The Facebook Log off Week and the inspiration that followed.

As I mentioned last post I’ve been doing the artist’s Way by Julia Cameron over the past few weeks and the results are mind boggling. I have found myself burbling up to the surface, barely aware that so much had been gently being ignored as it was shoved under my consciousness. Crazy isn’t it?  A woman who writes under being Spiritually Aware suddenly finds out that maybe I haven’t been quite as Aware as I’ve been wanting to be. Hence the lack of posts over the past couple of years I suppose.

But like all unawareness the coming back into awareness is sublime. Like a wonderful page-turning novel I am discovering so much about Me and what I’ve expanded to over the past few years. Its like catching up with an old friend.

It is reminding me that is exactly what life is about. We are spiritual beings in a physical reality. We come here to live and often in that living we become closed off from the spiritual being we really are. If we live entirely from the Spirit perspective, we feel closed off, like observers to a movie scene. We are involved, but sometimes a little distant from the human experience. Yet, when we are unaware of the Spiritual element of life, we get so caught up in the illusion of it all, in the game that we become a victim to our own reality. Balance. The great Teeter-Totter of life.  I am back to LIVING my life, no longer distantly watching it or getting caught up in it, LIVING my day to day. CREATING my day to day and greeting the sun with a smile and a wave.

I was so excited on this new journey that I almost didn’t notice my exercises last week, until my jaw dropped. Cameron had suddenly announced the week of reading deprivation. No newspapers, no books no reading. Well that would be OK if it was twenty years ago when the book was written. Now, here in 2015... it meant no Facebook.

We run a small business. I post on SAP all the time, I email. Suddenly I found myself ponder, how was I to go Internet surfing free. I gave myself guidelines. Writing, no reading. No scanning newsfeeds, no clicking on links, only emails and posts to write. I was on for about 5 minutes twice a day. My computer wasn’t even turned on at home. I was free.

Yes, seriously. From dreading it, wondering how I could do it and horrified at my own habit, feeling like an FB junky, in a quick switch, I was free. Not only that, my posture improved, I stood straight and I focused on my family more. I could feel energy from my head to my toes and like darling Julia predicted, my thoughts were my own again.

That’s the idea. We are bombarded by thoughts all the time. We are inundated with information (plug, my husband wrote a song called Information Overload which he will be releasing on his next album, keep in touch at www.vibrationraisers.com) and it literally is forming what we think. It tells us how to see the world. Our perspective, which is really our own identity, is being formed by the information we take part in and now, in the age of the internet, we take part in more than before.  A day into my internet free week and I made a scary discovery. My emotional detachment, my sense of observing which I often had thought was a sense of spiritual awareness was none other than a symptom of information overload. Yes, I was observing life, but not for spiritual expansion, but for the postability of the event. How could I share it with others? How could I take a snapshot of the experience? Meanwhile, I was too far removed to experience it myself.

Yes, I’ve called myself back from the Facebook Abyss. I’m demanding my emotions back again. After all, yes, positive thought is the key to happiness but avoiding feeling offness cuts you off from your inner guidance system. FEELING is key to living! I needed to hear that inner voice again.

So, I enlisted one of my favourite tools. A tool I have passed on to so many. The wonderful world of Inspiration boarding. I went to my library, who had just sorted out their past issues of various magazines with very good timing, and I brought back a stack of everything from Parent Magazine to Architectural Digest. I browsed, I scanned and everything that made me feel good I cut out. Soon I had a box full and yesterday I started. My new desk I got a few weeks back had a glass top, so I carefully removed it and started scrapbooking underneath it. Nature images, quotes, pretty things, Opening French Doors with sunlight pouring in, beaches and one simple antique desk with a pulled out chair inviting me to sit down, now greets me when I sit here to create. I’ve told my children it’s my place for escape. I can visit any one of these images whenever I wish. I can imagine walking on the beach or sitting under a tree. I can do as I wish. What’s fascinating is the selection of images. As I cut them out I found myself re-introduced to my own inner self, learning I’ve grown and expanding as a person since starting the SAP site 5 years ago. That was the last time I did an Inspiration board (and from then to now a lot of what appeared on there has manifested into real life) and the difference is incredible. From my board based on cozy home life, on little children, babies, warm kitchens and comfy chairs, my new one is expansive, wide open spaces and inviting doors.  Its full of the unknown, full of adventure. It’s exciting.

