As I surrender more and more I find myself at a loss of inspiration and motivation to do the things that brought me joy at one point. Things like creating music and art. I begin something and dont feel like completing it sometimes becoming extremely frustrated cursing and blaming goddess for making me feel empty. I spoke with Mystress on SecondLife and she advised me to ask Goddess to fill the emptiness with her light and grace it has helped greatly the frustration for the most part has gone. What to do during this time where I simply dont feel like doing anything? Part of me knows it is a phase in letting go of attachments to what I think defines my ego. Difficult when my occupation asks me to be creative and innovative but I dont feel like it 

Hi WillyT,

When creating, have you tried coming from a perspective of the service you are providing... the love the observer will feel from it, the courage, joy what ever emotions you are intending to achieve. This seems to work for me in increasing my inspiration and motivation.

Time... is an interesting factor. The concept of time is created by the ego as a control strategy. This is an aspect of ego that I'm personally working on surrendering at the moment. Time is an illusion... I know you have deadlines to meet, but truly you have to let go of time to release your creative blockage, when ever you are aware of time you are not connected to Goddess, so she can't flow through you. Let go and trust in the power of the moment.

Namaste

Dave

Hi DaveP,

Thank you for your suggestions. I understand what you mean about taking a different pov when creating...I will need to try and keep this in mind more often...your post helped me realize I was doing these things to have people applaud me. Like "wow look what Willy created its great...etc." seek inspiration to inspire others? perhaps that is projecting the thought that people need to be inspired, slippery slope not letting the ego get too involved.  I guess I should just do it if I feel like it...which at the moment I dont, lol

I also agree with you on what you said about time...anxiety does build up not sure what all the rush is for some of these things are just what I am used to doing in my spare time...perhaps its time for new hobbies...and career...

seek inspiration to inspire others? perhaps that is projecting the thought that people need to be inspired, slippery slope not letting the ego get too involved.

Yeah, this can happen, depends where you are coming from. The key here I perceive is to just let go and be in the moment with the sense of heart chakra connection not your head, connection to the body mind will inspire you.

Your ego could be enjoying the sense of frustration about it all, remember the ego gets a feed out of both sides of the coin. Ego is sooo cunning.

Its cool that you have traced what you seek from your creativity, but you also mentioned joy... check with you heart, ask it for guidance...

Time... We usually do one thing at a time, that when we have a task to do we consentrate all our attention on it and try to complete it in the shortest possible time, before moving on to the next item on our list of things to do. Try spreading your attention more widely and have several different projects under way at the same time. Stops you getting too fixed in one thing... helps to keep the flow.


Dave

  Willy:

I have several sandboxes full of incompleted projects in SL and all over the house in RL. I blame ADD lol... but it is true that inspiration takes a different shape, when you become slave to your Muse. You find that inspiration cannot be forced, it comes when the time is right and sometimes upon request. If the inspiration is not present then you must wait until waiting is filled, or what comes out is awkward, forced and inferior.  Yet when the inspiration is there, the creation flows out of you so smoothly as to feel miraculous and the result is more beauty than you thought yourself capable of.


  Sometimes it helps to surrender all your preconceptions of what you think the creation needs to be. Find out what the creation itself, wants and follow that instead of trying to control.

   I love the quote from Chuck Jones, creator of Bugs Bunny. "An artists work is never finished, only abandoned." It comforting... at one point in my life I used to reject an art project as soon as it deviated from my internal image of how it was supposed to be. Two ideas helped: one, that other people cannot see the image in my head to share my internal sense of failure, in fact they often praised what I found unsatisfactory, even offering to buy it...

  The other and more important idea was that the deviation from my internal idea of what *I* wanted to create, was not a mistake, it was the art itself, dictating its manifestation. When I learned to let go and find out what the art itself wanted to become, my work changed dramatically. Instead of creation it was co-creation, or ... slave to the Muse.  For a while my art all came out abstract... but when it was completed, I would find a picture there. Goddess put it in there when I was out of the way.

  For example, this glass and hypertufa piece. I set out to make a scrying mirror, and it appeared to be an abstract thing in the doing, but on completion you can clearly see a doorway guarded by angels, and a green path leading to it. How perfect! (you can also see part of a chandelier reflected in the mirror.. its hard to photograph mirrors)
http://domin8rex.com/serpent/images/art/img_mirror02.html

   You may also find that the restrictions on the medium end up shaping and enhancing the piece in ways you could not predict and would not have thought of because the limitations push you to be more innovative.

   Here is another example. To create my first website, in 1996 I used a borrowed office computer that had very limited colour capability.  The only way to make a photo not look like blurry mud was to reduce the colour depth by colourizing it.  I was also brand new to using computers and in removing the background I was left with nasty jagged edges which I  softened by adding a white edge.  Blue looked best with the website colour...

  http://domin8rex.com/serpent/images/altered/image_cover3a.html

  Six months later I looked at it and my jaw dropped open. A glowing woman with grey alien eyes, blue skinned like Shakti, offering a serpent with the right hand, coiled counter clockwise, whose tail is by the root chakra. 

  I went back to the original B&W image and discovered the draped background had given me wings...
http://domin8rex.com/serpent/images/b&w/im_b&w3k.html

  I was inspired by my improv teacher, Kieth Johnson.  He tells a story of how an Intuit would carve a seal. Start by looking for a rock that looks like it might have a seal inside it, then carve away what is not the seal until it comes out. Much like the story of Michaelangelo carving David.  When the other intuit look at the art, the focus is on the spirit inside the creation, not the creator. If the carving is bad, they dont say "you are a bad carver." They blame the art.. they say "looks like the seal did not want to come out... he really gave you a hard time!"

