2019 ROUND UP
Here I am in my little studio space where I’ve made so much magic out of thin air…
Happy Solstice my friends!
Gratitude is a weird word. It's kind of like the word meditation in that as soon as someone suggests we practice it, we get kind of turned off.
But practicing both gratitude and meditation really works when it comes to creating and enjoying a beautiful life.
I was feeling off-kilter professionally yesterday. I am moving out of the little office/studio space I've had for the last three years and I was feeling the kind of creative malaise that creeps up on me sometimes.
So I started today with a long walk and meditation even though I have "a million things to do". Then I decided to make a list of all the things I'd created for you this past year. Here's that list - I think you'll be able to see how powerfully it changed my mood:
2019
7 ARTxMAGIC WORKSHOPS
1 ARTx MAGIC RETREAT
50 NEWSLETTERS
1 INSTAGRAM HIATUS
21 NEW AUDIO MEDITATIONS
23,000 PLAYS ON SOUNDCLOUD
So then I meditated a little more and decided that was definitely enough for one year and I also decided to give away Presence, my newest meditation until 1/1/20.
If you are out there, reading this, please know everything I make is here to reconnect you to your own magic. And I know keeping that signature magical connection live is hard in the modern world. Which is why I come at it in so many ways - audio, visual, live events, words and inspiration.
And I also want to be sure to say - I am not free of my creative ennui, the strands of it still entangle me; I still feel them wrapped around my ankles, snaking their way towards my brain. I love my work, but so often I send these things out into the ether and never get to know if they 'land' - if they are making the difference I hope they do (especially when it comes to sparking your imagination).
I think it is important that you know that even though I've made all these things that I deeply wanted to make, I am still unsatisfied. That's what I am talking about when I made the subject line of this email "there is no there there". There's no long-lasting satisfaction that solves every other thing because every satisfied desire gives birth to a new desire. So it is the journey, the process that is the thing, the things we do or get are not the things.
I'm going to take some real time over the next two weeks to reconnect to my truest/deepest values and dream even bigger than I have been. I am going to fashion a creative incubator for myself so in 2020 I can serve you even better than I have been so far. I am going to take the reins of 'business' off of my imagination and see where it takes me.
And in the meantime I hope you use the youaremagicla.com website to the fullest and maybe even share it with a family member, partner, kid or friend. There's a lot there for you:
the instantly download-able Dreamworld Audio Guidebook
free podcasts and in-depth interviews
the pleasantly weird Deep Dive blog
so many beautiful meditations to keep your inner light lit.
Wishing you a wonderful Solstice and stay tuned, we are going to experience many wonderful things together in the new year...
xoxo
JS
P.S. The Field meditation is full-length and always free... listen here.
"It is, after all, not necessary to fly right into the middle of the sun, but it is necessary to crawl to a clean little spot on earth where the sun sometimes shines and one can warm oneself a little."
- Franz Kafka
1. Just watch everything happen. This is the same thing as surrendering.
2. The reason you can't do it is because you're afraid of your own mind.
3. To do it, you have to stop the continuous squinching that makes you you.
4. The self that gets lost in thoughts is also a thought.
5. Everything of which you can be aware is a mental event, including the "me" who thinks it's aware.
6. That "me" is the thought that Ramana Maharshi says is last to go, his "I-thought." His method aims at suffocating that thought by placing all attention on it.
7. One of thinking's main purposes is to say "this really exists" and "that does not," but this distinction isn't useful for meditation.
8. Forget about the nature of reality. This is about phenomenology.
9. Watching takes the fun out of thoughts. The pain, too.
10. All thinking is motivated by an intention (intention is not quite the right word, but the proper word does not exist) to excite a feeling.
11. Nothing you think can make you happy for very long.
12. Being lost in thoughts is a form of masturbation.
13. This instruction sums it up: don't daydream. Or does it?
14. And this one too: be aware. But it makes a difference whether you are aware of something or of anything.
15. You can play a lot of games with meditation that are pure wastes of time.
16. Gurdjieff's self-remembering is the same thing as Theravada's mindfulness.
17. Minds are incredibly prone to travel in ruts.
18. The reason we have to do this stuff - seek relief from unhappiness, meditate, get enlightened - is that nature designed our minds for brains that were much less intelligent than the ones we have.
19. Small children hum like cats when they eat. The memory is worth recovering.
- Freddie Yam, What I've Learned from Meditating
THE LAYERS
I have walked through many lives,
some of them my own,
and I am not who I was,
though some principle of being
abides, from which I struggle
not to stray.
When I look behind,
as I am compelled to look
before I can gather strength
to proceed on my journey,
I see the milestones dwindling
toward the horizon
and the slow fires trailing
from the abandoned camp-sites,
over which scavenger angels
wheel on heavy wings.
Oh, I have made myself a tribe
out of my true affections,
and my tribe is scattered!
How shall the heart be reconciled
to its feast of losses?
In a rising wind
the manic dust of my friends,
those who fell along the way,
bitterly stings my face.
Yet I turn, I turn,
exulting somewhat,
with my will intact to go
wherever I need to go,
and every stone on the road
precious to me.
In my darkest night,
when the moon was covered
and I roamed through wreckage,
a nimbus-clouded voice
directed me:
"Live in the layers,
not on the litter."
Though I lack the art
to decipher it,
no doubt the next chapter
in my book of transformations
is already written.
I am not done with my changes.
- Stanley Kunitz
Your great mistake is to act the drama
as if you were alone. As if life
were a progressive and cunning crime
with no witness to the tiny hidden
transgressions. To feel abandoned is to deny
the intimacy of your surroundings. Surely,
even you, at times, have felt the grand array;
the swelling presence, and the chorus, crowding
out your solo voice. You must note
the way the soap dish enables you,
or the window latch grants you freedom.
Alertness is the hidden discipline of familiarity.
The stairs are your mentor of things
to come, the doors have always been there
to frighten you and invite you,
and the tiny speaker in the phone
is your dream-ladder to divinity.
Put down the weight of your aloneness and ease into the
conversation. The kettle is singing
even as it pours you a drink, the cooking pots
have left their arrogant aloofness and
seen the good in you at last. All the birds
and creatures of the world are unutterably
themselves. Everything is waiting for you.
- David Whyte
"I don't mean it's easy or assured, there are the stubborn stumps of shame, grief that remains unsolvable after all the years, a bag of stones that goes with one wherever one goes and however the hour may call for dancing and for light feet. But there is, also, the summoning world, the admirable energies of the world, better than anger, better than bitterness and, because more interesting, more alleviating. And there is the thing that one does, the needle one plies, the work, and within that work a chance to take thoughts that are hot and formless and to place them slowly and with meticulous effort into some shapely heat-retaining form, even as the gods, or nature, or the soundless wheels of time have made forms all across the soft, curved universe - that is to say, having chosen to claim my life, I have made for myself.”
– Mary Oliver
“Logic only gives man what he needs
Magic gives him what he wants.”
- Tom Robbins