Special Shout Out for Intentional Creativity Community
Soul Sisters – An amazing Intentional Creativity Retreat on Orcas Island with 3 Color of Woman Graduates – Learn more here
June 24 – San Francisco Unity Church – Kerry Lee and Jessica Bowman on IMAGINATION in our series – Crafting a Year of Intention and Power Here
The First Steps to Getting Free
Dear One,
I am having my coffee and thinking about one of my favorite topics of all time: Freedom. I think of any amount of freedom as a luxury and a privilege – because so much of our lives are constrained. The place we can find the most freedom, and the kind of freedom that can lead to other freedom, is within our own consciousness. We know this, and yet it can be illusive to cultivate, because it does take some practice to liberate one’s mind – does it not?
In the work I teach with Intentional Creativity, this is how it flows – I know it can be reached by many other ways – but this is the language and flow I work with. If inspired, bring this into the journal, the canvas or both. The first step is so obvious and yet often missed…
1. Awareness: To become aware of our choice in the development of consciousness. That we get to be a part of it, that we aren’t just as we are – but as we create ourselves.
2. Desire: Identify the reasons, as in, to create a connection to, the desire to be conscious and to have access to the self with his/her hidden language, symbols, stories.
3. Identify: Begin to review and identify the first layer of default settings that compose your worldview. Start with things like : how you feel the world is set up.
As in, the framework that you look at the world through. What settings and views are keeping you trapped in thoughts not your own?
4. Explore: Choose to be in a period of recovery and discovery – don’t just invent new ways of seeing – sit in the mystery first. Be in not knowing as long as you feel called. Experience the freedom from the initial layer of default settings coming into view.
5. Experience: Begin to be in curiosity about what you really think, feel, know and how you create yourself. In this, freedom is found, and you become the adventurer of your own consciousness.
Next the reweaving of the chosen freedoms within begins….
There are many more layers – because this is juicy depth diving kind of work. But this is how I teach it to begin the path of becoming conscious. Some of us have a wake up and epiphany – but others of us can use a path, like the one above to deconstruct and the, reweave. One the reweaving begins we often find that we desire to bring what we learned, our very life story, into service to others – and in that a new freedom is created that is blissful.
This is freedom within. And for many of us – the first step in creating an experience of freedom in external circumstances. But even if the stuff outside doesn’t change, that which is happening around us – within, we are changed, and can indeed be free here in the spaciousness of our own hearts. This is the greatest freedom, to think one’s own thoughts.
For you – how do you cultivate freedom? You certainly don’t need to accept what I have shared as a potential path – but perhaps your own way of thinking about it may emerge or bump up against what I have shared. I share to encourage you for the journey, not because I have it figured out – but because I love. And because I do lots of research in this domain that I find endlessly exciting.
There is an Intentional Creativity process at the bottom with 3 pieces of paper, a simple ritual to bring this into form.
For to be free is not merely to cast off one’s chains, but to live in a way that respects and enhances the freedom of others. ~ Nelson Mandela
Finding Paradise – Creating for my Grandmother Eden during her transition many years ago…
An offering of Intentional Creativity – materials : pen, paper and heart
FREEDOM WRITING: 3 Pieces of Paper
After you read the above notes on Freedom, make a list of the default settings you are releasing. The burn it, or tear it up while being grateful for what it has brought you.
At the top of new piece of paper and write: The Mystery of Freedom – and keep that page blank for now – wait for a few hours or weeks and let the piece of paper be the space – the opening.
Next piece – Celebrate the freedoms you do enjoy. Start in the center with your name…in a heart or circle – then going out from there….list them. There are so many…
