I’m concluding my trip to Death Valley with this beautifully chanted mantra recorded on March 30, 2008, hit the arrow to listen. It’s a Hebrew blessing, thanking God for imparting strength. It seems fitting. Thanks for all your prayers and well wishes during this time.
Check out The Mantra Trailer to get access to the complete archive!
I’m now in the desert on the home stretch. This mantra reminds me that I AM strong and I will go the distance! Join me by pressing the arrow above and listen to this motivational mantra, recorded March 29, 2008.
Check out The Mantra Trailer project to get access to the complete archive!
I’m now in the desert half way through my week. This mantra reminds me to feel great gratitude for the glory of the landscape that is so much more than me. Join me by pressing the arrow above and listen to this sweetly sung, heartfelt mantra, recorded April 26, 2008.
Check out The Mantra Trailer to get access to the complete archive!
I’m now in the desert chanting away under the sun, beneath the full moon, and through infinite space. There is plenty of solitude but this mantra reminds me that even though I’m alone, I am INFINITELY connected with the universe. Join me by pressing the arrow above and listen to this chanted mantra, recorded December 31, 2007.
Check out The Mantra Trailer to get access to the complete archive!
I’m on my way to Death Valley today. This mantra reminds me of the stark desert that I’m choosing to enter alone. The desert resides within, without, and all around. There is death but there is light and poetry and connection. Join me by pressing the arrow above and listen to this mesmerizing mantra recorded May 19, 2008.
Check out The Mantra Trailer to get access to the complete archive!
I’m getting excited about my trip to Death Valley. I bought some binoculars today. I’ve heard that when you view the Milky Way with binoculars, the milky part will distinguish itself into stars. I don’t know if this is true but I’ll find out. Maybe I’ll use them to look across the vast flat lands to see mirages disappear.
I also talked to my therapist, Norma, today. She lives in North Carolina, but I still call her for a phone session when I really feel the need. Her understanding of things always grounds me. She said I don’t have to think about the past or the future. All I need to do is feel my feelings, take care of myself, and get back on track. I don’t need to let go or to hold on. There’s no magical thinking involved.
I brought up that I feel conflicted by the need to vilify this ex boyfriend to get over the hurt and disappointment. She suggested that I think of him as confused instead. Smile!
Finally I’ve been thinking about my intentions for this blog and how it functions. I blog for professional reasons, but my art and creativity have always been bound by my life. I can’t separate them. It’s a little gross to go public with such raw emotion, but on the other hand I also use this blog to chronicle the essential events of my life — which of course IS the source of my creativity. It’s a circle!
Again thanks for all your comments and patience. Waking with the earthquake this morning felt natural. I’m still a little shaky, but I have a feeling that there will be some kinda kick-ass quilt making happening in my studio when I return from the desert!
Photo: The Realm of Complete Joy, 2004, installation detail, by Sherri Lynn Wood
Good Morning – here I am one week and three days after the big heart-break. I’m surviving one day at a time.
Of course there are lessons here. I can find no fault in my behavior towards the guy. As I said earlier I loved fully and responsibly. I never betrayed him but perhaps I betrayed myself in two significant ways. I became attached to the idea of a future and security with him too soon, and I gave my love to easily, to a man who had not proven worthy of it yet.
Yet again maybe I didn’t betray myself. And its simply hard for me to accept that I fell in love with someone who didn’t have the capacity to love me in return.
I’m sure there will be more insights during my week of solo camping in Death Valley, but I’ll never have a clear understanding.
While I’m in the desert I hope you will enjoy the mantras and images of the Mantra Trailer in desert landscapes. I can assure you I will be chanting some new mantras while I’m taking stock next week.
Thank you all for suffering me this space to gush and heal. I appreciate all the comments and perspectives you share with me. It helps!
