Reality

Curtain - Painter IX

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This week in FW is called Uncovering a Sense of Reality. I couldn't find my book to read about it on Saturday but it re-appeared on Sunday. And having sat down and read the chapter I realised I needed to alter most of the exercises to suit me. They are too word-oriented for me. I need to do them in pictures.

Working with SoulCollage®, as I have been since the end of last year, is a great way to do them. For instance the suggestion that one falls in love with oneself, I find that much easier through making cards that depict me rather than by writing words. Sometimes the words do come later. But pictures speak louder than words to me. For instance I already have cards called such things as:

1. She who lives in the city
2. Beautiful me
3. Book Lover
4. Night Dreamer
5. The Gardener

I'd love to show them to you but I feel that it is breaking copyright to blog collages cut from magazines, etc. so despite the value of the pictures I'm only giving you their titles.

Now, using the five small actions diving rod, here is a list of cards for me to make:

1. She who loves to be alive and present now
2. She who prefers silence to noise
3. She who sings to herself
4. She who has the time to be herself
5. She who makes pictures to show herself to herself

I've no idea yet how these will happen but I trust they will. And if they don't something else worthwhile will appear.

Quite a few cards start off as one thing and end up as something else - for instance I was doing one about my working self from my 20's - I'd started off thinking of it as something like She who stood up to her bosses - but it ended up with the title: Worker - Unmanageable. And I felt compassion for the people who had tried to direct the firecracker I then was - this was very healing for me, I forgave them in that moment.

One of the exercises this week is to make a picture of the critic or censor. I did this as a SoulCollage® card a while ago.

It called itself Boo-er and my picture depicted a brain sitting on a settee - now I don't need to reduce this down to size, but redirect it, engage it. I now love this part of me too. I feel that Julia Cameron is still at war with her inner critic rather than embracing it, loving it and re-directing it. I prefer this second option.

For more about SoulCollage® see the soulcollage.com
Or have a reading.

The last exercise in the book requires a date with a friend and ends with asking them for spiritual help too... what I'd like from all of you is to wish me luck, please!

And I wish you luck too.