Your Inner Artist and Healer

The most amazing thing about dreams is their infinite creativity, variety and availability. The mind, regardless of age or intelligence level, generates new material, night after night, spinning endless fantasies that surpass Hollywood’s best efforts. We each have a master artist living in our unconscious, inviting us to a free private screening of works created especially for us each night.

This hidden artist weaves past, present and future into intricate and bizarre patterns that on the surface may seem to make no sense, and yet are strangely compelling. From its unlimited palette of memories, emotions, sensations and images, it creates masterful and sometimes frightening self-portraits.

As your personal healer, your dreams, even your nightmares, can diagnose and heal you at many levels. Facing and owning your "shadow material" through dream work often reveals inner sources of personal power and wellbeing.

Dreams have their own internally consistent logic that is more creative and richer than the linear logic of waking reality. Dream content is not random or accidental, as our culture believes. Instead, it is chosen quite intentionally by the unconscious from infinity of possibilities. A simple example: there is a car in your dream. Who decided whether to make it a new Ferrari or an old beat up pick-up truck with no brakes? Your inner artist and healer chose it, for its symbolic accuracy and its resonance to some aspect of yourself or your life.

Every detail of your dream is a carefully placed brush stroke, representing an aspect of yourself and also having its own external meaning. You may have seen the red Ferrari on the street today (along with the pick-up truck that didn't make it into your dream). But the Ferrari also represents something about you, so your unconscious re-created it in your dreamscape.

Dream Symbols don't have fixed positive or negative meanings. The red Ferrari could mean power, high value, speed, status, success, self-image, or it could as easily mean anger, waste, recklessness, etc. Its "true meaning" is whatever fits you and your life at this moment. The same image may mean different things at different times in your life, or in different dream contexts. Is the Ferrari cruising along? Parked? Stuck in mud? Crashing into a tree? Flying above the pavement? Who is driving and where are you going? But dream contexts also have no intrinsically positive or negative meaning.

Come explore to find your own inner truth -- in your dreams as in all of life!

Ann Klein, licensed therapist

Pauline Libutti, RiverRock Critters.com
Copyright 2008 CraftyCritters Newsletter

7 Easy Creative Rituals to Spark Your Imagination and Inspire Your Soul

Revitalize Your Creative Talents

Creativity is a mysterious force that visits us with great ideas, new ways of seeing the world and the courage to do things differently. Revitalizing your creative talents will help you in the most unexpectedly wonderful ways: a new business idea, a renewed commitment to self-care, an appreciation for the beauty that lies all around us.

Finding a small bit of time each day to feed this force will not only reward you with increased creativity, but also an expanded sense of appreciation and gratitude for the creative process.

The following list highlights simple yet powerful actions you can take to spark your creative energy from the inside out.

1. Keep a Daily Journal

Use a journal to jot down the meandering thoughts of your mind. Write, draw, doodle, and paste collages together. Stuck between your great ideas are random thoughts, mental notes, and menial observations. Use your journal as a place to deposit these thoughts, keeping your creative mental workspace clear. Think of it as feng shui for the mind, a way of keeping the creative juices flowing.

2. Create Sacred Space

Find a place in your home to keep inspiring, motivating and spiritually significant objects. Remind yourself that creativity flows like water and wind, that it is steadfast like earth and powerful like fire. Collect objects from nature to remind you of this. Place things that awe and inspire you, projects you’re most proud of, and photos of people who support and encourage your creative action.

3. Reflection

Reflection can be a minute of appreciating someone or something, or it can be a day of meditation and writing. Find ways to incorporate reflection into your daily routine, noting how experiences and interactions help you grow as a creative person. This is great for surveying what inspires you and what blocks you, what attracts you and what doesn’t.

4. Creative Getaways

If you can, find some time to sneak away and enjoy a creative pleasure. It can be an hour wandering through a craft store, window shopping, a hike in nature or a visit to a special place. If you have kids and can’t get away alone, don’t worry. Enjoy the outing and reflect on it together. There are no rules to creative getaways. It is whatever touches you at that moment.

5. Do Something "Loco "

What’s something crazy you’ve always dreamed of doing but didn’t because of insecurity, fear or intimidation? Make a pact with yourself to get to know your Inner Loco and find ways to let her out to play each and every day.

6. See the World through a Child’s Eyes

Children have the amazing ability to be open to the possibilities of just about anything. Give yourself playtime to see the world through the eyes of a child. Sometimes it can be simply sitting on the floor and looking at a room from a new angle, or giving yourself permission to laugh and have fun.

