Creative Life

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene

AS a child, Sunday’s used to be boring and sad. I had to stay home with my parents, and there was nothing to do after the cartoons ended at 10am. My parents slept late, my brother was younger and I can’t even remember what he would be doing on a Sunday. My mother wouldn’t let me visit our neighbors, and I missed my grandmother immensely, since I was used to spending most free time with her.

I sometimes feel that I do a lot on Sundays to avoid feeling like I did when I was 4 years old.

And that may be the reason why the first room that I set up in an apartment or house is my studio. It was only when I grew up and I started studying art books that I found my creative life, the cure for at-home boredom.

When everything is quiet, and there is nothing else to do, I always have my materials to play with and my imagination to dream with. I wish I had my studio when I was 4!

I was thinking that the goal I set at the beginning of this year by writing, thinking, imagining, dreaming, hoping and taking action, is taking concrete shape.

I has become easy to be in the studio, have perfect days, live in a way that is nurturing to my soul and my body. This room is full of color, Mary Magdalene lives here, and the air is charged with ideas to grab if I need them. There is no doubt that thinking is creating when I’m here.

Looking back to the last 8 years, I wonder how I let everything inside mirror what was happening outside. I had no space for a studio, true, but can’t an artist find a way to create no matter what?

I still had to learn an important lesson.

When I first started painting Mary Magdalene, I had achieved, or was achieving, something very important for me. I had become able to work with ease and trust. The work flowed easily, and I felt realized. I wanted very little else but what I had. I remember expressing how much I appreciated my bed. I really did.

Then I lost all that, including the bed, but went and bought a house for my studio and created there for a few months. And God provided everything that I needed: help, the right conditions, opportunities, just enough money. I painted Mary Magdalene, fixed my house, and felt plentiful within the situation.

But I had worked too hard for my dream in NYC, and couldn’t let it go. And that was the mistake. I didn’t realize that the lesson was letting go. I went back to the the life I had managed to escape. My old programs did their work.

This sent me in a strange new journey. I resisted it so much. I didn’t want to change. I wanted the old reality. And by not letting go, I lost my freedom. Only when I did a simple ceremony of release guided by a friend who went on my retreat in Puerto Rico, did life start flowing again.

I recently was reminded of this lesson in a different way, when I tried to impose myself and work beyond what my body is willing to allow. I had to let go of the idea of maximum productivity. And when I did, and started forgiving myself if I didn’t publish here every day, my productivity simply increased on it’s own.

Looking back, what would be the prescription?

It might be useful to meditate on the meaning of the seemingly negative situations that arise in our lives. And rather than looking at them from a point of view of guilt (as in what did I do wrong?), we can consider viewing the new challenge as a door into a new and fruitful reality, an invitation into the next step in life. We can always take with us the experiences and wisdom that we carry inside, and leave the material behind.

I could have realized that I was carrying my creativity with me, and also all that I had accomplished until then. But I forgot that whatever I needed could have been mine. I forgot I just needed to live creatively, imagining the next step, taking one step at a time on the transition bridge until I reached the next island. Trusting and Having Faith.

It took me a while, but In the end, I arrived. I am living my creative life on Sundays, and by minutes whenever I can.

Living creatively is how I stay spiritually aware and connected. So a creative life is what I need to be the basis of my daily reality. It is in those daily practices that I build the future I envision. I practice living that perfect day to the best of my ability, so that instead of a moment of crisis that comes and changes my life again, I can create a flow into fully living that envisioned reality.

I have been hearing (a lot) the message that says that love for self is at the base of having a joyful life. And it makes me wonder what exactly does it mean to love oneself. I think the answer partly lies in the question, what is the best gift you can give yourself that will make your life the most joyful? Besides permission to live, living a life that’s created and creative, that contains dreams but that also contains a beautiful present of growth into that future version of the self, is for me the best gift. Because while I have always made sure I had that opportunity to realize my dreams, it is also true that my early programming continues to work within me and will take over if I am not aware.

So I keep reading the dream I wrote in order to never again forget. I want to work with ease and trust. I want more perfect days, I want freedom to go where I need to go. I want to create every day fluidly. I want to never be bored on Sundays or any other day. I want to cook beautiful meals, visit beautiful places, put my feet in the water of the Caribbean Sea whenever I want. I want to enjoy my tribe and offer what’s best in me. I want the right abundance for my life and for my being. I want to hear and I want to see. I want to love and live fully every day.