I originally posted this on Thursday, February 23, about a week after Valentine’s Day. For the last six months I’ve been dating a new man. I wasn’t sure about him at first, he wasn’t my usual type, but he was so good to me. He called every day. He seemed so passionate for me. I told him things about past relationships – about times when I wasn’t treated so well and he told me he could never imagine treating me that way. I gradually opened my heart and fell in love. You can see it in my eyes in the picture below.
This post is a little late… but I am still enjoying the bloom of these roses from my sweetheart. They arrived on Valentines Day while I was working at St. Gregory’s.
I’m also still enjoying the bloom of this new relationship. I’m so happy, so lucky, so thankful! And so distracted! No wonder it’s hard to get any quilting done around here.
The very next day, Friday February 24, started out so well. I met my friend Melinda at the Korean Baths that morning. It had been awhile since we had seen each other and I filled her in about this terrific man, and the wonderful relationship we were building. I told her we would soon be traveling to Death Valley to spend a week together in the desert, camping and hiking, and having time alone together.
While I was laying in the warm yellow clay room at the bath house that morning I felt so much gratitude. I was so happy. My man and I were getting together later that night and I was excited about seeing him after a long week.
He showed up at my place and told me that his affection for me wasn’t growing and that he wanted to end the relationship – out of the blue – without warning. He never brought up any dissatisfaction about the relationship until the evening he told me it was over.
My heart is broken. I feel so insulted, dismissed, and thrown away.
It’s a shock being a part of a couple and feeling connected to someone and something bigger than my self, to being single again in a heartbeat. All the other relationships I’ve been in have ended after at least some mutual discussion, care, and respect usually occurring over a period of months or at least weeks.
I’m deeply shaken. I’m going to the desert next week as planned but by myself – sans boyfriend. I’ll take some reading, my yoga mat, my hiking boots, my knitting, a journal, and I’ll sit and listen to the deep quiet of Death Valley. Hopefully I’ll find some peace – maybe some new understanding about what love is and how to better cultivate it in my life.
The upside is that I am thankful that I loved fully and responsibly. Also my friends and family have been awesome in their support. Please say prayers for me. Send me energy. I’m a beautiful, authentic woman and all I want is a chance to build a loving, respectful, and lasting relationship with a worthy and caring man.
Last week we learned about CASTING a hexagram. The next step in the I Ching Modern Quilt-along is READING your I Ching hexagram and integrating the oracle’s response into your work and life. This includes finding places in the text that resonate, writing your insights down in a journal and then applying them to your original question.
The more you throw the I Ching the more you will intuitively sense the interconnectedness of things, actions, and situations. There is a lot of wisdom to gained from this process over time.
So back to my question: How do I move past procrastination? The hexagram that was revealed when I cast my coins was # 54: The Marrying Maiden. You might wonder how the hell does that connect with procrastination in my workspace. It surprised me but here is what I resonated with and what I discovered:
Marrying Maiden – to set out to bring order: PITFALL. No direction is fruitfal!
How can I grow into this situation…of continuing on the quilt I’ve been procrastinating on? I’m not ready to exert influence. There is no point in setting intentions or making plans. All I can do is feel my way, adopt and find my place without originating any action or having my own agenda.
I’M SECOND TO THE WORK! I have to adapt myself to it’s agenda and then I can move forward.
I have to grow within myself to catch up with the sudden and complete change in my circumstances.
Bigger picture issues in my procrastination: moving to the west coast, loosing a sense of community.
After asking your question and casting your coins you now have a hexagram. A lower and upper trigram form your hexagram. You can use a chart to find the reference number for your reading in the I Ching. Look up your upper trigram in the horizontal row of this chart and your lower trigram in the vertical column.
If you cast a hexagram that doesn’t change then you read only the main part of the primary hexagram, not the lines.
If you throw a changing line you will read the primary hexagram and then the changing line of that primary hexagram and finally you will read the relational hexagram formed from the changing line or lines.
How do the parts of the reading work together? From Hillary Barrett’s I Ching:
If your reading includes changing lines, then you will need to understand primary hexagram, relating hexaram and changing lines together.
