— work in progress, (c) Cat Charissage, 2016

Dear Friend,

This work in progress is a first step in my using Intentional Creativity to work through a significant life challenge of mine:  How do I create a sustainable and joyful way to live, a way that will allow me to have the best health possible, to have deep and meaningful connections with my beloveds, will allow me to explore the depth dimensions as much as I want, and create a rhythm so that I’m creating more of what I feel called to create in writing and painting?

The painting connects the visions of my heart with the necessary (but as yet unknown) strategies of the mind that will help me choose out of the possibilities available to me that which will support me in a contemplative and whole life, while contributing by sharing compassion, skills, and whatever wisdom comes through me. There’s also something important in there about opening my voice in a greater way.  We’ll see how it progresses.

Uh, you too?  Oh, I’m not presuming you have the exact challenges or the same goals.  But there’s this seeming never ending discernment of how to best use our time and attention to live the life we long to live, isn’t there?  There’s always so many more interesting and often very important matters than there is time in the day to give proper attention to.  So many needs and cries for justice in our world to lend our voices and time to!

Well, towards that end, I have two ANNOUNCEMENTS:

1.  I’ve a new offering:  ONLINE INDIVIDUAL SESSIONS in Intentional Creativity and Soulwork. This is really exciting for me, and I’ve thought carefully about what I can offer online with my full integrity.  Please consider referring my services to your friends if you think I can be of help.  For all the details, go to my page Work with me Individually.
2.  My online presence on Facebook and FB groups will be curtailed, just to keep what little discretionary time I do have available to invest in my highest priorities.  There are so many  people in my life that I deeply treasure, and remember regularly with love and all good intention.  At the same time, most of you know that I rarely read my FB Timeline, and am not caught up with many of the groups I’m a member of.  And I’m feeling the need to cut back even more.   (So remember, if something significant in your life occurs and it’s posted on FB and you don’t hear from me — it’s not that I don’t care about you, but it’s because I simply will have missed it!) However, I do respond as soon as possible to any private messages on FB or to personal emails.

With much love at this New Moon and entrance into the “thin spaces” of the year here in the Northern Hemisphere,

Cat

(c) Cat Charissage, 2016, acrylic on canvas

Bodhisattva Between the Worlds

Here I am.

I arose from this.

I belong here.

Here, now, within and between the worlds

of ordinary and non-ordinary reality,

I am prism

allowing Light to come in, flow through,

become just what is needed in this needful world.

I live . . . . differently, now,

building on what came before, organically,

revisiting pattern, expanding with an aerial view.

No more pushing rivers that flow anyway.

I am flow.  I am vibration.

I live in the spaciousness of All of reality.

With the gift of Light and color

I know radiance, and bring it into darkness.

To see All the Mystery, to share flow,

and roses,

here I am.

HERE I am.

Hello dear friend,

As we move more steadily into fall (where I live), and on this Full Moon energy, I want to invite you to dream and ponder a bit today if you can.

This painting resulted from a lot of dreaming and pondering, especially about the kind of life I want to and need to live, so as to live as expansively and creatively as possible within the realities of this life, here, now.  I was accompanied in this pondering by the most recent class I took with my painting teacher, Shiloh Sophia and her husband Jonathan Lewis, called Prism Leadership Lab.  It sought to apply principles of quantum physics to leadership, by means of painting.

I loved experimenting in a different style than my usual, and hope to do more like this.  Here are some of the “in process photos”.  There were many stages and much writing in each stage.  I had no idea what the finished painting would look like; I just kept painting the next stroke, adding the next idea.

With much love,

Cat

— WIP, Cat Charissage (c) 2016

Dear Friend,

Happy new moon in this beautiful month of October.  I’m more fatigued than usual right now, but also very happy.  In mid September I was privileged to again attend a training with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes in her Original Voice series entitled “Getting Unstuck:  Journey through Hell to the Hidden Heart”.  Here’s part of her description of it:

“As I say to you often, as some of my family members used to say with uncanny vision: “Be the first, the last, and the only.” I’d add, this is not a harsh striving; it is a natural condition. Except for being barred from one’s own richness, by various self imposed and external injunctions.

“However, those can be removed and replaced with far better instruction about the nature of the true self, and one creative force, which is the animating force of one’s entire life.  In other words, the overculture causes far too often that people become stuck instead of progressing. Shy instead of shining. Embarrassed instead of energized. Fallow instead of fearless.

“I mean to show the ways to break free, for to remain painfully glued in, unable to move toward the bountiful nature each soul was born in and with, and wanly plucking at the curtains instead, whilst other surge ahead– is a way to feel sick, paltry, unable, and tied in knots.  Such souls so sincerely want to be free to move forward, to try many things, to blossom, to create fully. But often are stymied in the exact how to, the steps needed to break free, to unleash no matter what/who/how/when/where.

“Using the hidden instructions for freeing oneself from the nine circles of capture in Dante’s writing about an underground infierno, translated as ‘hell’, this Original Voice® training teaches how to free oneself for life, teaches the exact steps to be unfettered, to jailbreak the prison. Your part is to practice faithfully. Mine is to impart the field guide.

“This I shall do. I hope you will join us…I’ve remedios for ‘can’t’ and it isn’t merely ‘can.’ It is ‘will.’ Focused vortex of will. You’ll see. We’ll see. Together.”

It’s not everyday that you can go to hell and back with a beloved teacher as guide. . .   It was an adventure, an ordeal, a challenge . . . . and I came back with a virulent cold!  Still, very much worth it.

Since then I’ve been recovering from the cold, and beginning Story Circles.  I’m launching my offerings to do Red Thread Sessions individually online (stay tuned for a more formal announcement), and celebrating birthdays.

My 60th birthday was on September 29.  I alternate between feeling like an elder, a crone, an old lady, a survivor, and entirely too young to be what I used to think of as a “woman of sixty”.    Other birthdays have been my son’s, my sister in law’s, and my mother in law’s.

My son Liberty created an unusual birthday card for me.  It’s a certificate, with writing on both sides.  It’s an invitation to choose how I want to look at myself at this age.  On one side it says ” 60 years.  Dear Mom, you’re getting old, you’ve spent 60 horrible years in this terrible world, you are going to die one day.  Your parents are dead, your father wasn’t nice, you aren’t happy all the time and you argue with your husband.  You have many painful illnesses and your son is angry a lot.  Happy birthday!”

On the other side he wrote “60 years.  Dear Mom, you have lived a long life, you have a nice home, lots of friends, a loving husband that you’ve been with for many years.  You help many people.  You have a kid who makes people laugh at the U. of L.  You have lived through some tough stuff and come out of it better.  You are happy, very happy most of the time.  You’ve got this!  Happy birthday!”

Yes, both are true, and there’s only one I’m going to dwell on.

Thank you for being one of my “lots of friends”.

With much love,

Cat