SingingStones:Retreat- Listen-Vision-Focus-Create

Art As Meditation:The Process

The Vision
Welcome
Coming Workshops
Art As Meditation:The Process
The Art-full Life
Mindful Practice
Peace Practice
Silence
Sacred Land Sacred Earth
Creation Spirituality
Spirituality Of The Ordinary
Circles and Labyrinth
Annes Word Weavings
Mini-Workshops
Living Moments
Healing Stories
Breaking Stress
Mindful Connections

  •  Preparation

 Gather Your Art Materials with a conscious intention and awareness that you are working in a Sacred Manner with sacred materials.

Turn on your favorite quiet music or connect with one of the links on this site.

Light a candle-- Burn some Incense

 Bless your space in a manner that is comfortable for you.

 Remember Your Work is Holy!

 You will need:. A Journal or sketch book, Colored Pencils, Index Cards. Collage Materials of Magazine pictures, glue, sizzors.

 Whatever thoughts, ideas, insights are generated, put them in your journal.

 Doodle and Scribble.

 You may work through the entire site to connect with the mood and the opportunities that are here and waiting for you.

  Focus on what grabs you:

 It may be one image, poem or exercise or you may be inspired to create one of your own.

 Let your intuition take you down whatever trail you want to go.

 Return often. Have fun

This is a work in process; what is here today may not be here tomorrow.

 There may be something new!

 Communicate with us to share your experience.

 It also makes us feel good.

OOOOOOO

 

The Four Ways of Art As Meditation
 or
 The Circle of The Creative Process.

 

this circle is a journey around the medicine wheel , a process of transformation ,change and healing

 The First Way:

 It begins with a yearning longing for something more. a state of readiness, expectency and LISTENING. A heightened awareness of both our environment and our inner life. Sometimes painful, sometime joyous, but always alive. We create and nourish a state of mindfull awareness. 

This is  The Place Of The East

The Second Way:

 We Affirm and Celebrate the Disorder and Brokeness, the chaos and seperation, the longing for what is lost and we want to find, the pain and the joy. Like a child we play with this disorder; the words, symbols, images, the dreams and fantasys of both our inner and outer life in the flowing stream of our consciousness.

This is the Place Of The South

The Third Way:

 We FOCUS.  With our gathered materials of words and paper, brush, paints and canvas,woods and grasses, feathers and beads,leather and stone, cloth and images, we focus and connect the core idea of our inner life, giving shape, form and texture to what is seeking to be brought forth.

 This is the Place Of The West

The Fourth Way:

 We Celebrate the Broken Parts becoming Whole. We receive the Wisdom. We connect with Universal Truth. Connections are made between Art and Life, the child and Adult, the lost and found, something and nothing, questions and answers, the pain and joy, life and death, lonliness and communtiy, guilt and forgiveness, wandering and coming home. The parts have become whole. We are restored to the Circle. we have found our pathway to the stars. We have been gifted with an enpowering VISION.

This is the Place of The North

The Fifth Way:

 THE VISION IS NOW OUR TRUTH BUT IT NOW  BELONGS TO ALL

 WE RETURN OUR WORK TO THE UNIVERSE FOR THE GOOD OF ALL

 By

 Putting Into Practice everything we have learned for the good of 'the people' 

The Book from which this taken,'TheArtist Inside' is wonderful. (wordweaver)

