This month’s inquiry is "what happens for you when you notice that your experience is one of happiness, joy or contentment?"
How do you experience joy? What colors, textures, sounds, tastes, smells, body sensations, thoughts, and feelings are associated with it? How do you experience contentment? How do you experience happiness?
Be curious and see what you notice. Let yourself be open to surprises.
Set your intention to notice joy when it arises. Know that there is a perfection in your experience exactly as it is. You may or may not experience joy, happiness, contentment. Or you may not be aware that you are experiencing them. No need to change anything. Let it be. Notice your experience and give it some expression through your art-making.
With my experience, I have been noticing that when I touch into a place of deep joy there is a sense of letting go, coming home and it brings a lot of tears. Other times happiness brings a lightness and timeless quality to my experience.
Experience is a dynamic flow of every changing perceptions, thoughts, feelings and states of being. Let your experience show you what’s true for you in any moment.
Art-Making Inquiry
This month’s inquiry is "what happens for you when you notice that your experience is one of happiness, joy or contentment?"
1) Sit quietly and read the poem "So Much Happiness" below. Notice your experience whatever it is. What colors, textures, sounds, tastes, smells, body sensations, thoughts, and feelings? Don’t think you should be happy after reading it. You may. You may not. Notice what your experience is and give it some expression through your art-making.
If there are other poems that you sense would support this inquiry, work with them as well.
2) Choose a piece of music that seems connected to joy, happiness, contentment. Sit quietly and listen to it. Notice what your experience is and give it some expression through your art-making. Work with as many pieces of music as you like.
3) Choose an image that seems connected to joy, happiness, contentment. Sit quietly and look to it. Notice what your experience is and give it some expression through your art-making. Work with as many images as you like.
Have a great month. Please share if you feel inspired to do so. I love hearing from you.
So Much Happiness
It is difficult to know what to do with so much happiness.
With sadness there is something to rub against,
A wound to tend with lotion and cloth.
When the world falls in around you, you have pieces to pick up,
Something to hold in your hands, like ticket stubs or change.
But happiness floats.
It doesn’t need you to hold it down.
It doesn’t need anything.
Happiness lands on the roof of the next house, singing,
And disappears when it wants to.
You are happy either way.
Even the fact that you once lived in a peaceful tree house
And now live over a quarry of noise and dust
Cannot make you unhappy.
Everything has a life of its own,
It too could wake up filled with possibilities
Of coffee cake and ripe peaches,
And love even the floor which needs to be swept,
The soiled linens and scratched records.
Since there is no place large enough
To contain so much happiness,
You shrug, you raise your hands, and it flows out of you
Into everything you touch.
You are not responsible.
You take no credit, as the night sky takes no credit
For the moon, but continues to hold it, and to share it,
And in that way, be known.
- Naomi Shihab Nye
My Art Work as Inspiration for Your Art Work
I share my artwork here to inspire you to create your artwork. It is through your art-making that you will discover more about who you are.
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| 32309-01.jpeg, magazine images & paper, 2009, 12" x 12", |
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012109.jpeg, |
You can click on an image or its title to see a larger version within the online
gallery.
I always welcome a connection with you. If you would like to share about
the inquiry, art-making or other things happening in life, please feel
free to contact
me.
Previous inquiries are online at www.artasaccess.com/resources/inquiries
Have
a great month and live in the remembrance that in all of time, there will only be one you. Your greatest gift to yourself and the world is the expression of your authentic self. By using art-making to connect deeply with yourself, may you find the courage and strength to share your beautiful, joyous self with the world.
-Ryl
Who do you know that would benefit from reading this?
Please share it with them.