The two hexagrams in conversation with one another map out your whole answer. The primary hexagram shows you quiet directly what your answer involves. The relating hexagram generally describes what the answer is about for you. It sets the primary hexagram in a broader context. an influence, a direction of travel, an underlying issue – that has to do with you and your relationship to it all.
If the two hexagrams map out a landscape for you, then the changing lines stick a pin in that map to say ‘You are here!’ They are the immediate answer to your question, as the most specific, focused part of a reading.
If you throw an unchanging hexagram then it is important to fully understand the concept of the hexagram before moving on.
Perhaps you have been ASKING, CASTING and READING the I Ching these past three weeks. If so keep going. Continue to ask your questions, cast the coins, resonate with the readings you receive from the hexagrams and then journal about your surprises and discoveries.
Keep a record of all of your castings. Be sure you are marking the changing lines of your hexagrams because you will need this information when translating your hexagrams into a quilt.
Ask questions about your creative process for the next couple of weeks. You will want to have completed at least 4 to 6 castings so that you can use this information to design the score or parameters of your quilt.
I’ll be back with the next step of TRANSLATING our hexagrams into a quilt form in two weeks. This is when the fun begins!
I’ll be posting new segments of the quilt-along on Mondays. Subscribe to the RSS feed here: I Ching Modern Quilt-along.
After opening to the I Ching by ASKING a question, the next part of the conversation with the oracle is to connect to the divination through the chance operation of CASTING, or throwing three coins, six times to form a hexagram. The hexagram becomes the key to the reading as well as the basis for our I Ching Modern Quilt-along blocks.
You might be wondering, “If the hexagram is determined by chance, then how is it relevant to me and my situation?” OR “How am I connected to the random happenings of the universe?”
So here is the most interesting thing about how the I Ching works…
In his foreword to the Whilhelm translation of the I Ching, Carl Jung explains:
whoever invented the I Ching was convinced that the hexagram was the exponent of the moment in which it was cast — even more so than the hours of the clock or the divisions of the calendar could be — inasmuch as the hexagram was understood to be an indicator of the essential situation prevailing in the moment of its origin.
This assumption involves a certain curious principle that I have termed synchronicity,a concept that formulates a point of view diametrically opposed to that of causality. Since the latter is a merely statistical truth and not absolute, it is a sort of working hypothesis of how events evolve one out of another, whereas synchronicity takes the coincidence of events in space and time as meaning something more than mere chance, namely, a peculiar interdependence of objective events among themselves as well as with the subjective (psychic) states of the observer or observers.
Let me summarize: In our western mind-set we tend to think about time and events as linear. We assign meaning through causality. So when we look at our lives, we think – this happened – we were born – which in turn caused this to happen – which caused this to happen , and so on – until we die.
Jung introduces synchronicity as an alternative model for understanding our relationship to events and the unfolding of time. Through synchronicity chance events, happening simultaneously in time and space, relate to each other in the shared and present moment. When there is a relationship there is meaning. Cool right!
So many possibilities for creation open up from this idea. Just think of the ways you might allow random events to influence, decide, or guide your creative output.
Casting coins:
Last week I asked the I Ching about procrastination, and I threw the hexagram 54, or the Marrying Maiden. I didn’t throw any changing lines. So the oracle is asking me to focus carefully on this one primary hexagram for my answer.
Last week we practiced opening to the oracle of the I Ching by exploring the best ways of ASKING our creative questions.
This week’s task is to focus on one question and connect to the I Ching through casting your coins. If the process seems a little confusing don’t worry. Once you start it will become clear. If you have a good text to work with then go ahead and look up your hexagram and see what the oracle has to say. Be sure to record all of your questions and hexagrams in your notebook. If you have questions post them in the comments.
Next week we will be READING the oracle’s response and integrating through resonating with the text, and journaling.
I’ll be posting new segments of the quilt-along on Mondays. Subscribe to the RSS feed here: I Ching Modern Quilt-along.
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