WEEK 9 | THE ARTIST'S WAY UPDATE

Yurpppppp!? What's good fam?! Happy to have you back. Glad to see (per the back end analytics) that even though I haven't been posting an adjourning video via YT that some people are still finding the blog posts! And I haven't been posting the YT videos bc...

[ enters the notes from week 9 ] 📝

I think I am BURNT OUT from RECOVERING FROM BURN OUT. I think I said or wrote this somewhere before, but it is still A THING! So forgive the redundancy. But yea... I just can't. I don't wanna film it, I don't want edit it, I don't wanna post it, I don't wanna see who or if it is watched - I don't I don't I don't (and the list escalates on *in my gpa's voice 🤣).

So guess what, I just STOPPED. There is/are too many things GOING OUT. I need something coming in. All this interaction, exchange and debiting of energy - where is the credit, the deposit, the top off, the fill up!? Everything seems so empty and fake, and as an introvert (in the energy sense, not personality sense) - I just can't do it. It is like being surrounded by and involved in small talk and frivolous tasks 24/7. I am not built for it. SO ALL THAT SAID...I am taking a break. Idk what that looks like or for how long... but it is happening. 

Now ... on the the next note of  week 9 🫠

I have been saying for the past few years that I believe the REAL "thief of joy" is not COMPARISON, but EXPECTATION/DESIRE. This is true for me, if not everyone else (although deeply I think it is true for everyone). It is not the comparison that JOE has ITEM A and you don't. In most cases you are not jealous-you are disappointed. It is the expectation that you ASSUMED you would have ITEM A too (by now, or bc you worked just as hard etc). This theme arose - as themes do and I just sat with why it was there and even mulled over WHY DO WE EVEN EXPECT AND WANT THINGS. Which leads me to the other side of the expectation coin, DESIRE! I can't remember who in this moment, but one of the sages 🧘🏾‍♀️ said something to the effect of desires being man's chief source of grief and strife. Another said ( or maybe the same one) that if we want for nothing then we have everything. If you think deeply about it, it makes sense. Bc what you resist persists and like also attracts like. So if you are in WANT or LACK of something and that's all you put out vibrationally - that's all you can get back. We have to work our way into DETACHING FROM THE DESIRE in trust and faith so that it can be made manifest. This is also why when you finally say SCREW IT NVM and let the need for something go - IT SHOWS UP!! But the humanness of us seems to have to get to a point of pure exhaustion in the fight to say NVM I GIVE UP before we TRULY GIVE IT TO GOD, and then BAM 💥 it shows up. When we will learn to just do it the easy way to start with 👀 ?

The "human condition" is our biggest DIS-EASE 🤦🏾‍♀️

Anywho...moving on! Next what came up was THE MIDDLE PATH via Tao Te Ching, as well as, practicing heart opening and IN(ner)LIGHTENMENT! the Tao spoke about letting go of the extremes and remaining somewhere in the middle. This helps with larges swings of mood, energy etc! But to get here you also have to work on my last mentioned topic - expectation and desire. Also with this was a pull to work on loosening and opening my heart. I have (and most others have) built up walls around our hearts bc life, people, situations and disappointments have hurt us so many times that we "can't stand" to be bulldozed again. So we start to build up protection so we don't hurt again... at least not as much/bad as the last time. And this works great as a defense mechanism. What it doesn't  do is, as you try to grow and heal, is let love and light in. The wall works both ways. So we are out here trying to achieve and do all these things only to come up short. But no wonder right?! We have no choice but to come up short if you aren't open enough to let stuff in, to give things a chance - to feel!

💖To work on opening my heart I literally set down as if to start meditating and sent energy to my heart space and recited things to myself about opening, being safe, letting go etc. After a while I could feel warmth in this area and flutters. I continue to work through it a little but daily and I will stop whenever I am called to leave it be. Til then... onward. 

Last handful of things... the tasks in TAW for this week 🧐 I really didn't connect with any of them. I didn't feel called to them, but I committed to selecting at least 2 a week so I did just that and made it as enjoyable and healing as possible as I completed them. I did miss my morning pages on Saturday. It seems that I am actively skipping one day a week now...oops! *I am in week 10 now and I missed one this week too* and lastly, I mentioned a while back that I was doing the Deepak 21 Day Meditation via Spotify and I have completed that. It was nice, although I feel like they got too short the final week or so! 

​Whew 😅 ok, that was all for week 9. I am currently rounding out week 10 IRL and I am too happy to be coming to completion on this. Imma actually do it this time guys 🤣 I have stopped posting the YT weekly vids for TAW, but I do plan to do a final wrap vid as well as a short on the artist's dates! 

Let me know how it is going for y'all out there. 
Peace and Love 
​Xo - JG