LIR 053017 - ThurisazR

Look to your protections. Are they enough? Are they too much?

Look to your responses. Do they match the intensity and need of the situation?

These days, it's easy to feel caught between too mean, and not safe enough. So what protection / aggression / offense & defense works for you, allowing you to feel like you without giving away your power?

I hope you have a great day!
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The Art of Writing (and Riting [and Righting]) Life

As a writer, I have had many "aha!" moments. I have surfed on inspiration's wave thousands of times, and come away from my creations with joyous grins and gleeful pride. "I wrote this!"

Probably half of those amazing creations have been to replace, fix, improve, or expand the  other half of the amazing creations.

As a writer, I am constantly making "perfect!" even more perfect. Because the "perfect" of one moment is simply the building block for the next perfection.

Though all perfect really means, at least for my writing vocabulary, is that what I have expressed in prose, poetry, or song, is a perfect match to what I am feeling at that moment.

Sometimes the writing is a way of harvesting from whatever verdant pasture hosts my ideas, and putting it before my eyes so I can really find out if it's A truth, or MY truth.

And sometimes the writing really is a cycle of stepping stones, like layers of paint on a canvas.

Today's example is a song I have been working on for about a year. It's for Threshold Choir, which of course means it can't just be a flippant little piece of music. It has to be examined and woven and tried on and examined again. Rather like my stories.

And like my stories, this song has been rewritten maybe twenty times. And each time I think, "Ah! got it! Beautiful. This is it!" and I write it down and sing it and sing it and I never present it, because I after that glorious moment, I feel it is still missing... something.

And then there is another Aha! and the song changes, meshes, expands and contracts.

Tonite I think my latest inspiration could be the finish touch! I wonder what I'll think tomorrow.

Life is like that also. So many "aha!" moments. So many truths. So many times thinking, "Yes, this is it! I have found my: purpose, strength, soul mate, song, support, meaning, work, love, happy place, desire... My Perfection." And we stride along in confidence for a day or a week or a year (or an hour, or a moment, or a breath,) and then we realize that the song we're singing, the purpose we're following, the happy we're placing, is feeling out of tune again.
Old patterns are cropping up again.
Old wounds are bruising again.

And we look and we pray and we find the next opening, the next clearing, the NEXT "aha!"

The difference between writing and living is, of course, that we don't get to cut out whole chapters or verses from our lives, when we realize "Aha!" turned to "Oh, crap."

We eventually do finish the story, the song, or the poem. But life's inspiration never stops.

We are creating every moment we are breathing. Absorbing and processing and harvesting the ideas that come from living our lives, and adding them to our foundations, and stepping forward and finding the next perfection, the next aha!, the next stone in the path.

And actually, if you think about it, every published or presented piece still has the ghosts of old perfections attached to it, too. I can delete and cross out, write over, rip up and throw away; but since the idea was harvested, since that "aha" moment existed, it is part of  the foundation of the final story. Each "perfection" is an essential step of the creation.

I don't know what writing is like for others, but I do know what living is like for myself and for many of the people around me. It is not just one glorious moment of inspiration which leads to a long and perfect state of being. It is a step by step building of a path, full of a thousand "Aha's" and a million waves of grace. We CAN'T step forward until we have had the inspiration that leads us to the next inspiration.

So I'm going to keep singing. And Writing. And Riting, and Righting. In every aspect. And I will welcome, and rejoice in, every Perfect creation.

I hope you have thousands of them too!

-Lila

Today's Happiness Practice - Book Healing

Today I have practiced healing a book.

Yeah, really.

Reiki is a healing modality where energy simply flows. I am a vessel. I don't have to direct the energy to heal a specific thing or work in a specific way. I spread my own two hands on (or slightly above) the client. I envision the symbols. The energy flows and heals what needs to be healed.

The "World as Myth" is a belief I connected with through Robert Heinlein. In short, every story everytold is a world, a reality, a place out in the multiverse. So places like Wonderland and Middle Earth and Jurassic Park exist. As do Chalion and Brigadoon. And Zootopia. And all the varieties of Earth that Historic Fiction has imagined.

Because of this belief, I have imbued my stories with a goal, a purpose. Every time someone reads one, a person in this reality (the reality we as a society most universally connect with;) a person who is in a similar situation will find her (or his) healing, happiness, freedom.

Even if that person is only me. (After all, we write what we know, right? Hmm. A psychologist would have a field day. (Hmm again. I think I need to finish the Destiny series!))

This belief of realities extends to the books of others. There are some I won't read because I don't want to give weight to that kind of reality. Some I can't read because I just don't connect with that kind of reality.

And some I have to stop  reading because the reality is so very painful.

And that's a tough one, to decide to stop reading not because of the writing, but because of the worlds created. Because it feels like I'm leaving the characters stuck in their miserable existence. I'm stranding them, by not finishing their journey with them.

Which kind of goes against a whole lot of happiness stuff, cuz it's not my job to finish someone else's journey, etc and so forth.