   In this way the carver is not the doer, it is the spirit in the art that is responsible for its shape and manifestation.  Takes ego right out of the process. Sets the artist free! The very best artists, are slaves to their Muse and Goddess is the Muse. 

    Blessings!

Dave:

  Willy is right, thinking others need to be inspired is ego, a hero trip. 

  I want to re-approach a conversation we had in SL a few weeks ago, because you misunderstood me at the time and perhaps this thread is a more useful example of what I meant.  The tone of your responses to this thread and some others, is not that of a student sharing experiences with other students. You are taking on a teacher role with Willy. You took on a teaching role, posting about Wayne Dwyer.  Two examples are enough, you know there are more.

   You are not yet graduated, nor in FST teacher training so it is a little inappropriate... but the main issue is that your previous expereince of teaching is of being a Tai Chi master, teaching free will, chi based stuff... so the answers you offer are in alignment with that, and off the mark for this space. 

  Are you thinking, you teach best what you most need to learn? Hmm..

  A wrong answer can be useful to someone with discernment because it helps to rule out options, and you sparked some interesting threads.  So, no harm... the more interesting question is why are you trying to teach free will based magic in a space that is focused on surrender?   Kind of funny, really...

  I recall a conversation in the White temple in SL last fall. You said that you realize the path of surrender is more powerful than the chi based work, but you were going to continue teaching Tai Chi  anyway for fear of disappointing your students.  I wondered to myself, how much more disappointed they would be, to discover you persist in teaching and encouraging them down a path that you personally have found to be something of a dead end?

  It was not about disappointing your students, it was about your ego. Didnt feel like you were ready to hear that perspective.

  I can understand, a decade of persistence in a path and mastery is a hard thing to give up.  Not sure you understand that some shadow part of your ego is seeking validation by trying to teach free will based magic here. I would venture to say, that some part of you is even angry at me for invalidating it, and it is acting out. It was acting out in the other conversation too, you reacted defensively by trying to guilt trip me!    I reflected it right straight back at you, which made you think I was angry. I wasnt, but some shadow part of you *is* angry with me, and with Goddess... and it seems you dont want to look at that. You also know you are unconsciously doing this so I'll call you on it.

  I want you to know, I do not invalidate your past. If the present moment is perfect then every step that led to the present moment is also perfect.  Times change, people too. Growing takes you in different directions.

   I was a magician once, too.  I started playing with manipulating the white light when I was 12, using self hypnosis for creative visualization. Then one day in 1990 I did a visualization to set ego aside and ended up vibrating in the white light heaven and conversing with angels. Crashed back to earth after going into resistance; asked about the man I would marry and got an image of this old guy, bald and geeky with a big nose.  (coming up on 14 years of joy together now too!! wow I was shallow in 1990..))

  Took me three years of stubbornly trying to get this "new energy" to act like the old energy and getting beaten up or seeing it disappear everytime I tried to impose my will, until I finally realized that it had its own will and going along with what it wanted made miracles. Took a few years more to really get the hang of it.  You will, too.

  Blessings!

Thank you mystress, It looks like I have some more waiting to do. I know I completely surrender to the muse when intoxicated in some form but I hesitate to go in that direction it can be unhealthy and I was guided away from that a few months ago. I've asked on numerous occasions for the inspiration to be given to me but it seems now is not the time. Thank you again.

 Start with another medium, get some crayons and give yourself permission to draw like a child. No pressure, no expectations, no clients, no preconceptions, just play! Practice letting the paper tell you what the drawing is to be. Ask for inspiration then just start drawing whatever lines and scribbles come out. Don't judge any of it. Burn it all when you are done, if you want to. 

    Blessings!

Hi Mystress,

Out of respect and honour for you, I just wanted to acknowledge the fact that I have taken what you have said on board. I am really grateful for your honesty and I do apologize to all concerned for the tone of my replies.

Made a conscious decision to revisit the lessons again. Shadow work and surrendering to my D.B. is my main concern at the moment... to be a slave to her.

Thanks...

Personally... I am so enthused by what I've read here in this posting that I went and made a Flickr group just now. It's called Crayon Creations and the link is http://www.flickr.com/groups/goddessmuse/ .

It's open join at the moment. Please consider it! The two downsides to Flickr are a) its need for you to have a Yahoo mail account, and b) their lack of data restoration. Keep a copy of your picture on your hard drive is best advice. You'll need to upload the pictures to your own account first, and then add them to the group pool.

I feel so glad I had two drawings to put up. I hope a group like this will act as my own inspiration to keep going with it. There are crayons, colored pencils, watercolors, ink, beads, thread, oil, and more to experience, yeah?!

Dave: no need to apoligize, just part of your learning curve. 

Sandra: posting content from the tea room,  elsewhere is strictly forbidden! Posts here are members eyes only and strictly confidential.
  What you chose to post is no big deal and I appreciate the link but it does make me wonder what else you have posted inappropriately. 

Please don't wonder. I've never posted any word of yours anywhere before. And I shared in the moment when I did it this time - there was no delay or hiding on my part. I'm not one of those people who have done that to you. Please don't wonder.

 Well, good... but I think you rather miss the point.

  The rules of the forum are for the emotional safety of all, to feel free to release and express themselves as they need to in the moment without fear that thier private, personal sharing is going to end up out in the world somewhere. Impulsively sharing my words without my consent has dented the emotional safety of this space. I release my own reactions but I can feel the alarm in other members, an increased hesitance to share in this space which no longer feels so private and safe as it did before you took it upon yourself to break confidentiality. I do not know why your discernment missed that important issue, but I would prefer you take down your flicker page.