7. Chart Your Course

It’s one thing to dream of creative things and it’s another thing to make them happen. Look at all the wonderful ideas you have and pick one to act upon. Make a commitment to do at least one daily action to support this idea. Doing the footwork to make your dream a reality will show you how easy it really is to turn ideas into action.

Ritual is a series of repeated acts. By incorporating creative ritual in your life, you will increase your innovation and creativity in ways that will surprise and delight you. Try at least one of these actions and feel your creativity grow!

by: Nancy Marmolejo

Pauline Libutti, RiverRock Critters.com
Copyright 2008 CraftyCritters Newsletter

Helping Mother Nature ...

Creative Expression

Creative expression can transform negative energies into a positive situation. Rock Art seems to fill that frustration for anyone who is creative, or a want to be, and has the desire to fulfill a long awaited talent. It’s as though Mother Nature handed you a piece of her art, that has profuse shapes, sizes, and natural color and said, here, I want you to finish it with your senses of imagination and creativity. Hence, the Rockers were born.

I feel art is one of mankind’s healthiest inclinations, and one of our greatest attributes. Unfortunately, it is tucked away in our inner being and at times we hold it prisoner instead of letting the beauty around us unfold and come alive.

Spiritual Development

Creative expression is a spiritual development, and can be a way of becoming more aware, and also deal with high sensitivity. We all possess the tools necessary to expand our creative horizons. Learning to use and apply them in everything we do is what counts.

Even though we feel we cannot achieve our dreams the love of the creative process is available to all of us if we just take the time to listen and learn. You need to hone in on your skill, whether it be Rock Painting, Writing, Music, and pursue it with almost obsessive diligence, foregoing other activities for this one true love. You will find yourself working hard to cultivate your natural talents.

Expanding Your Talents

Environment, nurture, exposure to a particular skill in your early years, luck and timing all play important roles into expanding your talents. Rock Art is a wonderful way to express your thoughts and feelings and a more comfortable way if you are one that does not express your feelings easily. Just about anything can be painted on a rock form. After all this art form was started almost 40,000 years ago in caves. Some theories hold that they may have been a way of transmitting information, while other theories ascribe them a religious or ceremonial purpose.

I believe now when you are walking in the desert, at the beach, or enjoying the serene sounds of the river you will look at Rocks differently. A shape, a size, a look that speaks to you. You might even here a slight whisper from “Mother Nature” telling you to create, to beautify, because she just wasn’t quite finished with this one.

Communication Through Art

Communication Through Art
Art is the means by which we communicate what it feels like to be alive. In the past that was mixed up with other illustrative duties but that was still its central function that has been liberated in the art called modern.

All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. At moments of great enthusiasm it seems that no one in the world has ever made art this beautiful and important. A sincere artist is not one who makes a faithful attempt to put on to canvas what is in front of him, but one who tries to create something which is, in itself, a living thing.

Reflect On Your Surroundings
If you sometimes need inspiration, reflect on your surroundings. You might find peace and joy in an exquisite photograph of nature's wonders, or beautiful thoughts beautifully expressed. Visualize this on paper, canvas, rock, etc. and you will soon find a way to transfer that vision, that feeling, into a beautiful work of art.

Your surroundings of Nature is not landscape, but the dynamism of visual forces.. an event rather than an appearance. These forces can only be tackled by treating color and form as ultimate identities, freeing them from all descriptive or functional roles.

Immerse Yourself In Your Sensations
Imagine your surroundings as a delicious dish. Take a moment to immerse yourself in your sensations. How does the dish smell or taste? When savoring the dish in your imagination, does it make you want to stretch like a cat, dance disco, or bounce like an excited puppy?

What sounds or music or rhythm could be associated with enjoying your dish? What colors or shape would it be framed by? What feelings does this dish evoke for you -- joy, comfort, sensuality, anticipation? What memories arise as you picture this dish, your art project? Now take a deep breath and bring yourself back to your project's current form. You just reconnected with your art!

Can,you dive right in to your project! If not, what is the missing ingredient and how can you invite it into your life? Your recipe for success is in the doing of your art.

I AM Creative
Just tell yourself, I am Creative! Creativity is not about inventing something totally new, it is about making new synergistic connections. You don't have to be a special kind of person to be creative – everyone can do it. It's not about who you are, it's about what you do. You just need to start looking for multiple solutions rather than settling for just one, and give yourself permission to be playful and inquisitive, flexible and versatile. Although creative people come from varied backgrounds, they all seem to have one thing in common – they love what they are doing.

The good news is that creativity is a skill and a talent that can be learned and developed through practice. By sharpening your thinking skills and exercising your natural creative powers, you can multiply the value of your efforts and rapidly increase the quantity and quality of your rewards.