I made the mistake of taking a short nap today.  I got wiped out from trying to unearth my house from that latest project tornado, as I call them.  I get so into whatever art project I'm doing that everything else goes by the wayside.  Anyway, now I can't sleep. 
Lately even though my life has had a lot of distracting, annoying events going on, I've been getting a ton of what I call "down loads".  What I mean by that is, images of designs/art/sculptures just pop into my head in full color and 3 dimension.  They have been practically overflowing.  I'm having a hard time getting them all down on paper.  I am filled with wonder and an overwhelming passion to create them.  Regular life though keeps asserting itself.  Makes it really hard to do my full time job, when I'm so fill with this immense drive to create.  I'm not complaining, I'm thrilled that I'm feeling so excited, alive and fulfilled.  I finally feel as though I have found my dharma/path/life's purpose.  I have been an artist all my life, dabbling in just about all forms of arts and crafts.  Slowly but surely I have felt as though I was being led but was too caught up in life's daily problems (most of which I created for myself) to see where I was heading.  Hind sight is always 20/20.  When I look back at the path that I have wandered through my life I can see the patterns, the image I get is of multiple streams all coming together into a large river.  Everything has been leading to where I am now. 
I have always been someone who questions why, why am I here, what is life all about, what's the point to all of this, what's my purpose for living.  I have tormented myself on and off over the years with these and many more questions.  I have finally come to a place of peace, serenity and acceptance.  Knowing that most of these questions have no answer or they can be answered anyway we chose.  To accept that life is what it is and to flow with it. 
There's so much more I could say about that, but I want to stay on topic.  The art.  I had to have a reason for it.  It had to mean something. Make a difference.  I asked over and over again what difference did creating works of art make, it's not like being a doctor, saving peoples lives after all.  It's just making beautiful things.  My friends always said that it feeds the soul.  I couldn't hear them.  It's like I wanted a stone tablet to fall from the sky with the answers and meaning engraved on it.  Silly me. 
I let go.  I let go of the questions.  I let go of the need for answers.  I even let go of trying to come to a decision about doing art for a living.  I finally realized that all of that was an excuse for me not to create, to face my fears, to expose my soul to the world - because that's what happens when I share my creations.  They are a part of me, an expression of my spirit.  What moves me.  I let go, deciding just to be and do. To just create and not to worry about what to do with it, just to enjoy it - if for nothing else then just for my self, my own enjoyment.  That's when it happened.  The images began flooding my mind.  They have been gathering strength and number. Even the reason has come to me.  The many different craft forms I have learned are converging - the river.  The meaning, as my friends tried to tell me over and over again....Spirit, soul, sharing the wonder of the divine within each one of us.  Reaching out to that divinity, connecting if only for a moment, ending our false feelings of isolation and remembering if only for a heart beat that we are all interconnected.  I think that's one of the reasons I have always been so drawn to flowing interwoven patterns, knotwork - they represent our intanglement.  Like the currents of the ocean.  How do you separate a single drop of water within the vast body of the ocean.
And so... how this has all come together in me and is flowing out is as vessels, sacred vessels.  Just as we are vessels, each holding within it a soul/spirit of incredible beauty and wonder.  For the past 10 years I have been focusing on my skills as a goldsmith.  Making jewelry.  It became so empty and meaningless to me.  All about capitalism, commercial - who has the biggest most expensive stone.  Not to say that it is that for anyone else, just for me.  And yet again the patterns, when I look back at how they've been coming together.  Metalworking, painting historic illuminations and mandalas, sewing, embroidery, leatherwork, woodworking, stained glass..... and so many more.  They are all flowing together.  The vessel, the container.  We even hold within us multiple "containers" of experience,thought emotion. Vessels within vessels.  Procreation, vessels birthing vessels. Each holding the sacredness of life. 
What does your vessel look like.....

I just finished reading an amazing book - The 100th Human by Chris Fenwick.  It's similar to the Celestine Prophesy, but I liked it better.  If you get a chance to read it, Do!  There's also a website: www.the100thhuman.com.   While the story was fictional and some times a bit sappy and fantastical, the principals that it presents are life changing, consciousness altering.  I don't want to spoil the mystery, so I'll leave it at that.  I highly recommend it. 

My daughter wanted to sleep with me last night, so I let her.  She is a very restless sleeper when she's over tired, which she was last night.  So, I got an arm smacked across my face at 4:30 this morning.  I couldn't get back to sleep.  Figured I might as well get up and take a few moments to myself and blog here. 

This August 15th, my mother died.  She wasn't feeling right earlier in the year, found out that she had a blood clot in her leg, then thought she was having a heart attack, only to find out that she had terminal cancer - ovarian, that had already spread.  She was given only 6 months to live.  She died in 2.  It was a shock.  My mom was always very healthy.  Though, she was very stowic, so we never really knew when she wasn't feeling good unless it showed, like a cold.  She suffered for a week, it was hard to watch sucha formidable woman brought to her knees by such intense pain.  It was very humbling - for all of us.

