A theme has been spiraling through my life lately. That is of how connection, centering in self, belonging, and artistic expression all interweave to bring positive transformation in this time of crisis.
I don't have answers to share. I exist in the space of questioning right now. Sometimes I don't even have a clear question. There is just a knowing that I don't know, a comfort with that confusion, and an embrace of the mystery.
Can you embrace your confusion with gratitude?
Can you rest in that place of dissolution just before the next thing even begins to emerge?
It's a challenge to our self-concept to let go of knowing who we are and how we relate to a known world around us even for just minutes. That's why so many people struggle with seated meditation practice.
Right now we are being challenged to live that practice in how we relate to life on this planet entirely. Even more challenging, right?
Earlier today I finally combined two different mastermind groups I'd been leading into a single group.
First there was a 3 year paid program that included a monthly mastermind meeting but mostly focused on pre-recorded instruction with homework assignments. It led entrepreneurial women through both the inner work needed to succeed in a business and the logistics of sound business creation.
The other group was of friends of mine who I consider to be women really making things happen in the world. One has her own cryptocurrency. The other is a spiritual/energy teacher with a large school. Another coaches NFL teams and players on growing their influence beyond the sport. And so on.
Over the last month I've known a transition was happening in what I offer the world, but have been unclear what was taking shape.
I still have other things going on too, but this one thing has clarified itself as an incubator for each of these women becoming community creators/leaders in their own right. It is a sort of Toastmasters for community leadership. That's what we're learning and practicing together.
As such, though I've been facilitating discussion and leading the guided meditations that start each meeting, I'm leaning more heavily into having others take turns fulfilling those two roles.
It feels like a good transition of my work, out of my being the expert teaching others into my being the teacher of teachers who will empower them to reach their own communities. This feels like the greatest contribution I can make right now to the world that is needing so much creative engagement to unfold in alignment with Divine well-being and total thriving.
I heard a spiritual teacher speaking earlier about art that silences the mind. Sometimes you take in music and when the music ends, there is a silence before the audience can even clap.
I was reminded of years ago when I danced for a community of Balinese spiritual practitioners. There was a silence after I stopped dancing. I was already off the stage before people starting clapping, a truly thunderous applause. I had to go back out to bow for the applause to give them a sense of completion, closing the circuit of giving, receiving, giving, receiving, love.
In so many ways, we are each artists, gifting ourselves to this world. Along the way, we keep spiraling.
We grow. We meet something in life that requires more than who we are to successfully meet it. We grow some more. And so on.
And through us we grow the world, we grow the human contribution at least.
What is your art?
What is your meditation?
How do the two meet in you?
I hope you find peace within the silence between those questions, whether answers arise in that space or do not.
