Felipe's path on a country journey!

” I have always known that I would take this road,but yesterday I did not know that it would be today.“Narihara

Life is a journey. Alongwith any journey comes the desire to want to write it down. As author Christina Baldwin states,” writing makes a map, and there is something about a journey that begs to have its passage marked.” For some their entire lives are recorded on the pages of a diary, for others images and colors reveal to the rest of the world what transpired through their artistic images. However we choose to express our ideas, we bear witness to our experiences, we share our questions and the insights that come from questioning.

My teaching life was spent in this quest to assist others in expressing ideas as they came to pass.  Ideas expressed in both art and in written words. It made for an extraordinary life spent over three decades with young people in several high schools with others who shared both the love of learning, teaching and a concern for the students under our supervision.

What was realized in addition to how incredible all of these devoted people were was that we also share a spiritual journey like a trip we are all taking together. You may be in a bookstore, in a restaurant or sitting somewhere reading this on your  smart phone or computer. Whatever else you are doing or identify yourself as doing, you are somewhere in the middle of your own spiritual quest. This spiritual quest is that part of life which is the path within the path. “Spirituality is the sacred center out of which all life comes,” including dreaded Mondays,rainy days in all their glorious details.

During the many years of teaching, sometimes life got in the way of a lesson plan. Oftentimes life was too much to bear for the young people or myself and upsets and “time out” from the curriculum was necessary. More often than not when things began moving into a new direction, as an educator you had to think on your feet. This approach is one of a  “reflective practitioner.” What was discovered that “inner whispers” oftentimes lead me in the direction that worked.

Imagine walking down a path and experiencing other people along the way, participating in everything along the way. You notice your actions both near and far, you interact with people and deal with obstacles and upsets. This is the “walker” or the action part of you living your life.

Now imagine a mirrored path running parallel to this path you are walking. This mirrored path reflects your feelings, thoughts, attitudes, and beliefs about whatever is happening in your life. This is the “watcher” or the reflective self.

We each have this capacity of a dual life.Together these two selves ( walker/watcher, action/reflection) create consciousness: the awareness of ourselves within our own existence. Consciousness is  like a second birth and is our ability to reflect and wonder. Consciousness is our life’s companion, the company that each of us keep with ourselves. There came a time in my art teaching career that making the art was coupled with writing about making the art. The depth of knowledge revealed to both myself and my students  was phenomenal.

Writing allows us to sort, act and reflect on paper. This written documentation over time allows us to respect the mind, to choose among and to harness our thoughts and to change the content of who we think we are. That is the most amazing part of this shared spiritual journey that we can experience shifts in who we think we are, followed by a corresponding change in what we believe ourselves capable of doing. This site will offer structures for making this journey. The paths will lead in and out and around creating a spiral. My own spiral lead me in and out of many books, to many teachers, experimenting with many forms of art, writing, affirmations, meditation and prayer. Your path will  be different than mine. This is not a prescription for one particular way, instead allowing for different seekers.

Through writing we connect our journeys to a multitude of life travelers, we learn from each other and yet we have to make our own way. This shared  journey shared may look like many ways to make art. In reality it is more about the many ways we can make our lives into a work of art. Here’s is sharing our journey in creating lives that up until now we only dreamed about.

Recommended Reading:

1. Life’s Companion, Journal Writing as a Spiritual Quest by Christina Baldwin.
2. Simple Abundance, A Day Book of Comfort and Joy by Sarah Ban Breathnach
3. The Artist’s Way, A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity by Julia Cameron