doing doing something in others and I will bring it to you now so that you all can kind of let it niggle in your brain where what you love to do may not always feel like that perfect alignment beautiful expression yet you know you know that you know that you know trust that instinct and keep going and pay attention to those accolades and gratitude gestures that come from the outside the hearts if you will so I said drive and there's four points my own life is is the only thing I have to share from so there's going to be some information here that comes from my own living out of this searching for understanding doorways numerology one of my son's calling and the world out of alignment I've kind of hit on that world out of alignment that will close with that and then if you're still here and you have the opportunity while I'm talking to grab something to draw with doodle and some paper do that we'll spend about five minutes in a contemplative exercise through the creative hand so that well I want to share what I've been doing all year with you so that you can kind of see if it resonates with you to get that deeper space within yourself opened up to expression to your best soul expression so first one doorways and I'm gonna I'm gonna work this in with numerology and all this is to help us understand myself first and then y'all drive and ambition because ambition has been just to be weird a driving force in my life well since I can remember I have I was raised into a professional household mother and father are both professionals my three siblings went on to have those traditionally professional professional careers and I always felt like the outsider the ill-fitting shoe the proverbial black sheep yet you know the older I get the more wise I become the more I can find those niches of society that helped me understand why my direction my own internal ambitions are legitimate and necessary I can see that that family of origin and those traditional efforts towards ambition and drive were not there to disempower me they were there to give me a lens or maybe a mirror through which to understand and then discern my own way everybody has their own timeline I didn't get that understanding early on I fought against it I tried the traditional I went through heartache and trauma trying to stay that traditional path that traditional ambition yet as I said we all have a timeline so I'm in my 50s now and it's all coming around to make sense and I believe that part of staying in my lane part of driving driving my own highway is owning and trusting that timeline if I were to identify and ask you to do the same thing here if you look back at your childhood if you've ever had disassociation with as I'm continuing to say the current cultural drive and ambition definitions go back to your childhood picture yourself as a 6, 7, 8, 12 year old and what was your greatest pleasure what was your greatest place or yeah place of peace as an example I I can remember okay from this perspective it feels like I would lie for hours in the front yard very close nose in the lawn my dad kept a very meticulous lawn there were no weeds and it was all that beautiful lush carpet of green I can remember remember lying on that lawn and studying blades of grass watching the ants and the pill bugs and Northern California slugs and you know all those insects the life that lived there I can remember contemplating that microcosm as it were that's a macrocosm for hours or climbing a tree there's a favorite tree next to the driveway I would climb and hang out in the the branch lie on that branch and feel that tree live with that tree in other words what I'm getting to was I was a dreamer there was no place for a dreamer in my family of origin but that dreaming was also tied to like I said the traditional ambition of my of my upbringing task mastering and chore doing and you know assignment completing so through that family of origin influence on my own propensity my own ambition to dream to create in my head at that point to actually pick up the crayons and draw I did chalk on the sidewalk all the time I never called myself an artist I still kind of don't you know there's something to it of course but you know those definitions don't work very well so if I take those both sides the outside if you will of cultural and family influence and my inside ambitions and let them work together harmonious I can see now 50 years down the road how they were meant to or they are meant to give me my fullest capacity for expression so doorways doorways are portals for me I tend towards more of a mystical understanding of the world and yet also that intense practicality I can't go go through a day without doing the task list still yet my day starts and ends with a very mystical spiritual sensibility I bring it to everything I do it's not the woo-woo I don't resonate with all aspects of either side but there's a blend in the middle doorways are energy portals to me and I bring this to you now because in numerology we are in a universal year eight you do not have to know what that means but the eight you can picture it it's it's a figure eight it's two is a portal the number eight if you think of it this way the below is us individuals that dream state that soul that spirit space and the top is the external and what we're looking at this year as this numerology year is to take all that internal space take all that internal authenticity and bring it to the world doorways to we go in this doorway as an energy portal I'm suggesting that every time I walk through a door every time you walk through a door you are changing an environment you are bringing yourself in some capacity let's say exiting your home and going out into the world you are bringing yourself that internal home space of you out the door and into the world there are always other people other creatures that share these doorways with us if we stay with the home you've got perhaps a dog a husband wife children partner mother who also