I had a weird relationship with my mom, like so many mothers and daughters.  Love - hate, unfulfilled needs - acceptance.  My mom couldn't show affection, accept to little children.  It made her very uncomfortable.  She saw emotion as a weakness.  Along came me, miss emotion - that went over like a lead balloon. Yet, being 42 and having had a child of my own taught me to accept and love her and her short comings.  To appreciate all that she did do for me and let go of all that she didn't.  When she died, I ended up being the one in the family that stepped up and handled everything with her husband (she remarried 2 years earlier, my father had died years ago).  I'm the oldest daughter, so everyone expected me to do that.  To take her role in the family as the materiarch.  I even found myself acting more and more like her, people said I sounded just like her.  Scared the crap out of me to be honest.  Fortunately I took a step back and came to my senses.  I didn't and still don't want to be my mother.  I don't want her place in my disfunctional family.  I am very different than her and them. 
When she found out that she had cancer, she acted the role of the strong stowic, saying "we all have to go sometime, so this is mine".  and that was the end of the discussion.  No emotion.  If we showed any she changed the subject, or blew it off.  I felt so sad for her that she couldn't go there.  We all missed an opportunity to share so much with her before she passed.  My brothers wife lost her mom this year to cancer too.  They all spent tons of time together, cried, talked for hours, shared stories, made plans.  She learned so much about her mom in those days.  I was left still not really knowing mine.  I've been going through old pictures.  Seeing a woman, I never knew.  Her friends knew her better.  They feel her loss deeper. 
I was left with so many opposing feelings that they almost cancelled each other out.  Grief, loss, relief, lightness... as if a breathe of fresh air had come into my life.  She was very strong willed and opinionated, as I am.  I finally feel like I can breathe, be what ever I want with out she rolling eyes and sneer.  What relief that was, the sense of freedom was overwhelming, empowering.  At the same time, the loss.  The big hole that she took up in my life.  The regret for all the things I would never know, all the needs that would never be fulfilled - she could never say she was proud of me, give a heart felt hug or so many other things like that.  It's so complex.  And yet when all is said and done, I feel peace and acceptance.  It was as it was, as it was meant to be, for what ever reasons.  She and I came together, so very different and yet so alike, for some greater purpose.  The peace is so strong, I don't really feel the need to cry.  Our soul contract was fulfilled.  I am who I am today because of and inspite of her.  I'm grinning at that statement.  I have come to see as I've gotten older and hopefully wiser that some seeds can not grow unless they go through a forest fire first, as others must be treated with utmost care or they crumble.  With how sensitve, idealistic and emotional as I was as a small child, the fire helped teach me to be strong, hardy, feisty and tenacious.  I don't know if I would have gotten as far as I have in my spiritual and emotional growth if it hadn't been for that.  But again, what is, is and I will never know or need to know if it would have been different. 
If I have learned anything from her, it is acceptance of what is.  To be in the moment. 
That doesn't mean that I can't and won't change the things that I see as needing change, it just means there is no reason for me to wallow in what was.  To accept, be at peace, grow and move on with each breathe.  FLOW - I have come to love that word.  To flow with what the universe sends us, Flow with the things that we magnetize into our lives.  All things have meaning, even the worst.  I have learn my greatest lessons and felt my greatest joys because of my greatest losses and sarrows.  The enlightenment that has followed these times has always awed me.  When hard things come my way, I look for the lesson with almost a sense of excitement - what will I learn this time... what step will I take on my path....
Breathe.... Flow.....Be 

It is all a beautiful, intricate dance of growth, discovery and so much more.

I'm not the partying type, so I usually spend my New Year's Eve quietly at home.  My usual ritual is to write a letter of intention/gratitude.  This isn't the same as setting resolutions.  You write a letter as if it is the end of the new year.  In it you thank the Universe or what ever God(s) you believe in for all the things that have come to pass over the year.  What I've learned from doing this over the past few years is that anything that I wrote like it really had happened, happened.  Anything that I wrote statements like "want, hope, will, wish etc...didn't.  It's been a fascinating learning experience in Manifestation.  I have come to appreciate the fine nuances for the power of words, thoughts and actions.  When I've truly wanted to manifest something and believed I could have it- that's a big one for me, in the past I have had to negotiate with the universe...ie if you'll give me this, I'll do this - I managed to receive exactly what I set out to get.  I've been wowrking on coming to a place where I don't feel the need to "Pay" for the things that I desire.  I guess I had it pretty ingrained in me from my mother that nothing is ever free.  This year I am letting go of that belief and I'm very excited about finally having realized that that belief was there so that I can release it.  For me it boils down to a belief of deserving.  As I have become more "conscious" of my unconscious thoughts and beliefs I have truly begun to step into a new reality.  Still I am amazed at how easy it is to realize something, forget it only to remember it again later.  I can't believe how I can still hestitate to try to mainfest things when I've actually done it on a number of occasions.  Again this brings me right back to my beliefs and the limits that they create.  I've been avoiding writing my letter this year because I haven't been able to decide what I want to manifest this year.  I guess letting go of those limiting beliefs would be a good start, Eh?  LOL  Ah, the tangled webs we weave.  I always get the image of a ball of yarn that a bunch of cats have been playing with when I start plucking away at my unconscious beliefs.  They are so intertwined and interconnected, one leading to another, to another.  Maybe I need to stop trying to unravel them and just slice through them like a greek myth I can't seem to remember the details to about unravelimg a huge ball of twine would rule a country.  Anyway, I'm babbling.  I think I'll go and meditate on what else I am going to bring into my life in 2007. 
Happy New Year!