Wednesday Dispatch #4 ~ Intention, Ritual & Art As Spiritual Practice

Hello lovely. :)

It's Wednesday, and that means Dispatch Day! I have decided to crosspost all the dispatches I write for Book of Days to my blog for fear that nothing else will get written, I'm that busy! If you want the videos and other goodies, go here to sign up. It's free!

Today, I want to talk to you a little bit about setting intentions, creating rituals, and art as spiritual practice.

My spiritual practice and my art practice are integral to one another. 

This may not be the case for all of you, and I totally get that, so feel free to roll your eyes at me when I talk about the woo woo. :) What I want to express to you, though is how journal keeping (either written or art) can be a red phone to the Source. 

When I sit down to art, I generally set an intention. This is something I learned in shamanic training ~ you don't do a shamanic journey without setting an intention. It's a little like setting out in a forest without a map, compass or box of matches. When I sit down to art, I make a statement, be that out loud, in writing, or just a mental note, about what I intend to explore. I might say "I intend to explore complimentary colour" or "I want to explore why my feelings are hurt." Sometimes, the intention is playful (I wanna play with bubble wrap) and sometimes it's very serious (I need to heal this long open wound). Whatever it is, stating it before hand is a little like dialing in to Source. It gives your subconscious instructions about what symbols, colours, or images to access during your arting session.  

If you are not a spiritual person and there is no such thing as "God" or "Source" or "Divine" in your vocabulary, you can think of this practice in purely psychological terms. When you set the intention, you are communicating to your superego what your ego needs. As you art, your younger self or subconscious goes to work on representing that on the page. 

Woo woo, right? But really darned powerful.  

A lot of us have abandoned the spiritual teachings our our childhoods. While I'm all for leaving oppressive teachings behind, I think that if you *are* a spiritual person by nature but you lack a spiritual practice, you can feel really cut adrift. Creating your own rituals around arting can fill the void your abandoned spiritual path has left behind. 

Some things you can do to imbue your art practice with spirit are: 

*Set an intention for your session. 
Have a way to open the session and then close the session. Example: Light a candle when you begin and extinguish when you finish. Say a prayer to be an open channel and then say a prayer to close the channel down. Get quiet for a minute before beginning, and get quiet for a moment as you finish up. These are all 'triggers' that will put in the arting frame of mind whenever you enact them. This creates a container for your creativity and allows you to access it more readily on demand.  

*Create rituals around the seasons of the year (solar) or phases of the moon (lunar) that are really meaningful to you. 

For example, I wrote about my New Moon practice in Facebook recently. When the moon is dark, (commonly known as "new moon"), I take an hour to reflect in my journal about the moon cycle that's just passed. When I know the moon is a crescent (about 2% waxing), I make what I fondly call my New Moon Vow. This is a promise to myself to do something during the next moon cycle. I might vow to take better care of my teeth, get a manicure, start a sketching practice, or walk. Whatever it is, it is made lightheartedly with full knowledge that I might struggle with it. There is no dire consequence for failing to follow through. But to better ensure that I do follow through, I art about it in my journal, taking the vow from words to something more tangible. Again, you can see this as woo woo or you can see this as a really effective psychological tool. I see it as both.  

Love & Glitter,
 

Effy