What the Heck is Artful Alchemy?

ALCHEMY [al-kuh-mee] (noun) the miraculous power of transmuting something common into something precious (e.g. turning lead into gold)

ARTFUL [ahrt-fuhl] (adjective) done with or characterized by art or skill

Artful Alchemy is about transforming a common life into your golden life through skillfully facilitated art practices.

Why art?

Art is a jumpstart into a new way of thinking, a new way of feeling, a new way of being. The shift can be explained with just a little left-brain/right-brain theory.

The Western World values the left-brain and downplays the value of the right-brain. Most of the time most of us are operating from our left-brain because that's what we've been taught to do. That’s all well and good. The qualities of the left-brain are very helpful and necessary if we’re to get anything done.

However, the predominant voices in the left-brain are the Ego and the Critic. The Ego’s like the map-keeper; it holds the map to things-as-they-are and has a vested interest in maintaining the status quo, because then it always knows where we are and what’s going on. So, the Ego, while a useful character for holding us together, takes its job so seriously that it really doesn’t allow us to make significant transformations. The Ego’s sidekick is the Inner Critic. The Inner Critic is the one who says, “You’re not smart enough, rich enough, good enough, deserving enough.” So the Ego says, “Let’s not change a thing,” and the Critic says, “And even if you wanted to, you’d never succeed.” Not a very conducive dialogue for life transformation.

That’s where the power of the right-brain comes in, with a whole different set of qualities and voices. If you want to know what your heart truly wants, the answer can only come through the right brain. If you want to connect to your higher wisdom, to spiritual guidance or to the pure spark of the inner child, then tune into your right-brain. This is where the truly life-transforming ideas will be found. If you want to break out of a dull, common, status-quo way of being and create your golden life, your right-brain is key.

But how to tune out or bypass the dominant, left-brain voices of the Ego and the Critic? Stop speaking their language. Their language is verbal; it’s words. Have you ever noticed how you tend to go ‘round and ‘round about a problem, with the same words replaying over and over again in your head? Break the cycle by breaking out of verbal mode.

What is the language of the right-brain? It’s non-verbal; it’s visual; it’s art.

Try it sometime. If you have been stuck in some way, or if you are facing a challenge that you can’t quite figure out how to tackle, stop thinking about it in words. Draw a picture instead. Draw a picture of how things are, then draw another of how you want things to be. I guarantee you’ll get a whole new perspective on the matter.

Meet Scarlett

There’s been a lot of buzz lately about our “Shadows,” especially since the recent release of The Shadow Effect from co-authors Deepak Chopra, Debbie Ford and Marianne Williamson.

Briefly stated, Shadows are those unsavory aspects of our personalities that we’ve repressed, but which continue to subconsciously wreak havoc in our individual and collective lives. If, however, we can bring those aspects of ourselves back into our conscious awareness, we can discover and harness their gifts. This is what’s known as “embracing the Shadow.”

Does that mean that if I have a rage-aholic Shadow, I should embrace that rage and go around consciously hurting people? No, of course not. It means that if I look consciously at the source of all that rage I might be able to take the energy of anger to make positive changes in the world, to right some wrongs. Or maybe I can take the physicality of that energy and channel it into marathon running. Once the rage has a safe and productive outlet, it doesn’t have to sneak up on me (or those around me) anymore.

This past Saturday, I led a group of women in an exploration of a Shadow Self through mask-making and journaling. My own mask, and the work I did with it, was quite revealing and healing.

For the past several months, I have been working to develop the structure and direction of my Artful Alchemist practice with my wonderful coach and EFT master, Rev. Anne Presuel. During the course of our work together it has become apparent that I have HUGE resistance to all things marketing.

In a recent session together, Anne helped me to tap into a key image for what I’ve been resisting. The visual that represents my distaste about sales and marketing is that of a prostitute standing on the street corner hiking her skirt. I don’t want to prostitute myself, I don’t want to sell my soul, I don’t want to be all flash (and flesh!), I’m not interested in offering a quick trick or a fast fix, I don’t want my work to be all about the money, yada, yada, yada. Wow! Juicy Shadow stuff!

