At the 2011 Winter Solstice, I made the decision to do 12 Days of Coming Home to My Self. This 12 Days would be different than others I have done because the days would not all be sequential. I set aside four days around Christmas, five days around New Year's, and three days around a lecture and workshop on Calling Our Primordial Ancestors.
The focus on Coming Home to Myself was chosen because in actuality my home was being restored following a flood on November 28. Home restoration symbolized to me a desire to come back to center after many years of overextending myself. Three threads were woven through the 12 days: Physical Care, Studio Time, and Spiritual Practices.
Physical Care meant caring for my body and my home. I began with a facial on the first of the 12 days, a massage on the first day of the second time segment, restorative Yoga on the last day of 2011, and getting back into walking as the torn tendon in my right ankle has begun to heal.
Caring for my home began on Christmas Day with washing the front sidewalks of sawdust, plaster, and mud from all the workmen coming and going for the previous month; unpacking all that was stored during demolition and restoration and putting it back into place; getting the washer and dryer serviced; smudging my home of all foreign energies brought in by strangers; and having the carpet cleaned throughout the entire house. Moving and replacing everything for the carpet cleaning was quite a physical workout, so it was both body and home care.
I knew that Studio Time would involve working on completing the narrative cycle of my Heritage Mandala. A mandala is composed of several concentric circles around a central square. The narrative cycle is the fourth circle from the edge. Based on each of us having had a DNA analysis, this is where we have painted the journey of our maternal ancestors out of the Rift Valley in East Africa to some place in the globe.
Because we paint one segment at a time, the completed narrative circle is not always a balanced art form. Mine was really out of balance, like me over the past year. It had dark and light segments that needed to be integrated. Although it took far longer than I had anticipated, mandala work is very meditative, and I found it restful and healing. It seemed somehow important to complete the narrative cycle in 2011 and to begin the Sea of Human Life in the New Year, which I did.
The big surprise was my decision to create a Who I Am Becoming sketchbook. The concept for the sketchbook was a marriage of two ideas. I had committed in my Career Shaping group to do a sketchbook to record my explorations. Then I met a woman who wants to curate a self-portrait show of paintings/artwork based not on who we are but who we are becoming. The moment she used that phrase, I knew that was what my sketchbook needed to be.
I began it on the second of my 12 Days by doing the front and back covers. When I began working on the interior pages, I was amazed by how their execution and my understanding of them morphed and changed. Two collaged pages show how deep my struggle with this process is. I thought it was a simple matter of merging artist and writer, but I discovered that something deeper wants to happen.
I began it on the second of my 12 Days by doing the front and back covers. When I began working on the interior pages, I was amazed by how their execution and my understanding of them morphed and changed. Two collaged pages show how deep my struggle with this process is. I thought it was a simple matter of merging artist and writer, but I discovered that something deeper wants to happen.
The holiday season has always been an opportunity for me to do a variety of Spiritual Practices. Every day I played the Dalai Lama chanting the Maha Mkiiyunjava Manika. The healing force of this chanted mantra sends forth ripples from body to psyche and from psyche to soul. I would often stop whatever I was doing, sit, and allow the vibrations to wash over me.
Other spiritual practices included dreamwork, editing a friend’s book of poetry, divination readings, and attending a lecture and workshop on the Primordial Psyche. My divination readings were the I Ching, Sacred Path Peace Tree spread, and Medicine Cards to expand on the Peace Tree reading. The immediate take away from these readings is the awareness that I need a fallow period during which to replenish my self. If I do, like the dried Hydranga blossom above, roots will grow and the old stem will send forth fresh shoots.
The lecture and workshop on the Primordial Psyche took me back to a big dream I had in 1991, shortly after I arrived in Victoria, B.C., and to my travel around the continent of Africa many years before that. As more work is done with tapping into this deep layer of the unconscious, insights will feed into my Children of Eve series.
Like the Dalai Lama’s chanting, these practices set something in motion. Dream images, ideas and thoughts are tumbling around like seeds shaken in a jar. It will take patience to sort the seeds, nurture them, and allow them to sprout. As I was talking with my poet friend, the issue of patience arose. I mentioned that on the counter in the newly reconstructed downstairs bathroom I have a small rock with the word “patience” on it. She said, “The Mystery really picked up that rock and threw it at you recently.” Although we both laughed, it is not a laughing matter.
I hope for the patience to continue the healing begun in my 12 Days of Coming Home to My Self. For I know what has been set in motion may take months or years to manifest.