So, why blog about this? Why confess to you that I, a Spiritually aware living coach, has been off lately and just connected? Because, I surprised myself with how the computer disconnected me. It blocked me. Before I went offline I read an article saying that children are actually becoming unable to recognize  human emotions through facial expressions because of screentime. It was a study performed somewhere. But I think its deeper. WAY deeper. I think we are being shut off from our emotional guidance systems. I think we are exposed to so much we are observing our lives, not as Spirit, but as.... as a viewer. We need to claim ourselves back again. Now will I be back on FB?...um yup. I’ll be posting and interacting. Will I scan my newsfeed and check out the Trending column, probably not. I love my FB community of SAP, it fuels me up with the interactions and people I’ve met. But I’ll also be logged off a lot more. I’ll be lying on a beach... somewhere in Spain.... or walking through a sunlit door... or walking down a bluestone path... and I won’t even have to leave my chair.

The Artist's Way and the Morning Pages Process

For the past few weeks I've been taking part in Julia Cameron’s course, The Artist’s Way. It’s a twelve week course, meant to help you tap in, tune on, and let the creativity flow. After a year and a half running a food business with my family and my writing becoming less and less frequent and... well flowing... I figured it was a good idea to start. 

It’s an exciting journey. It’s a hard journey. I've still yet to take my “artist’s date”, an outing where you are suppose to do something for yourself, something to satisfy your inner child/artist. A coffee date, a movie alone, a bookstore hunt, even a bath; two hours, planned ahead, scheduled and achieved. It’s made me aware that my life is pretty jammed packed. But it’s also made me aware that if I have 2 hours alone, I’d sooner be in front of my computer or pen and paper writing, creating and tapping into the flow more than anything. This is my date. I didn’t plan a babysitter, I didn’t plan what I was going to write. I just sat here, and said “flow”.

What I am getting the most out of is the “morning pages.”; which I’m proud to say I’m doing rather religiously. Sometimes my five year old wakes up and sits beside me to do his “pages”, scribbles in his notebook which are lovely, and my daughter will sometimes do some in her diary, when she gets up in time. The idea is 3 pages, first thing or as close to as possible, handwritten about anything. Every little niggle, every little morning fleeting thought, every buried dream, every wishful thought, but mostly, those boring daily doldrums that seem to be put on repeat without us even noticing it. You know what, when you write them three days in a row you start to notice them. I’ve noticed a lot.

 So I’ve started looking for new thoughts, which suddenly means breaking down old thought processes. Suddenly, Morning Pages are miraculous. Suddenly Morning Pages need capitalization. Julia Cameron breaks it down that as long as you are doing morning pages, you are doing them right. You write them, don’t re-read them, lock them up, seal them in an envelope, burn them, whatever feels right, or like me, write them in a notebook and never look back. I don’t have the time, I’m too excited to move forward, to see what will come out in the next page. I've been sorting out things, asking questions, getting answers, Source, Universal powers, God, jumping onto the flow of words getting me messages and nudges. Yesterday I saw an Abraham Hicks quote saying that writing is the most focus a human can establish in physical reality, therefore it can quickly shift vibration, suddenly through my morning pages I’m doing visualizations, painting pictures of thoughts that make me feel good, my dream life at the moment, stories of laughing children and stress free living.

When I started my pages four weeks ago, I struggled filling my three pages. I felt ridiculous. I’m a writer. I write. I’m suppose to let lose my sub-conscious and just write the thoughts, the monkey mind chatter that is rolling by. But I’d lose focus, I’d get bored, they weren’t real thoughts. Now, I get to the end of my third page and I wonder if I’ll just flow over to four or five pages... but then my boy looks over, counts the pages I’ve done, raises his eyebrows and says Mom, I’m hungry, you’re finished. Let’s have breakfast!