So, guess what shadow I chose to explore with my mask-making?

Meet Scarlett, my Shadow Prostitute:

She's actually a rather lovely painted lady and I'm growing quite fond of her. Here are a few excerpts from what she had to say to me through journaling dialogue:

“I am Scarlett, but NOT Scarlett the Harlot as you’ve been thinking of me. Think more along the lines of Scarlett O’Hara. I am strong and resourceful, but not afraid to use my own beauty.”

"What are you afraid of, darlin'? Little Ole Me? Why, I don't bite Baby Girl, unless of course that's what you want."

“I am the one who knows she’s got it. I ain’t afraid to shine, to sparkle, to PUT IT OUT THERE.”

“I am the one who knows my worth and demands it. AND GETS IT!”

“I am the one who entices with flash, but delivers substance.”

"I can help you be a better business woman. Believe me, you get pretty money-savvy turning tricks. You don't get taken advantage of for long. Not when you decide to run your own show, anyway."

Oh, my dear Scarlett! Let me embrace all of that!

Is Emotional Pain Necessary?

Remembering Cameron by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

Is Emotional Pain Necessary?

This is the question posed by today’s NPR piece, which talks about a recent change in the American Psychiatric Association’s new Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM. The proposal is to remove the “bereavement exclusion” from the guidelines for diagnosing major depression. In other words, if one’s grief is severe and lasts too long, it should be treated like depression. How long is too long? In the words of the article:

“ . . . if symptoms like these [acute upset, loss of sleep, appetite, energy and concentration] persist for more than two weeks, the bereaved person will be considered to have a mental disorder: major depression. And treatment, either therapy or medication, is recommended.”

TWO WEEKS?!!! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!!!

Are we, as a culture, so afraid of feeling the depths of our emotion that we would choose to medicate the pain of grief as soon as two weeks out from a major loss? It seems ludicrous to me.

After losing my son six years ago, my journey of grief (which I chronicle in my award-winning book The Deep Water Leaf Society) took at least TWO YEARS and in many ways continues even today. Were there days that I would have liked to take a pill and make the pain stop? Yes. And if I had, would I have learned and experienced all that I did and healed so completely? I think not. For me expressive arts, journaling and dreamwork allowed me to honor my pain, learn from it and heal by moving headlong into my pain, not running away from it.

It is the conscious journey through our grief that creates healing. In my opinion, if you stuff it down, ignore it, drown it in alcohol or happy it up with Prozac you will miss the meaning, the lessons, the growth that come from being real about how it feels. I learned more about myself and let go of more useless baggage during those two years of healing than I had in my entire life up to that point. I am a better person because of my loss and because of the very real pain it caused. Had I numbed the pain with Prozac, I know my loss would not have created the same level of positive personal transformation.

I am reminded of Kirk in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. When the mysterious mystic Syvok wants to take away everyone's pain, Kirk is the only hold-out while everyone else is all silly with nirvanic joy. "Damn it, Bones,” says Kirk, “you're a doctor. You know that pain and guilt can't be taken away with a wave of a magic wand. They're the things we carry with us, the things that make us who we are. If we lose them, we lose ourselves. I don't want my pain taken away! I need my pain!"

I’m with Kirk on this one.

It’s not that we should choose to live in the depths of that pain permanently. And certainly if someone becomes suicidal or is completely unable to function for long periods of time there may be some call for intervention. But to put an arbitrary timeframe on how long it should take to process the pain of grief is ridiculous.

TWO WEEKS?!!! I don’t think it’s we grievers who have a mental disorder. I think the authors of the DSM should have their own heads examined!

Reveal thy Radiant Countenance

Reveal thy Radiant Countenance by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

What masks are hiding the shining brightness that is you?

In this life, we hide behind many masks.

