morning meditation - sit, rest, work

I'm having an experience with synchronicity. It feels like I'm dancing with it. This is new.  I've had brief flashes of OH! Connected!, and  I can see links over time more often now in hindsight. But I realize this morning that I'm having my first real string of recognition around this as it's happening.  In the last two days it has been building. I guess really my awareness of synchronicity has built rather than these things themselves. If they are in the flow already, I am awake to them more. It feels a little bit like coming out of a dream of come kind.

I pulled a card from my Buddha deck this morning which spoke about being present and recognizing that all we take with us as we travel from one plane of existence to the next is our wakefulness. The more we cultivate our consciousness, the more we carry forward. This prompted me to wander around in my studio and look at what is in progress and waiting on me at the moment. I have another Buddha card from that same deck that I pulled out and put up when I was adding my alter space to my studio. I haven't read it in a while. This morning I know that synchronicity is why I felt as though I should take it down and read it front and back.

On the front it says: "Sit. Rest. Work."
On the back it says: "Let these three words sink deep into your heart. Learn to sit silently, restfully, not fighting with yourself, relaxed. Not in a yoga posture, remember, because the yoga posture is a constant effort. No yoga posture is needed. Sit in any way that you find relaxed--even a chair will do.
Be at rest . . . and when energy accumulates in you, start being creative. Paint, sing, dance, or do whatever you feel like doing to make this world a little more beautiful, a little more warm.
We have to create a paradise on the earth."

I always have to stop after that line about "learn to sit restfully. . . relaxed" and roll my eyes and say yeah, right.  But the fact of the matter is yes. correct.  I now identify with this notion of letting energy fill me and then be creative out of being filled.  I often sit at the meditation center for an hour on Sundays. I have learned that I need that hour. I need at least 20 minutes to let the chatter pass in order to actually show up for the other 40.  For well over a year, I've gotten encouragement in all sorts of ways to       sit.       rest.    and then      make work.       I sometimes actually give that gift to myself. My meditation teachers at the Tucson Meditation Center talk often about intention and setting intention for a sit and for the things you show up for in life. I'm finding myself more able to ponder this before leaping in a way that I never have before. I have a ritual now before I make work that involves prayer and positive openness to my HP/connect to the creative.

Interesting things happen when I'm open to this way of creating.  I know that I'm present when what happens to me during meditation involves images that are worth jotting down later. I also find myself better able to shuffle beyond my fear of making and just make something. This prompted me to start making records of what I "saw" during the meditations where I stop fighting myself and just show up.

I have a wonderful ap on my phone. It's one of only a couple that I have paid for and it was well worth it. It's called Tayasui Sketches. It's a sketch book with piles of tools and ways of making marks. It's what I use to make the abstracts that happen for me out of being present to sound, body, and imagination during meditation.

These are in response to sounds (a couple specifically to the sounding of the singing bowl at the end of the sit):

These were emotional responses:

And these are beyond me to explain. They just came:

In the last few weeks, I have been learning more about Shambhala Buddhism because that is the practice that is observed at the sit I go to on Thursday night. I found two amazing things last night that are a part of this synchronicity that I'm in right now. The founder of Shambhala, Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, was an artist and photographer. The latter part of his life he spent writing about and developing a way of practicing that was about connecting inspiration directly to expression. Shambhala centers teach art classes. There is a place in Cali that offers these 5 courses as a retreat. I had a very clear moment on discovering this of the difference between wanting something and recognizing that what I discovered is somewhere on my path. The feelings are similar, but the discernment for me in that moment was that want is attachment and recognition of path and realizing path is about acceptance and action.  The want is about instant gratification, about feeling some sort of sadness about not having until I get it. The 2nd is about resonating with something. So I bought his book - and put my foot forward on that quilt square of possibility.

Here is just a snippet from the book:

Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, True Perception: The Art of Dharma

 For more on Shambhala and Shambhala art practice: http://www.shambhalaart.org/