Equipment for Modern Mystics:
Your Creative License and a Secret Recipe.
The Alchemy of Mysticism !
From an early age I felt something marvelous and real that often appeared from out of the blue. Sometimes it frightened me. A few times it was so irresistible that I fell for it– body and soul.
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Was I in love with “me”? Was it something greater? What made this love palpable? What made it dissipate?
It was sweet, ecstatic, and so compelling that I fell in love with it. I wanted to nurture it in all its forms.
I began to pay attention What creates intimacy with the Mysterious Reality?
I’d sense “it” most while •
Dancing
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Singing
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Being in nature
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Hugging Those I Love
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Making Art
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Praying
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Learning
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Being in Community
What About You?
I’d lose it by •
Overworking
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Over focusing on ideas and opinions.
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Trying to be a masterful teacher or leader.
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Getting wrapped up in people’s challenges.
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Resisting life around me.
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Pushing certain ideas or practices.
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I was rewarded for being driven, industrious, and accomplished. Work was called God even when it trumped intimacy.
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Does a body want more work?
And You?
As a recovering work, artist, lover and seeker I asked, “what does my body want?”
“Work” that is unpleasantly dictated by others? tedious? overly demanding? a drain? Shaming? That disorganizes body, mind, heart, and soul? That only benefits others? !
Work can eat life and mystery alive.
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It feels a lot like anxiety.
“Work” is an Anglo Saxon word that means •“bodily or mental effort exerted to do or make something: purposeful activity, labor; toil.” We “work connections,” “work it off,” “get worked up,” and “work out.” It’s where we get paid. “What’s your work?” tells our worth.
The Work Ethic is a Modern God.
The trouble is? Worth, mastery, and status knock body mind heart and spirit out of whack. Heart and spirit are losers.
On the other hand
Maybe Work is Just Creativity It helps me to think of work as creativity. It’s how we generate, serve, make things of use and beauty. We make contact, make the bed, make love, make time, make beauty, make space, make memories, make stories, songs, dances, poems, and words to share ideas. We make it all up to stimulate curiosity, benefit those we love, energize and inspire, increase health and intimacy with life, and feed the earth, spirit, and people.
What do you love to make? Is it work?
Creativity is our Birthright
My Divine License
Creating is key. But, tracking Mystery requires two other things! Play Rest. I celebrate people who have this down!
Play has no destination other than curiosity or enjoyment. What? No Purpose? Prayer with no purpose? Art with no purpose? Wander with no purpose? Research for no purpose? What else?
REST is life’s most mysterious ingredient. It is all about letting go. Chill, Sleep, Be Held, Hang Out, Dream with No Obligation.
Create. Play. Rest.
Mystery needs all 3, especially Play and Rest. Where we use the least control, gates to the Unknown swing open.
Sadly, this is not the “American” Way or The Way of the Global Economy. Play? Rest?
Practice I ask myself each day Did I play? Did I rest? Or, was I fighting evil and incessantly creating?
And one more thing! I need a counter culture.
To let go‌ I need you. It’s a body thing. Bodies need to feel secure to open to the Unknown. In a work driven society I need those who mirror back the divine license to live in mystic freedom.
Even a small virtual temple will do, “wherever two or three are gathered.�
Thank you. Love, Cynthia.