Nature as Inspiration and Oracle

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Today’s IGNITE Peer Mentor Kate Elliot invites us to look deeper at our own lives through the magical eyes of nature and art.

IGNITE Peer Mentors are women who successfully completed my IGNITE Online Intensive and are eager to deepen their own skills and intentions as heart guided artists by mentoring a new circle of women in IGNITE. You can check out past Peer Mentor posts by CLICKING HERE.

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As creatives, nature inspires us in so many ways—as color, texture, sound, light, rhythm, shape, and relationship. As majesty, abundance, as power and as vulnerability. And in many other untold ways.

We’ve had a warm, wet winter here in the Pacific Northwest. I have a large garden – one I have essentially ignored lately, scarcely overwintering the beds properly (except for the established beets and kale that survive our winters, even if it snows, which it didn’t. And no, the picture is not what my garden looks like now. It is a glimpse of its coming summer potential).

Spring came early this year—the wet and the warmth coaxing new shoots to push through the soil of their winter hibernation, flowering buds to open and release their sweet fragrance, colors to pop and young leaves to unfurl. The dark days and downpours had kept me out of the garden, doing only the occasional drive by blessing as I hurried from car to door.

This last Saturday was a glorious exception—bright, sunny, and warm.

I wandered the entire garden, front, back and side, exploring the plethora of newness, the regeneration happening before my eyes, springing forth without me even noticing, in perfect cyclic harmony.

bud composite

Being awestruck and excited at the wonder of spring, I also felt a dampening.

I have been through a tremendous year of growth and change and expanded awareness. As much as I “thought I should” relate to the bursting spring, I wasn’t feeling it (that old should word popping up again. Will it ever go away??).

I was feeling tired and a bit listless and anxious.

I sat with this for a day or two, allowing feelings, thoughts, and emotions to bubble to the surface—judging some, allowing some to pass through unscathed. I asked my garden to speak. The garden inspired me to look for what’s hidden underneath. The depths of the soil teaming with microbes, nutrients, elements, bugs, mammals, and decaying organic matter. The internal flow of the tree with its inner bark, cambium cell layer, sapwood and heartwood. Hmmm, that place felt like home and my Ahh Haa moment happened.

soil_Alive

I have a dream and desire to support myself as a creative. To work for myself, being compensated for doing that which nourishes my soul, my wholeness (and the soul and wholeness of those I serve), not just my mind and bank account.

I realized I have been putting all my attention on the outcome.  The bright and shiny “new” life.

I look around and my life is not that (yet).

This creates disappointment and a separation in my soul, in my thoughts, my Life and ultimately my actions. I consciously shift my awareness to the inside. I embrace all the hidden, underneath parts and embrace all this as well as the flower. I focus on that which nourishes and supports the flower, the building blocks of the visual beauty. In doing so, I shift my experience. I shift from lack to abundance. From have not to have. And I paint the soil. And it is ALIVE.

This is just one story of the healing power of art and nature.

Tell yours.

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KateElliotToday’s Guest Post was written by Kate Elliot, Peer Mentor for IGNITE 2016.  Here is a little about Kate…

As an artist I believe in creative expression for its own sake and art as a means of interacting with the Divine, or the Invisible(s) as I like to call them. Everyone is creative, we are born with an inmate desire to express ourselves. Sometimes we forget this or we don’t pay attention to life’s subtleties and details. My joy and passion is facilitating that remembrance. I create art and workshops that speak to the Creator in each of us. I draw your attention to your own unique voice and how and what it wants to express. Through art I encourage your authentic voice to speak and invite you to court its Presence and uncensored expression.

My offerings are both local and online. My current passion is facilitating Intuitive Painting workshops in my home studio, and Creative Practice as Spiritual Practice as an online workshop. My intention is to grow as an Artist and my workshop offerings will grow with me. My purpose is to live so that my heart, body, soul, mind and the Divine co-mingle as one voice. To play in the realm of the terrestrial while courting the realm of the Invisible. Art, and creative expression is a bridge between the two. Come walk it with me.

Kate resides in Seattle, Washington, USA and can be found online HERE.

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