Dear Ones,
The Great One granted us many gifts upon our earthly arrival. Though not all of us have access to every tool in the GO (Great One) toolbox for humans, we have been given a lot to work with, don’t you think?
Sense-wise we have hearing, seeing, tasting, smelling, touching….and the often less acknowledged tool (because it often lay unused at the bottom of the box lodged between a soft pink stone and box of copper nails)…the sixth sense, or as I call it: perception.
The sixth sense, when used, can shed light upon all the other senses. It is a tool called by many names, but in the light which it’s shining/clouded surface emits, one could be said to “perceive” — which is to become aware of or conscious , or from the Old French: perçoivre: seize or understand.
Some know how to use it better than others. Some were born with the tool radiant and on top of the box and they use it as lamp to peer through the construction sites of our tangled souls. That sixth sense, which is linked arm and arm with the tools of intuition and compassion is also one which, if mis-managed, can cause havoc in the whole toolbox of creation. Or, it can become our light to see by if used with care and knowledge. There are degrees of course of use and misuse with all gifts we have been given.
I have been thinking lately that to become mad is simply to dip too far into the other worlds without knowing how to get back from them… or without knowing how to navigate them without getting too lost….or how to not use the other world knowledge to harm or acquire. In essence, opening too many doors to which we do not have keys to safely lock back up on once we have put the looking glass down.
There was a time, many moons and 18 years ago, when I had my first awakening on a mountain top. Along with the vast files added to my filing cabinet and the additional tools I found in my little red GO toolbox – after the smoke cleared and heartbeat returned to normal and my gaze was returned to my own eyes instead of spreading out across the universe – I was complete. For a few days. Intact within myself. Neither my past of my future, only my now. Comprehension and perception joined and I began to dig dig dig into the collective unconscious file cabinets of the soul with intense curiosity. And when I found a file with my name on it pulled it out and made a tidy stack under the heading: TO SORT.
While stargazing into possibility one cannot be help but be affected by the suffering in those collective files. If one opens oneself to all that is happening at this very moment, it is a wonder we do not go mad at the cacophony of cries. I just have to think- thank God, for putting words into the minds of the poets and pens into the hands of the authors and keys and strings into the hand of the musicians and an endless melody that calls to the nimble toes of our dancers so they can keep the world whirling along. I think….and the Great One knows I do…that it is the fine golden red threads of the artists that keep the weave of the world from coming undone and losing our threads into oblivion. Artists knot and knit and warf and woof between the particles malice and greed and evil and ignorance. Somehow the strength of the artists, like that of the ant, carry 1000 times their own weight in light.
Into my hands, stung too many times to mention, the Author of Life put two tools: Paintbrush and Pen. (Really keyboard..but that sounds so much less poetic!) Wielding my tools like a cowgirl wields her pistolas against injustice, I flail through existence in a flurry of red paint, red roses, red wine, red threads and red cowgirl boots dancing and stomping and whooshing through the Rodeo of the Soul.
The day when I was called forth from the sleep of making a living into the wake of making a life worth living, so much light and perception came that I almost lost my balance for the radiance of it. It wasn’t my light – I was just allowed to view it as Mama Mary pulled back the beaded curtain long enough for me to see and realize I had work to do here. I was called, but to what…I didn’t have yet words for the “what”.
I didn’t turn back, of that I am glad. I did leave my corporate job and did run wild in the woods and did dig clay from the hillside and surrender my overly patriarchal musings onto the altar of fresh soft hill grass. But then I got overly sad and despairing, the gravity of the world’s pain pressed on me like a giant thumb crushing a tiny ant. To which came the paintbrush delivery.
Do you remember the first moment when you realized that someone was giving birth, someone was dying and someone was hurting someone and someone was loving someone all at the same time over and over in a million ways in this same moment, which WE are sharing with them? Right now?
There is a hesitancy to enter into the form of knowing which quickens the heart and allows you to hear the calling of your life path and get onto it straight away and begin your wild journey with more tools than you had yesterday. Answering your calling delivers another toolbox, this one a basket filled of sorted tricks, medicine, stamina serum, and holy water. And of course, and a spool of hand woven red woolen thread so you can make all the connections you are supposed to make. We use the light bulb of our sixth sense to make sense of this new basket of possibilities, which often is all a jumble at first – until we perceive how things will fit together. Until we learn how creativity is a compass.
We are all creative. All of us, each and all. And yet somehow, through the challenges of this world – so many put their creative tool kits away, avoid the awakening bees of meaning and find ourselves, more often then not in life we have no business living… wondering, how did I get here?