Art as Sacred Practice: Recovering the Creative Soul. Tom Crockett

The artist and the shaman were probably one in the same, as artists have ever since claimed. Through their magical power to recreate the animals on the walls of the temple caves, they--the artist-shamans--connected the tribe with the source of life that animated both human and animal, becoming themselves vehicles of that source, creators of the living form like the source itself.--Anne Baring and Jules Cashford, The Myth of the Goddess: Evolution of an Image
When was the last time you made music? When did you last dance? What was the last story you told? When was the last time you engaged in the "work" of art?These are the questions a shaman or indigenous healer might ask if you came seeking help or guidance. It wouldn't matter whether your condition was physical, emotional, spiritual, or emotional. The answers to these questions would still be of vital interest. If your answer to any of these questions is "not within the past six months," you might be instructed to go home and sing, dance, perform, or express your creative spirit. This recommendation alone is often considered sufficient to cure an illness. But even if a return visit to the healer is required, this first step of entering into communion with the spirit world through creative expression is critically important.There is a connection between artistic expression and spirit that resides deep in our ancestral memory. The native and indigenous cultures from which we all descend understand this connection. It is only our contemporary, Western view of art that de-emphasizes the connection between the material and the spirit. In his book, The Strong Eye of Shamanism: A Journey Into the Caves of Consciousness, Robert E. Ryan describes how a well-known aboriginal "shamanic ecstatic dream artist" named Allan Balbungu was able to separate his soul from his body, and, with the aid of his spirit helpers, enter the otherworld of the ancestors to find songs and dances for the tribe. "Allan translates his visionary experience onto the corroboree ground. The poet has delved deeply into the creative source, the world of the spirit, and touched its deepest source. This art not only represents his reception of the songs and dances he has received in the Otherworld but also the very structure of the creative visionary experience itself."For tribal peoples, the "work" of art is the manifestation of spirit in material form. The tribal individual engaging in artistic expression first accesses the realm of spirit, seeking what we might call inspiration or the breath of the divine. This divine inspiration is then translated into material form with words, images, music, dance, or artifacts. Engaging the spirit, now in material form, through ritual completes the cycle. This ritual releases that spirit and draws artist and community alike back into sacred communion with the divine. This is the sacred creative cycle. It is a cycle of transformation. In his book, Voices of the First Day: Awakening in the Aboriginal Dreamtime, Robert Lawlor writes, "Sacred art always implies transformation: the transformation of pure energy into form, the transformation of ancestral powers into animals, animals into humans, and humans, through ritual costume and body painting, into the ancestral beings and their animal powers." When art is about transformation, it is a sacred practice.But we needn't look far afield to find examples of artists engaging this sacred creative cycle. When dream artist Dan Raven finds a piece of stone, he studies it energetically, vision-shifting to look and listen to what the stone has to share. He slips momentarily into divine space to seek the animal spirit waiting to be released from the stone. Carving the stone is a careful process. He carves until just enough of the animal is visible. This is what is required to release the spirit into the world. More than this and he would be imposing form rather than revealing it. His carvings then become ritual offerings to the elements and power connections between the people who purchase them and the primal spirit. Dan hasn't done this work all his life. He just reached a point where he couldn't "not do it" any longer.So why is this important?
Most of us don't consider ourselves artists. Even if we secretly enjoy expressing ourselves creatively, we may still be frightened of claiming that we are artists. It may seem pretentious to label oneself as an artist, and identifying oneself as an artist might mean being judged. We remember how competitive the arts were in school. Someone else's work was always better than our own. Who needs that pressure?The point is that being an artist, expressing oneself artistically, is a birthright, not a career path. It's part of what makes us whole and fulfilled. It's one of the primary ways we can connect with spirit in our lives.The complaints that are most often expressed by members of Western, materialist cultures include a vague sense of unease and insecurity, a deep loneliness or emptiness, and, despite material abundance and prosperity, a sense of being unfulfilled. Sometimes our emotional and spiritual states of dis-ease end up manifesting in physical form within our bodies. But even emotional and spiritual distress can keep us from living our lives fully. A shaman or indigenous healer would identify our condition as growing from a lack of connection to community and spirit.Engaging in the soulful expression of spirit through art is a way each of us can reconnect to spirit and find a place in a greater community. Organized religions can provide a connection to community and spirit, but many of us are simultaneously evolving beyond the need for institutions and authority figures that interpret the divine for us. We want direct experience. We no longer want to believe in a thing, we want to know it.In the same way that we've come to rely upon gurus, spiritual leaders, and churches to experience the divine for us, we've also abrogated our right to engage in the "work" of art. We allow artists to make our art for us, as though it was nothing more than a craft or trade--a commodity to be produced by the most efficient means possible. This is as deadening to our creative soul as our reliance on organized religion has been to our spirit. This is not to suggest that powerful artists who dedicate a greater portion of their energy to manifesting spirit in material form will not bring us important visions through their work. In a small ideal community, we might have regular intimate contact with several individuals who engage in the work of art on behalf of their community. We would benefit immensely from such an arrangement, but our role would then be to reflect upon that vision in our lives, to manifest it and translate it through our own creative processes. There is no way around our own individual obligation and responsibility to honor spirit through creative expression.
 
 

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