When we grieve, we often feel we must hide behind a smiling “I’m okay” mask, sensing that our friends, family and other associates are not comfortable with the depth of our pain. We are not comfortable with their discomfort and the responses triggered by that discomfort, so we put on the mask.

Sometimes, we even try to hide the full depth of our grief from ourselves. Fearing its power, we are not willing to risk drowning in a bottomless well of tears. We are not willing to sit with our pain on its own terms. So we find a way to suck it up or dam it up. We put on a mask.

The paradox is that by not honoring the truth of our pain in the moment, we are at risk of internalizing and unconsciously identifying so deeply with it that it develops a life of its own. Some, including Eckhart Tolle, have called the unconscious internal energy that develops the Pain Body. (See a great explanation of the Pain Body and how to deal with it here.)

The Pain Body can take over, masking our true identity, tricking us into believing that pain is our reality or our identity. We think we are wearing an “I’m okay” mask, but it is the Pain Body that’s really masking our own true Light.

The Sufi poet Hafiz said, "I wish I could show you, when you are lonely or in darkness, the astonishing Light of your own Being."

That is also my wish for you. May your own Pain Body be dissolved, may the mask fall away, and may you reveal your true radiant countenance to yourself and to the world.

Are You a Money Magnet?

Are you a money magnet? Does money flow into your life easily, effortlessly and consistently? Or, does it seem like the polarity might be reversed on your money magnet so that it’s actually pushing money away?

Here’s an interesting visual exercise from my Art of Abundance workshop that can help you to check the polarity of your own money magnet. Take a look at the following images, and for each one fill in the blanks of the following sentence:

This image makes me think of __________________ and it makes me feel __________________.

 

Don’t over-think your answers, and answer honestly. Just go with your gut response to each image.

Now, look over your answers and see whether your emotional responses were primarily positive, primarily negative or about even. Which image feels most like your current relationship with money? Was your emotional response to that image positive or negative?

If most of your emotional responses are negative (lack, limits, constriction, fear, worry, anxiety, anger, hopelessness, sadness) then your money magnet may be repelling rather than attracting money into your life. If most of your emotional responses were positive (optimism, expansiveness, hope, happiness, love, humor, joy) then your money magnet is set to draw money into your life.

Why would that be true? Because you are seeing these images through your own money perception filter. The images themselves are neutral – it’s your own perception that makes them positive or negative. And the Law of Attraction tells us that our emotional state is the biggest attraction factor: positive emotions attract more positive results, negative emotions attract more negative results.

So, what can you do if your money magnet is set to repel? You can work at reframing your response to each image, especially to the one that feels most like your current money situation. Is it possible to see the image in another way? In a more positive light?

Here are a few reframes that came from my Art of Abundance students recently:

The money with the belt around it reminded one woman about her enormous student loan debt and about feeling very determined to pay it all off, tightening the money belt as much as necessary to do so. It made her feel determined, but also tense. When I asked her if she could see the image in a different, more positive light, she said the image was actually “kind of sexy” – that belt gave the dollars a real hour-glass shape. I suggested that she approach her bill paying and financial decision-making by thinking about how sexy it was to be in control of her money and how cutting back here and there financially was a bit like dieting to create a healthy, sexy  financial body.

For another woman, the man and woman tugging on the dollar sign reminded her of stronger, more powerful people taking money away from the more needy and deserving. It made her feel frustrated in her charity fund-raising work. I suggested that the man and woman could be seen as dancing with money or laughing over money rather than fighting over it. If she brought the idea of dancing and laughing into her fund-raising efforts, maybe it would stop feeling like such a struggle.

Granted, if your habitual money responses are primarily negative, shifting your money magnet into attraction mode may not happen over night. But by consciously working at reframing negative responses to money, you can turn the tide and learn to become a powerful money magnet.

Shared Dreaming with the Departed

Dreaming of Dad by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

I recently had the most amazing SHARED dream experience! I dreamed of my deceased father and a few days later discovered that my husband (who rarely remembers his dreams) had also dreamed of my dad and his own parents (who are also deceased) the very same night. The details of his dream and mine were so connected that I am convinced we were all sharing a very real experience.

