DAY 558

50

As you may already know it was my 50th birthday past week. As the days have  passed I have started to feel the urge to make a sort of assessment but I was no able to find an appropriate approach.

Finally, this morning I came up with this. They are just fifty random (and immaterial) things that happened to me along my first fifty years of life. They are not logically organized. They don´t summarize all my experiences, either or narrate a complete or coherent story, they are not even the most important or interesting, but they are for sure, some of the more decisive.

 They can seem recent facts or achievements, but they are not because even when I have faced some of them along the last decade they have been present in my life –some way or another- since my earlier years. Indeed I truly believe that this birthday is also a turning point as I have completed and closed many pending things from the past. I hope so. I celebrate it.


1. I have learnt how to deal with my feelings

2. I suffered and have overcome suffering

3. I understood the great importance of setting boundaries

4. I have learnt to love myself to love another

5. I stopped abuse and I liberated myself

6. I healed my past

7. I have developed a personal practice based on spirituality

8. I accepted guidance and asked for what I need

9. I have prayed a lot

10. I made contact with my inner power

11. I have tried to embrace my demons (keep trying)

12. I gave thanks to those tyrants in my life and I am letting them go

13. I have learnt how to live in the present, day after day (even when sometimes I am tempted to give up)

14. I understood that baby steps counts

15. I´ve been wrong about many things

16. I have had to accept the mind-body connections

17. I acknowledged that perfectionism is a way to run away (I am now a recovering perfectionist)

18. I made decisions and then, I forgot them and had to start again but this showed me how to live in process

19. I have forgiven myself for my weaknesses and my naivety and for handing over my own power

20. I understood why I should trust

21. I decided to restore a healthy sense of self

22. I have listened and been listened

23. I have questioned my conditionings

24. I discovered the allure of ordinary things

25. I have had to apologized and this taught me humbleness

26. I have appreciated everydayness almost every single day

27. I have tried to help as much as I can and have been helped a lot

28. I started to run after light

29. I resolved to cultivate mindfulness

30. One day I decided to rely on my soul don´t know exactly how or why

31. I started to consider myself a survivor, nor a victim

32. I have accepted that teaching is the voice of my soul

33. I started to practice authenticity and pay the consequences (all positive in the medium term)

34. I have cherished memories and mementos

35. I am trying to keep my journey (and my inner work) no matter what people said

36. I have laughed

37. I have dreamt a bit (maybe not as much as I have would liked)

38. I have –little by little- spread my wings

39. I have appreciated both calm and storm (I have gotten no choice!)

40. I expected miracles and miracles happened

41. I have loved (and being loved) much

42. I have created so many things… including life that is meaningful to me

43. I have walked my path with a joyful heart most of the days

44. I am internalizing why is so important to abandon those (both circumstances or persons) that try to invalidate me and I am exerting myself to act accordingly

45. I have had great masters

46. I have been arrogant and stubborn. It took me so much to bow down to my destiny, to love this life of mine as it is, but I am learning to do it

47. I have met kindred souls

48. I have learned to hear the messages of the spirit

49. I am realizing that I have to tame my ego if I want to be happy

50. I have come to understand that finally everything had to be exactly as it was

DAY 534

making a happy come-back

After a whole month of checking my students´ papers, dealing with tons of administrative tasks and after publishing their grades, I am slowly trying to be back to a more exhaustive way to develop my inner work.

I haven´t been totally far away from my daily practice and that´s the reason right now I feel tired but not as exhausted as previous academic courses, although I haven´t had time to do most of the things I usually do. In fact, I have been developing a simpler version of it that hasn´t included sharing my thoughts here, but it has been enough to keep the balance.

But now that I am a bit more relaxed, my brain, my heart and my soul are claiming the peace that this inner work provides me.

I thought I would take it easy because I felt that I needed to rest. This week my creativity has seemed to be asleep and I´ve been feeling totally drained, but once I started to check my latest photos in order to write this post I realized that I am fully ready to restart.

That´s great because means that I have internalized the abilities and routines to do such thing. So here I am. It hasn´t been easy to keep this blog updated along this first semester of the year, but summer will give me the chance to refresh it and to start new projects.

Hope all is well with all you. Thanks for your patience and as always, thanks for reading.

Much Love,

Z.

DAY 365+97

I am not going to search for your ideal perfection anymore. It´s a deception

From now on, I am only going to see miracles around me 

and inside me

I am going to experience amazement

I am going to let go preconceived ideas about beauty,

about life, about myself

I am determined to cultivate gratitude

I am going to accept what is, not to regret or reject

I am going to live

I am going to celebrate my gifts and talents

I don´t want to fight anymore against myself

I want to play and laugh and love

I want to trust my life

I want to improve myself by embracing the power of what I really am

If you can help me to do this with much love, stay,

if not, set me free

I am sorry, it´s not you, it´s me

Kind Regards

Z.

