Part 11: The Importance of the Arts in Following Your Heart’s Desire

Welcome to Part 11 of Your Heart’s Desire. 
As I said last week we would have a break
from doing exercises in order to give you more time
to complete your inventories.

So today we will discuss the importance of the arts
in following your Heart’s Desire.

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What are you?

You

 are a part of God’s self expression. 

God sings a song, and that song is you.

Why does God sing?

For sheer joy.

This

 is the Absolute Truth.

-Emmet Fox-

 

The Arts seek to express the colors, flavors, fragrance, songs, and dances of the soul.  They seek to draw the forces of nature to and through them to be shared with others in ways that vibrate souls together, like strummed strings of the harp.  

They provide an outlet and vehicle for the handling of difficult emotions and experiences, traumas as well as intense joys.  And therefore, as agents and emissaries of the beauty of the soul, they help clear the channel of the whisperings of God so that we are better able to follow (or dance with) our Heart’s Desire.

But some of you might already be thinking, “Then my dreams are doomed.  I can’t draw, I can’t write poetry, I can’t sing or play a musical instrument, and I most certainly can’t dance!”

To which I reply: Hold on.  I am not in any way suggesting, even a little bit, that you need to be an accomplished artist, a published poet, or a recording star in order to manifest your dreams.  What I am saying is this: 

Those things you just thought up there…all those “cant’s”…they’re lies. 

They are all lies someone told you way early on and you believed them.  That’s number one. 

Number two, everyone, by virtue of being human; by virtue of being a child of an Infinitely Creative Creator—the Ultimate Poet, Artist, Singer, Dancer, and Storyteller—means you have, whether you believe it or feel it—the ability to create artistically, poetically, and musically. 

You, by virtue of being part of the music of God have the ability to dance with your every step.  In fact, when one stops to consider the very act of walking and how it takes the knowledge of the space in front of you, and of the space behind; how it takes the complete balancing of the head on the torso; and the gentle sway of the limbs; when one considers the delicate, microscopic hairs in your ears and the tiny, dew drops of fluid in your ears and how they all work together to keep you upright—you must acknowledge that your every step is an orchestrated dance, a thing of beauty often overlooked.  You have the ability to move through space, like visible poetry.  And that’s just walking. 

The same goes for the acts of speaking, seeing, tasting, touching, and so on.  Everything you and your body does is artistic and creative—you are constantly inhaling bits of sensory information and converting them to some sort of expression of beauty. 

The soul has to express itself…It is a law—no, it is more than a law; it simply is the way it is.  Creativity is part and parcel of the human experience.  As the body breathes, so the soul creates. 

Every child I have ever met (and I’ve met lots of children having been a teacher for the past 15 years) sings.  They all draw.  They all make up stories and love rhyme and rhythm.  All of them.  I have never found a single exception.  Ever. 

But where do these impulses to create go?  They are taught out of us in many schools and homes.  They are crushed out of us by parents and teachers that focus too soon and too much on academics.  Adults who have had their own dreams stolen and their own creativity squashed, forcibly turn children’s faces away from the arts in favor of cold, hard (dead) facts.  This is one of the main reasons why American schools are failing in so many respects.  They have lost beauty.  But that’s another story. 

And there’s also other types of traumas (for the discounting and removal of art and beauty is a trauma).  There are other types of abuse, neglect, and so on that also create inhibitions within us, that also pervert and damage the soul’s inherent desire for beauty.  And while the natural inclination of the soul is always towards beauty, when damaged through abuse or addictions, the soul sometimes creates mayhem and havoc, discord, and storms of violence. 

The point is you were born with artistic and musical gifts.  You were born with a desire to tell stories whether those stories are in rhyme or prose, true or fantasy. 

After I began working through my own abuse memories and addictions, and began actively following my Heart’s Desire, deep-seated impulses to express what was happening in my soul began to surface.  My desire to share the joy and wonder at what was happening grew. And in my case, I began cultivating my artistic and musical talents.  I began writing poetry.  And my soul blossomed.  With Lefty’s help, the more creativity I shared the more I was inspired to create and to share.  I started the Wonder Child Blog.  I started a YouTube channel to share my music.  And my soul became a garden.

Were there doubts and inner critics? Yes!  I had only begun dealing with my negative body image issues, for example, and there I was being videotaped singing and playing guitar.  There I was posting videos of myself on the world-wide web. 

I had to surrender my inhibitions and perfectionism.  I had to move through shame.  I had to learn the one characteristic that makes us human—I simply had to learn to play.  And when I say “had to,” I mean that literally.  My soul’s flowering had to manifest in the same way the rose has to when given the proper care and setting.

So I encourage you to simply draw.  Sing.  Become conscious that your every move bespeaks a secret dance.  And don’t worry about mistakes or looking goofy, or screwing up. Be playful, splash the paint, make a mess, write pure drivel, have fun with it all, laugh with it.  After all, “no art,” said Rudolf Steiner, “can be mastered without humor.”

But if learning to sing or draw or write seems like too much right now, then find writers that inspire you and read them.  Find music you enjoy and listen to it.  Find artists you admire and go to the museum or the library and look at their artwork.  Allow creativity to begin flowing through you.  Memorize a poem, learn it by heart.  Study the life of a great artist. Sing in the car or the shower.  Doodle during a business meeting or on a napkin at a restaurant—anything—just begin and watch your heart open.