pass through those doorways you pick up on that energy in that transition point that doorway is that transition point if you picture it it's a narrowing we don't have an entire wall that is a doorway just like the figure eight when you bring it out it's a very narrow passageway you're taking a piece of yourself the most distilled part of you into that world and sharing it and at the same time you're bringing that distilled external world into the internal doorways are passageways my son moved it back in I have four sons one of them moved back in with myself and my husband four months ago I'll be with us a couple more months and the energy shift was so dramatic at the get-go I almost well it surprised me tremendously because this is my son if y'all feel the same way I would do anything for my children and they're the closest thing to my heart therefore shouldn't it be easy to live with this child shouldn't it be easy to share energetic space no not so much they are their own individuals they have developed into their own creatures their own spirits their own energy fields and when he comes and goes and I come and go in his dog and my dog we are interchanging those energies to the point where it takes extra effort more time on the inside of that doorway of that portal or that lower part of the figure eight then perhaps it would have been in the previous iteration where I lived alone and only had my own dog and our rhythm are sharing to exit so kind of tie that up I encourage you to explore this for yourself this notion of the portal but also perhaps it's new to you new information the figure eight in numerology we are in an eight year it being a portal a threshold between the inside and the out calling us even more so to identify with our personal ambition our personal drive stay in our lane get to know our lane and bring it out to the world if you're interested in more about numerology I encourage you to open a search engine and look up numerology look up look up personal number let me back up numerology for me is the same as with the Bible and other spiritual texts it is a tool that humans have developed and can help us understand more about ourselves and showing up in the completeness of ourselves so to identify your it's like your main number and I can't remember what the name for it is it's a combination of your birth date digits distilled down to one digit so I'm an eight and we're in a numerological year eight which I think is fascinating there's also something called an expression number which is equally fascinating and it is the expression number is what you take into the world so if you get into the numerology if you investigate this for yourself look at that number and its identity in terms of description so I'm a number three expression number and it is creativity and color I didn't know that till just a few days ago and I was fascinated to realize that is probably how anybody anybody whose paths I have crossed would say you know she's creative into the world I bring creativity into the world it's not always aligned it's not always resonant but that one obviously was extremely clear I probably wouldn't have identified with it in my 20s I was too ambitious in trying to do the professional path so it's super curious to get these numbers understand what they're trying to tell my soul and spirit figure out what they're where they're resonating and then realign to that authenticity realign to my born ambition that birth self ambition so that I'm a better force in the world you're a better force in the world this world out of alignment that we're in right now but also in that transition because we're in that transition point I think it's a call to every one of us again getting on this soapbox it's a call to every one of us to grab a hold of whatever tool I've suggested numerology for myself astrology really resonates reading spiritual texts and using my own experiences to understand what they're saying when I pull that all together and live at this transition time in this global world we're in and view the long game the long road the highway run route 66 not the little country road to find where I am driving where my drive will take me I see that collectively we are responsible for first our own self we've got to return to the trust of our own soul our own heart in our own head to discern how we are showing up in the world where we are showing up in the world and to whom we connect rather than the school higher education job family the design that we've been trained towards that the culture tells us towards this ambition towards more when we each pull back and identify our own soulful original ambitions and bring those origins more truly into our lives it doesn't necessarily say we're going to change a job or get out of a brush professional career it's nuancing where we already are for some of us nuancing where we already are so that that more authentic original ambition shows up when we all collectively start to do that that is when the highway becomes fluid and flowing and as a culture we start turning the tides on where we're going so numerology look it up find your expression number and your character number I feel like I'm saying that wrong but those two numbers can be a really interesting intriguing guidepost guidepoint to understanding more about that ambition that soulful or origin of ambition for yourself now we're talking about this number eight this figure eight we're in a eight universal year I mentioned that I my character number is an eight I always tend towards needing affirmation I need something external confirming the sense of myself internally maybe we all do my fourth point is just that so my son my youngest son has always believed in my art has been a great advocate for who I am and what I'm doing and he called yesterday just yesterday and said mom I don't mean to be morbid that's not my intention but I had this really neat idea and I wanted to bring it to you I was like okay you know great morbid