My dream:

Phone Call from Dad
I pick up the phone to make a call, but there is no dial tone. I hang it up and try again and get a different kind of sound than the normal dial tone, then silence. I try a few more times, getting just a bit of a dial tone which quickly goes silent. On my next try, a recorded voice speaking in French says something about the phone not being equipped for French signals. I say, “English, not French! What’s wrong with this thing?” Suddenly my Dad is on the line, speaking in a raspy, Sling Blade kind of voice, but still recognizable as my Dad. It’s like he’s using a voice he hasn’t used for a long time. “Dad? Is that you, Dad?” We have a sweet conversation, although it seems difficult for him to use words. I ask him what he’s been doing and he says, “Well, I caught me a fish.” He sounds kind of delighted and so am I. I say, “You went fishing, Dad? Was it really beautiful where you fished?” He says, “Well, it was nothing like Tahiti.” Then he tells me I am beautiful and he loves me. His words seem to carry layers and layers of additional meaning. I feel totally loved and supported. I tell him I love him, and then he’s gone.
~~

I was so moved by this, and it was so real. I awoke just saying thank you and I love you over and over again. My Dad is French-Canadian, so French is his first language. It would not be surprising for him to try to communicate in French as the phone call initially began. He loved fishing and his passion was sailing. He and my Mom went to Tahiti for one of their anniversaries and he took hundreds of gorgeous photographs. It was the most memorable trip in his life. The very last conversation I had with him, as he was slowly dying of Alzheimer’s and lay sleeping and unresponsive in his bed, was about Tahiti. I put on one of his Tahitian CDs and told him to imagine the aqua blue seas of Tahiti. I told him he could let go and just sail away. He died early the next morning.

A few days after my dream, something on the TV reminded me of my Dad and I said to my husband, “Oh, I dreamed of my Dad the other night.” He said, with surprise, “I dreamed about your Dad the other night, too. And my Mom and Dad, too.” We quickly determined that our dreams had been on the same night.

My husband’s dream:

Pulling the Boat out of the Lake with a Backhoe
My husband’s Mom is griping that his Dad went to pull the boat out of the lake with the backhoe. He goes to see what his Dad is up to. His Dad says, “I had to pull some old geezer in a sailboat out of the lake.” My husband is surprised to see that the “old geezer” in question is MY Dad!
~~

My husband’s Dad drove a backhoe for a living, grading county roads. The “old geezer” was in a sailboat – my Dad’s boat of choice. My husband’s parents have been gone longer than my Dad. I got the feeling that maybe Dad is just coming into full consciousness of his new surroundings (he’s been gone about a year and a half). He found a lake to sail away on, all right,  but it's nothing like Tahiti. He maybe got himself into a bit of trouble out there on that new lake, and my husband’s folks are there, helping him out.

The whole experience is just so validating to me that life continues on the “other side.” And that we can communicate with our loved ones who are over there through dreams.

Has anything like this ever happened to you?

I would love to hear your own ideas about and experiences of shared dreaming and dreaming with the departed.

Visioning: Cutting and Pasting Your Future

Staying Grounded by ArtfulAlchemist on Polyvore.com

I recently read this great article about vision boards by the wonderful writer and life coach Martha Beck. I love her humorous writing style and I think she’s nailed some things about how the process works (or doesn’t!).

If you are not a long-term student of the Law of Attraction, you may have first heard the term “vision board” in the movie The Secret. It refers to the process of cutting out pictures of things you want to bring into your life and gluing them down in a notebook or on a large sheet of paper. The idea is that by focusing visually on the things you desire, you will (almost magically) draw them into your life.

Having been trained and certified to facilitate a similar but much more powerful and effective process called Visioning® (created and trademarked by Dr. Lucia Capacchione), I was struck by a number of Beck’s reflections.

