Mathew Lewis from www.visualreflectionsunlimited.com/ is revamping my website www.tavius.org! Look for it to come on line in the next week or so! If you need a website, or revamp, or visual artist, they are a great resource!
I recently purchased the domain www.artistcollective.biz to create an online community for “artists helping artists be artists”. After my personal website is revamped, I will begin building this new site similarly. If you or someone you know is an artist of any kind have them email me at tavius@tavius.org, and we will see how we may be able to help.
Thank you for checking out what is going on!
Stay tuned for more updates and content!
Much Love,
Tavius
www.tavius.org
www.artistcollective.biz
The other thing I attempt to do in the morning regularly is read some mediation books (I ought to be practicing formal mediation more often). However, I find some brief reading after journaling meditative, especially books of wisdom.
In jail a man read Proverbs from the bible daily. There are 31 Proverbs in the bible, one for each day. I attempt to read the proverb for the day as part of my morning meditation readings.
This morning Proverb 27 – 7 “One who is full, tramples on virgin honey, but to the man who is hungry, any bitter thing is sweet”.
It hit me how my personal relationship for a god of my own understanding must be a hunger, and how if I am full of myself, I cannot be full of God. If I hunger for God, then even the bitter things in life are sweet, because from them I can learn and grow, if I am humble enough to receive gratitude, listen for the lesson, and rely on god for the strength to change!
Sounds like I want your money, but I don’t. I want you to know what I have experienced and how it has helped me so that you may be able to consider trying some of these things out for yourself.
I have dealt with addiction and mental health issues all my life! I have been treated at various times since 1997 for depression mainly, but ADD as well as Bipolar Type 2 with very rapid cycling. I have been in recovery from drug and alcohol addiction since April 16th, 2004, when I was incarcerated for a year fighting two strikes over it! It was when I faced myself truthfully, and honestly, sought help for all I found, that my life began to change!
Here are some things I picked up along the way, that can change anyone’s life whether your challenges have been as severe as mine, or not. Ultimately we all experience similar feelings at one point or another, the circumstances of those emotional experiences is not the main point, but that we all are connected by the common experiences of our emotional realities.
Here are some action items for the motivated and open minded (feeling adventurous).
Buy a notebook or journal, preferably one that is noticeably and inspires you to write.
Keep that notebook by your bedside.
Set your alarm 20 minutes earlier the normal.
When you wake write whatever comes to mind as quickly, honestly and openly as you can for a minimum of three pages. If you can’t think of anything, write a word or phrase until three pages are complete.
After writing three pages, list three new things each day you are grateful for.
List the highest qualities or virtues you admire in others.
List the things you did yesterday and the real motivations for them.
Write the things you plan to do an imagine how yourself doing them with those virtues.
If you cannot imagine yourself motivated by those virtues, assess your plans and make any changes necessary, whether it just be visualizing approaching those situations with those virtues over and over or changing your plans to something that you imagine yourself motivated by those virtues.
More to come…..
I hope you will try some of this out for yourself, and let me know what you experience!
Much Love,
Tavius
P.S. (The main idea behind this article was based off of the book, The Artist Way (http://www.amazon.com/Artists-Way-Spiritual-Creativity-Workbook/dp/0874776945), which suggests journaling 30 days upon waking. I have practiced this and added to it as it was so beneficial and effective!)
Noam Chomsky speaks about how media was created with the sole purpose of controlling consumers! Scientists have studied the brains of Zen Buddhists in meditation and the brains of people watching television and the same phenomena occurred, passive receptive communication. When you pick up a TV Guide and it says “programming” it’s literal. Watch not only what you eat, but what you watch, becomes you. As my dear friend, and lover, Zayra, recently told me, manage my inputs, consciously chose what to take in. What we take in in this world becomes us. Cognitive Behavior Theory posits that feelings are our bodies reaction to thoughts, motivating actions which reinforce belief systems which give rise to thoughts. Interrupt this cycle! Break your routine. “Kill your TV”! Do whatever you have to do to become as Eckhardt Tolle so aptly expressed, a conscious observer of your thoughts, because otherwise, you are your thoughts, and have no control to the reaction you are to your environment, and it could be said you don’t even exist!
It’s ALWAYS right HERE, NOW!
The artist and ego relationship is of prime importance in my opinion. The act of art, of creativity, for me, is to be devoid of ego and attempt to let the art speak to me. What I mean by this, is that something in the world speaks to me, a sound, word, image, and I capture it and “listen” to it to try and “hear” what it wants we to “say”, what works best with it. I try and let the art create itself by letting go of myself in the moment and taken the art in with all of my senses until inspired to add to it, modify or change it. Art is the pursuit of truth, felicitously, for me. It is also a form of meditation, or maybe, even prayer, “creative expression is self exploration” so I discover myself through the process of letting myself go to the art medium I am engaged in. Also, “if it weren’t for creation, I’d have never been able to create.” Creativity is as close to Creation as I can get, so creativity is very much a spiritual experience for me.
If we were to assume, for a moment, conscious reality was comprised of our senses, perception, in the moment, and that thought were symbolic of reality, we would have the crux of my worldview at it’s taproot. Thus, the mind, outside of the here and now as we perceive it to be is merely symbolic of the world, subject, birthing what we call time, or the illusion of self as something separate from everything else. The problem then becomes, one, how do we reenter ourselves, everything in THIS moment, right here and now? Meditation is a good practice. Consciously observe your thoughts until they dissolve into the senses, what you see, hear, touch, smell, be alive, here and now, and experience the amazingly unique and alive gift life truly is in THIS moment, which is ALL that exists. Everything else is just an idea, symbolic, of now. Past, future, ideas.
Be aware of the story you tell yourself, the meaning you attribute to things, because you become them, symbolically, which mostly is a subconscious choice, indicating that we are far more a reaction to our environment than really conscious, or even existing.
I look forward to more downloading, and hopefully, some great conversations to develop the collective conscious so that the concious revolution that needs to occur may be facilitated if even just in THIS moment as you read this and wonder about something you may have never wondered about, and in that very act the wonder and beauty of reality has already begun to exist, all the more!
Tavius