what are we talking about here I'm getting a little cautious he said what if you start it he knows I paint very prolifically I have tons and tons of work and I tend to paint over that work or throw it away or you know if it doesn't make it into the galleries doesn't sell I don't sit on my stuff that's the Virgo in me clean it out or gonna organize it up get it out of there he says mom I think you should start a legacy series legacy series what do you mean what if you started painting not for now but for the future okay so he's got me there I've always believed that artists are the prophets we're here to say what is coming not not what is and so you know okay what do you what are you getting at so what if you take you know one painting a year two paintings or whatever and you didn't exhibit them you just started storing them and once you're gone you know we pull them out and show the world what you were saying 10 25 to 40 years ago you know okay as a project as a purpose that hits my sad my Sagittarius it's deep spiritual investigation time it's the color and the beauty and the creativity to express that and it's leaving a legacy it is giving something back to the world that I hope will be a change that can make a difference so him bringing that to me just resonated so strongly it relit that ambition in my soul to allow dreaming to allow expressive creativity that didn't have to look like a pot or you know perfectly resonate with the current landscape it was about just letting that soul and spirit live through those bright blades of grass or in that branch of that tree and that was delightful to me that was delicious to me and that fed that need of mine to have an external affirmation from a trusting soulful space place my son and all of this has comes together and I'm feeding it to you as I said because my own life is my best example and I learned from my own life how to live better and through sharing it I don't believe ambition is not to teach not to preach but to be a guiding example you know if just one sentence of what I've said gives you something to think about for the rest of the day and bring back to your space of great creativity or professional development or your everyday life then that is my that is my job well done so that's why I'm sharing all this with you and also to reiterate to reinforce the impact that numerology and this whole idea of ambition and drive have have fed to me that you know it's valid it's it may not have been culturally fed to me but when I have time and space and wisdom of age to see that my the long trajectory of my life has always been successful so far I haven't had to live out of a box and what's wrong with that maybe I don't know there's a place for me and my son you know giving me this idea that hit that authentic place in my soul once again re-nurtured that re-fed that so that I can come back inside come back through my doorway into myself and do my more expressions expressing that I will then carry back out to the world in yet another iteration another spiraling up look for those in yourself whether you're the accountant or the horse trainer whether you're the artist with the paintbrush in hand or the accountant with the keyboard you have a space that is authentically you and the more you bring that to the world you're in or the world you are trying to impact that ambition will feed not just you but then all of us collectively shall we draw shall we paint to keep my hand in the creativity creatively there's things called daily pages I've been just trying to reminding myself to sit with creative tools and paper canvas every day for 365 days so I call them 365 days just because because it's a year and 365 this is my template of practice at the end of the day I'll just sit and do as many pages as it takes to just lose my mind I mean that literally but not literally to lose my mind and sink into my heart sink into my soul truly I don't stop at the heart I go all the way to this soul the spirit the gut so that I go to bed more centered I can let that dream space live the true dream space of sleeping so I encourage you all to give it a try we've got the solstice coming up you know what if you didn't start obviously at the new year but you start at that solstice point what if you got a couple inexpensive watercolor drawing pads I have so many that I just pick a new one up when I run out of space until they're all used and then limit yourself make it easy on yourself I should say I've got just a graphite and a charcoal pencil and then a palette of pastels I'm using these because there's no I could have chosen paint but then you know I'll talk myself out of it because I have to go wash the brushes or something oh I don't have time for that now to wash it all in blah blah blah so I just have these sitting on a table and I pull them out open my notebook and start another for the day so if you have some materials with you now I'll just go through the process for a few minutes and maybe just help you feel that sense of sinking into your soul space and it will encourage you to go out and buy a few notebooks or and grab a pencil and some pastels these are just basic chalk pastels so that you can be ready for that solstice and see if you can make it from solstice to solstice here we go I wait for it to sync up s-y-n-d sync sync up to my soul no thought necessarily I can my mind doesn't turn off but it takes cues the for instance I'm using yellow and then I heard little green so I came in with just a little green and I just respond to those soul hits and change color and pick up my pencil and put my signature on it and turn the page it's fun I encourage you to try it all right everybody thanks for being here go out make a commitment to drive with your gifts in the passenger seats no more leaving them in the house go through that threshold pack them into the passenger seat put the seat belt on and drive with your ambitions your soul your spirit your treasures because if you don't nobody else can