By Shiloh Sophia McCloud
The way I see it, there were files – or shall I say, there ARE files with our names on it that the Virgin Mary on her Mondays in the office has carefully labeled, sorted and categorized for us. If we will just remember to open them. She has also packed our baskets with sandwiches and cookies and milk. Did you know it was her who packed the baskets in the first place? At least she packed my basket, and I only know that because there is a picture of her inside next to the hand drum and the spice jar. Her image, like a mommy’s note in a cherished school days brown bag lunch with my name written on it. Right alongside the cheetos: I love you. Have a good day sweetheart, love mama.
Which brings me to the point of this conversation, which I am imagining happening with you, while we sip coffee and we nibble excitedly on jalapeno blackberry scones resistances and my pen searches for the gateways that will pinpoint and jostles this idea into form.
At 40, which I turned this mid June – I have solidified my stance that I don’t know what truth is. And so can only stand by that which I know myself, and offer it as I know it and nothing else better or worse than that. And what I know is that art is medicine for madness. For lack-luster complacency. For nobodyness. Art is the remedy for not knowing. For too much past pain. For reaching into the soul. Art, and it’s verb of action, creativity, is the excavation tool. If perception is the lampara, creativity is the instruction manual for how to use the tools and how to implement the potions and poultices in your basket onto the fevered brows of your life.
The instruction manual of creativity is a book without a step by step which can be perceived through reading. One must USE the tool itself in order for the lights to come on. The only thing we know about how to activate the manual is to practice, any, of the arts, It seems so simple really. That to dance and dream and knit and paint and poem and skip and dip into clay, would allow us to learn how to navigate the rough terrain of existence.
I have been accused of too lofty an opinion regarding the power of art. But with the eyes of my own heart I have seen how art is used as medicine. Have learned why it is in the toolbox of all humans and also, why, because of it’s awesome power we something choose not to use it in the ways it can be used. Art, truly lived, will shake us to the core of ourselves and we will not cease to shed skins all our life as long as we don’t put that paintbrush or knitting needle down. Thumbs up!When I became aware of the pain in the world, I thought I would die of knowing.
Dramatic I know. After a few days of that madness I was directed to my basket in which the paintbrush was poking out. Those who loved me pointed to it, look there, there it is, as I now point to it for others. And once I wielded the brush the files of pain too large for my own body were put into wabi sabi organized fashion within my consciousness. The stories of existence, the maladies and the beauties became part of my palette to choose from which to draw and awaken as I could – instead of holding it all suspended in awareness which makes us too sensitive for this life and too miserable to joy. Now my joy is in balancing the knowing of the pain with the pleasures of creativity. But I tell you true. If I put my brush down too long and spend interminable days washing the dishes of life or answering the e-mails of existence, I become unbearable. Art gives us someplace to put the knowing. Art gives us THE WAY to manage the suffering of the world ours and others.
The good news is you don’t have to be good at art for it to do it’s work. If we will JUST create and keep that up in as consistent a manner as the continuance of dishes and laundry – our self will be reshaped over time. It is not a quick fix, although it does have super glue instant stick qualities when used in the proper ways – which is to say, without judgment of oneself.
The Great One made art in us and made us through art. We are art. We are the Creation and as such we create with wave of hand and puff of breath and stamp of toe in rhythm to the days of our lives. Some say they don’t have a creative bone in their body. I say, and indeed know as my own truth, that every bone in our body is a creative bone. That is how we are made. When we make ART it is an extension of our very soul as an offering onto the altar of creation. It has been said that to know oneself is the greatest assignment on earth. How do we know ourselves if we don’t make art? Art is the excavation tool of the soul.
Art is the seventh “sense” that the Great One gave us..but if we don’t put it to use we won’t know where to look for it in our GO toolbox. One of my jobs in life is to remind all that I meet of that precious tool – and then encourage us all to put it to use: first in service to self, and then, in service to creation, and the best of all, when our art is a prayer of gratitude, to the Great One.
So dear ones I want to know – is your seventh sense activated already?
What do you think you can do to help wake it up?
I have ideas as always for that — but for starters if you don’t have a journal
and your don’t write and draw – it is time. All of us are writers, all of us
can draw. I don’t mean GOOD WRITING and DRAWING -
but the process itself of being creative is the biggest activation you can
use to get that Seventh Sense flowing. And you can also join
me online or in person to get activated with right and left brain creativity!!
Clearly from this – as well as the Moving on Tea Party Dirge from last week, I have been going through some hard times. I don’t think I am alone
am I? Moving on is a good thing. And so at this moment, I send you my prayers and a hug soft as angel’s wings.
Feel free to comment and share what YOU are going through and/or how you activate your Seventh Sense….or plan to!!
Click here to learn more about my work, paintings and vision.
Activating Your Seventh Sense – Part One of Two