 

To end this entry, here is a short list of some of my favorite poets, musicians, and bands:

1). Mary Oliver (poet).

2). William Stafford (poet)

3). Rumi (poet)

4). Rainer Maria Rilke (poet)

5). Emily Dickinson (poet)

6). Van Morrison (singer/songwriter)

7). Jane Siberry (singer/songwriter)

8). Jon Anderson of Yes (singer/songwriter)

9). Israel Kamakawiwo’ole (IZ) (singer/songwriter)  

10). Krishna Das (singer/songwriter)

11). Sigur Ros (Icelandic music group)


12). Roger Hodgson of Supertramp (singer/songwriter)
 

Next week we will continue on with a regular edition of Your Heart’s Desire.  In the mean time, finish your inventories and read them to someone.

And remember to play.


Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog


Searching For A Center

Many of you know my mother crossed over to the other side

on February 18th.  Poems and songs still appear in my heart, 

needing to be shared. 

This one came on Sunday, July 3.

Searching For a Center

 

After my brother and I watched them lower

our mother’s casket into the cold, February ground,

with a back-hoe no less, the funeral director gave us each

 white roses he had saved from the viewing.

 

That night, alone, I held one of the roses,

and let the fragrant mass unravel carefully in my hands.

The petals fell in a heap, like silken snowflakes,

 and as I wept, searching for a center, I understood:

 

The center of things is nearer to the thorns

than to the blossom, nearer to the ending

than to the beginning, and nearer to the unraveling of yourself

than to the trying to hold on for dear life.

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog


Angels Everywhere–the Difficult and Rewarding Art of Making Everything in Your Life a Blessing

            

Bless a thing and it will bless you.

Emmet Fox

 

A radical shift has taken place in my life over these last three years.  Once one of the most negative people I knew, I am transforming into one of the most positive.  But by positive I do not mean happy all the time.  I do not mean I am overly chipper either.  By positive I mean my life is charged with an ability to move constructively forward in the face of a disease that wants me dead.  The disease I carry is addiction.  And all real addictions are fatal.  So I do not say that lightly.  I carry within me a disease whose very symptomology indicates a propensity towards negative, gloom and doom thinking–grandiose, self-centered thinking, fantasy-based thinking, lust and greed based thinking—any type of negative thinking that starts running through my head with the express intention of making me uncomfortable enough to seek relief in my addictions.  And the shift?  I do not have to live my life based on those impulses anymore. 

With the help of friends, whom God works through, I walk a free man.  As a result of this shift, my whole outlook upon life has changed.  Today I look at the time I hit bottom in my addictions as perhaps the biggest blessing of my life.  For the word blessing is related to an old Germanic word meaning to mark with blood. (Online Etymology Dictionary).  In other words, some blessings are wrought with pain.  Now I choose to look at everything in my life as an angel trying to tell me something.  And yes, there are dark angels in the sense of some come bearing news I would rather not hear.  For the word angel means messenger in the old Greek (ibid.).

Therefore, when a temptation comes into my head, I ask it what it wants, I ask it what it’s trying to tell me.  When the old fear that something bad is going to happen to me or someone I love creeps into my prayers, I ask it what it wants.  When I have some pain in my body, I ask it what it is trying to tell me.  I make every attempt to not resist the pain or the fear or the anger—I simply move towards it and ask it what has come to tell me.  This isn’t always easy, this isn’t always fun, and sometimes it doesn’t feel good. But the more I can move with the messenger, not wrestle with the angel, but rather dance with it, the easier the message is to bear.

Further, I am under no delusion today that just because I am actively using the Law of Attraction to manifest my dreams that this means I will never again stub my toe, or get sick again, or have something tragic happen in my life.  I do not believe I attract EVERYTHING that comes into my life.  There are other people in the world after all, and we are all sorting out karma, if you will, relationships, if you will, that span lifetimes.  In addition, I am moving through issues that run deep in my heredity, and as these spirits surface, sometimes things spiral in difficult directions, that may include difficult people or circumstances.  Ultimately  I am in charge of my life however, and am able to make healthy choices in terms of how I deal with whatever life brings—whether I attract it or not. 

To sum it all up, today I am able to take positive actions even when I feel sad or afraid.  I am able to utilize helpful tools such as EFT when the message is especially difficult to handle.  I am able to view everything as a messenger, as an angel, and because I believe God wants me “happy, joyous, and free,” then all of the angels, dark or light, are there to help me get closer to Him and to my fellows.  They are there to help me dance closer to serving God and my fellows.  They are there to help me rise up out of self-centeredness into the embrace of God and my fellows.  And so I am learning to bless the messengers in my life, to bless them with my attention—the ones that feel good and the ones that feel bad.  I am able to ask my emotions, my body, my disease, my writing, and my music: “What are you trying to tell me?  What is it you need? How can I use you to help others?” 

And, at the end of the day, all the messages are distilled into one message: “Love and serve God and your fellows–use this experience, thought, emotion– whatever it is–to love and serve God and your fellows–turn everything into a blessing by blessing everything that comes.  Give thanks for all things—for God is good all the time.

Copyright Joseph Anthony of the Wonder Child Blog