DAY 365+92

three. coincident. gazes

Sunset. Summer. Green
Without. A. Care
Rolling. Wandering. Enjoying
White. White. Clothes
Park. City. Heat
Bath.Of. Light
Resting. Awaiting. Exposed
White. White. Water
Movement. Calm. Posture
Experience. Naivety. Time
Pensive. Playful. Observer
Woman. Kid. Me
Exploring.The. World
Loving. The. Moment
Free. Of. Regrets
Without. Any. Shame
Visible. Authentic. True
Stories. Interconnection. Experiences
Glimpses. Of. Eternity



Assignment of "Practice as Creative Muse" online class

DAY 365+66

come and sit here with me

I hadn´t remembered that April would bring the flowering of the beautiful jacaranda trees till I saw wonderful mauve carpets covering lanes and roads 

I´ve arrived to this seat while I was wandering with my camera, 
walking on layers and layers of aromatic flowers, 
trying not to step on them if not necessary
 
It´s the same bench I have seen so many times, yet different

This is a quiet and beautiful place, 
the smell is dense and sweet, 
the earth is still damp due to spring´s downpours 
and the fallen tree leafs of fichus gleam like gold 

The light still shines even when it´s late in the evening and the ivy goes across the soil sinuously

Come and sit here with me. There is a path. Where it will lead us, I am not sure
 
It´s luminous and goes through the scented flowers, the fertile land, the yellowish and withered vegetation and the growing plants 

It´s maybe my path, your path. The path wich goes through our gifts and talents, the territory of life, the compost made by joy and suffering, the fruitful seeds of love... and gets into the unknown territory of contentment

Inhale with me the rich (even voluptuous) air. Inhale with me the spring, the warm light of the end of the day, the patches of color, the smell of an evolving world 

And now exhale with me the pain and the anger, sadness and frustration which the subtle wind will dispel. Exhale with me the story, the past, the lies, the sense of not being enough

 Open your eyes, and you will see, like me, just a what reality offers. You will see, like me, just a little jacaranda flower beautifully illuminated by the latest sun rays

And you will realize, like me, that you simply are in the right place



Walk and Click Wednesday

DAY 365+65

the yearning for balance

I´ve started to take a fitness class a few months ago. It´s not the typical class because the teacher uses strategies from different disciplines. She always says that our power comes from within, from our ability to feel our body and adjust every part of it in order to achieve the right posture. She has taught us that posture gained without consciousness is not posture, is imposture

This is so near to my own approach to my practice that I sensed -since the first day- that this could be the class I was looking for. And I was not wrong. Now my corporal work is closer to the inner one, and this pleases me very much. Indeed, I have realized that it´s the same work, but this is another story

Yesterday morning, while I was training, I could feel for a moment the proper coordination of all my components. I was developing an equilibrium exercise (I was on tiptoes and I had lifted my arms and hands) when I felt that my thoughts, my emotions and my whole soul were contained between these two opposite sides of my body. Oh friends, it was such a wonderful sensation!, I was almost touching heaven

Back home, I became aware of how much I have changed my concept about balance throughout the latest years. As a perfectionist, I´ve been always concerned about do the right thing (in accordance to social parameters), so the pursuit of what I would define as correctness has been underneath most of my actions and decision making. I used to think that this would lead me to conquer some kind of emotional stability, calmness of mind or at least, certain harmony

I couldn´t be more mistaken: the more I looked for steadiness this way, the more unbalanced I felt inside. As a result, at some point of my way, I felt like if I was about to break down from moment to moment . My posture was indeed, imposture because I hadn´t awakened to the true nature of my life (of myself) and I was influenced by a false standard of excellence. The acknowledgement of this true undermined my belief in perfection and redrew my concept of balance

According to this reconsideration, balance wouldn´t come from a preconceived faultlessness which generates prejudices, labels, unattainable ideals and suffering. Balance only could come from cultivating authenticity and mindfulness. Therefore, it is something that must be created -once and again- depending on circumstances, something that demands flexibility, movement, change and must be based on the evidence of mutability

It is, in short, the art of creating healthy responses that can cancel out the influence of my fear of transience… of being defective and not deserving of approval or love

It is taking me time to accept this perspective. My residual perfectionism often insists on considering that I am living in a precarious equilibrium (because my behavior is not imperturbable and fixed, because I am not adapting myself to others expectations, because I look for my contradictions deliberately and enjoy uncertainty), but something inside me is starting to accept that this precariousness is better than previous rigidity and endless discontent

Something inside me is accepting that life is made of pure impermanence: this is its grace and its challenge


Cross-posted at Vision and Verb on Sunday. Many other women share their passion for creativity and words there, please visit us, it is a wonderful site

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