It's time to break the rules

Sometimes I'm just dying under the weight of these rules. Not anyone else's rules - my stupid rules. The boundaries I place on myself. The rigid definitions and impossible principles that are holding me back in my creativity and happiness.

Elizabeth Gilbert had a great metaphor about this in her book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear (Highly recommended!). She talks about the martyr and the trickster. The martyr puts themselves on a pedestal of principles where they are bound and tied, a clear target and easy shot. The trickster, however, sneaks around, seeks out the opening in a situation, and has fun in the process. Gilbert talks about the martyr on the front lines dying for their cause while the trickster starts a profitable black market on the sides of the battle.

It's time for this martyr to break the rules and get a little tricksy. Here are some rules I broke recently and had a BREAKTHROUGH in my art:

 1. Don't make the same painting twice.  From left to right, a copy of the tiny bamboo bookmark that inspired the paintings, first version 2014 and second version 2017.

 2.  Don't copy someone else's painting. Top row: Robert Beer's Milarepa drawing and Faith Stone's. Bottom row: unknown Milarepa thangka and my thangka.

3.  Don't paint from photographs. My photo on left the inspired the painting on right. I have also copied a Georgia O'Keefe painting in the background ;)

How have you broken YOUR rules lately? 

Why make art and meditate?

This past weekend, Deepak and I facilitated a Shambhava Meditation Teacher Training intensive at Chi-town Shakti in Chicago. It was so wonderful to reaffirm the WHY behind my practice and spend time in the nourishment of meditation.

The amazing Meditation Teacher Training Grads at Chi-Town Shakti!

It takes a lot of courage to go within and sit with yourself, especially on a consistent basis. There are a million compelling reasons to fix the world around us and avoid sitting. I remember being a new meditator and the eternity of chanting a mala of mantra and sitting for twenty minutes. I was in denial about what inner skills I actually had, which were pretty weak.

My meditation practice has shown me that the challenges of life have a root in me. Fortunately, the solutions are also within, as is the fulfillment we are seeking in life. When I sit to meditate, I become present and open to experience the Inner Self, the goal of meditation that is a natural part of who we are. Meditation is a process of relaxing into this experience while releasing the things that obscure it: the tensions and emotions of the mind and reactions to our lives. This process of release is what my teacher calls surrender.

Reconnected to the purpose of my practice, I was so refreshed to return to teaching yoga after the meditation training.

Why do you meditate?