• “This whole process [of vision boarding] makes me roll my eyes – as I was trained to do over the course of my very rationalist education – but damn if it doesn’t work.”

LOL! I can so relate to this!! Before I learned the Visioning® process, I had spent over 15 years as a computer programmer/analyst. Talk about rational, logical, linear training! My habitual left-brain view of things had to question how gluing some pictures onto paper could possibly bring those things into my life. But, as Beck says, “damn if it doesn’t work! “

Not only does it work to attract more good into your life, the very process of Visioning® (practiced over time) begins to shift the rigid structure of logical, linear, ego-based, left-brain thinking and awaken the intuitive, creative, heart-based, right-brain modes of thinking that may have been slumbering or atrophied because of a cultural bias for left-brain skills. Visioning® sparks whole-brain thinking, and whole-brain thinking is optimal for problem solving and creating the life you want to be living.

• “To really work, a vision board has to come not from your culture but from your primordial, nonsocial self – the genetically unique animal/angel that contains your innate preferences.”

I agree with this 100%, but I would word it a little differently – AND I think this is one of the major differences between vision boards and Visioning®.

Visioning® works far better than the traditional vision board because the images and phrases that end up in your collage are selected by your heart instead of your head. Rather than already having a picture in mind and then going in search of it, you allow images to select you as you randomly sift through magazines. If you do this correctly, you will often clip images with no idea why you are selecting them. You will just follow your heart as it draws you to a particular image or phrase. Beck hits the nail on the head when she says, “The only responses involved should resemble these:
Ooooh!
Aaaahhhhh.
Whoa!
!!!!
????“

Your final collage may look nothing like what you might have expected it to – because it has been created from your true heart’s desire instead of the programmed messages in your ego-based left brain. That’s exactly the result you want.

When you follow the Visioning® process up with structured journaling, you are seeding the desires of your heart (as reflected in your selected imagery) back into your rational left brain (because language and words are left-brain functions). That’s when the magic starts to happen because you are beginning to replace entrenched left-brain habits and patterns (which have created the life you are currently living) with new, juicy, heartfelt ideas (that can help you to create the life of your dreams).

• “This is exactly what you should do once you’ve created a vision board. Stop thinking about it. Lose it. Recycle it. The biggest mistake [you can] make is continuing to push something [you’ve] already set in motion.”

Now here I have to disagree. Sort of.

It’s true, I have seen manifestations come long after putting a Visioning® collage away and forgetting about it. But I have also seen deep insights and fabulous manifestations happen by keeping a Visioning® collage where it can be reflected upon regularly for weeks – even months – on end.

At the very least, you should keep your Visioning® collage where you can see it and work with it long enough to journal about or dialogue with at least a handful of the most powerful images. This is how you move your heart’s desire into full consciousness and clarity. Without this step, it is too easy for the dreams that emerged to be overridden by firmly entrenched habits and the status quo.

It is true that you need to let go of your attachment to a particular outcome and especially release the need to control the “hows” of manifesting your heart’s desire. Here is where you have to trust in and rely upon your partnership with the larger powers of Spirit. The Universe (aka God) knows far better ways of manifesting your dreams than you do. So don’t think you have to go it alone.

That said, manifesting your dream life will take some work on your part. You have to do more than just stare at your Visioning® collage and wait for your dream to land in your lap. Keep your eyes, ears and heart open to synchronicities and connections that can help you move toward your dream. Take action when action is called for. Just make sure that action is heart-driven and divinely inspired rather than completely left-brain, ego-based or habitual.

• “This is the zone of reality creation: regularly picturing delights that don’t yet exist, emotionally detaching from them, and jumping into action when it’s time to help the miracles occur.”

Amen, Sister Beck! I could not agree with you more!

Feel free to contact me if you’d like more information about the process of Visioning® or you’d like to experience a facilitated Visioning® session. You might also want to check out Dr. Capacchione’s book, Visioning: Ten Steps to Designing the Life of Your Dreams or visit www.VisioningCoach.org.