But I also would like to do something, if I have the power to do something.

And since I'm against censorship, I decided to do a reiki healing on the book. To heal the characters, all of them, whomsoever they represent, in whichever reality.

Yeah, really.

I sat down on the floor, laid my hands upon the book, and let the energy flow.

And it did flow.(That's another thing about Reiki. If healing is not needed or wanted, you (I) just end up sitting there, hands on or just above skin, la-la-lala-la, no matter how hard I envision the symbols.)

So I did my first book healing today.

Or, more accurately, I did a healing of those whom this book might represent - children who grew into adulthood with pain and sorrow and bewildered determination as their bosom companions. People whose worlds ended in war and strife. Societies who changed because they they thought it was the only way to survive.

In my reality, it helped someone. Even if that someone was just my inner child, angry and hurting because of the pain some characters (therefore some people) are enduring.

Today I practiced book healing. And made my reality a better place.

I hope you're having a warm, pain-free day!
-Lila

Today's Happiness Practice - Tips from Favorite Authors 1

Today I am going to start a practice of moving myself OUT of my creative world.

Twice in the last week, after a bout of creativity, I have gone out to family and been asked if I was okay. "You are distant," I was told.

And it's true. I was distant. In some far off world, being a CREATOR.

Even something as "simple" as making a flyer, or setting up a paypal button, puts me in CREATOR world.

It's not a place I consciously go; it's not a mindset I summon (though perhaps this practice will help me do that.)

But I love being there, where time has no meaning and all that exists is me and the keyboard (and occasionally the printer.)

But it is painful to return. To wrench my focus back to this place and this time. To try and wonder two realities at the same time.

Today I remembered a character in Nora Roberts' book Tribute. The character is a graphic novelist. And he puts himself into AND brings himself out of his creative state with a "magic" phrase.

Yes, I imagine this took practice to set up. Everything does. I expect it isn't as simple as waving my pen and saying "bibbity-bobbity-boo!" and I'm back in attention paying mode. At least not at first.

But I think it is something worth exploring. Creating. Giving myself a start and a stop in the creative process.

Enter a command into my brain so it knows where it's supposed to be looking.

So I can go to this world and return to the physical with little harm to myself, my psyche, and the people around me.

Today I am going to build my portal to and from the world of CREATOR.

And it will be good. 🌞

I hope you're having a great day!
-Lila

Today's Happiness Practice - Using what LISTS I have

Today I am going to practice actually using the lists I make.

Using what I have has been one of my practices for awhile, though it has been focused on the side of - I don't need to get MORE stuff just to get something done. Quit trying to distract myself!

But it also works on the more mundane level. I don't need to sit down and make new lists and search for something to do, or wait for the Universe to give me a sign. When I am in that funk of "What now?" I have plenty of places to check for inspiration. I have project lists on my phone, on my computer, in each of my journals, on random sticky notes stuck in easy to see places. There is plenty for me to do.

I realized this morning it's kind of like Writer's Block - a subject we were discussing at Writer's Group last week. And I said, proudly, "I have over a thousand ideas. If I can't get into the one I'm trying to work on, I can switch."

The same goes for filling time. The question "What now?" can have a thousand different answers. I just need to use the lists I have and pick one.

Happily, I have just done something to fill five extra minutes, and I get to go to B&N now (at which I practice using what (skills and experience) I have without falling into old (cranky) patterns. Yay!

I hope you're having a great day!
-Lila

But what do you expect?

I am realizing (still? further? again?) that my expectations are getting in the way of my happiness.

From work to spiritual celebrations, I expect myself to feel this or that. I expect to expend "X" amount of energy. I expect this action to create that reaction. I expect that value for this price.

And because I am so busy looking for my expectations to be fulfilled, I am missing the actual experience.

Take meditation, for example. From reading a variety of books (fiction and non,) I have created an image of how meditation should feel, look, sound. And yet, my meditations are nothing like that. NOTHING! (Cause i have to be unique.) I don't actually really see things, or hear things, as I do with eyes and ears. For me, it's impressions, feelings, words appearing in my head. Rather like the Daredevil, where he receives a picture of the female by listening to the rain.

And I'm rarely so deeply in that I am unaware of my surroundings. I may not be able to respond, but I am aware.

For years I thought I was meditating wrong, because it wasn't matching my expectations. There are a lot of things I thought I was doing wrong, including praying.

But I am coming to realize that I can put aside my expectations.  I can let things be. I can experience things as they really are.

As I do with people, I can ACCEPT experiences instead of EXPECT them.

Which means, (still, further, again) I can accept myself in these experiences. My reactions to them. My truths instead of my expectations of behavior and perception.

I sometime wonder why it seems so difficult to just be me?

And that is all about expectations too.

It's not difficult to be me. It's pretty easy, in fact. I can do it effortlessly.

But to fit myself into the mold of expectations - that's what is difficult.

So, what do I expect? Well, I'm going to practice expecting nothing. And allowing everything.

I hope you have a great day!
-Lila