Spoon Chrysanthemum
I’ve become relatively inactive in Beliefnet this past few months, absorbed in the other aspects of my life, but I’d like to start the New Year with a report on my personal progress on working toward the “miracle question” and its way of envisioning change.
I’m probably a 7 on the progress in my inner life (where 1 is as far as I ever was from my personal miracle, and 10 is I am there every day). Progress this past year is largely due to taking another Focusing training and finding a Focusing partner, with whom I’m starting to explore, and hopefully to release, a part of myself that has been hidden since early childhood. This is the “little boy” side, the side with much of my creativity and joy, who 20 years ago I imagined to be contained in a titanium capsule six inches thick, but who now is a very real, if still timid, presense in my life.
On the counseling business side, I’m probably also a 7. I have finished up working at the community mental health clinic I’d been working at for 3 1/2 years and am now fully in private practice in Danvers, MA. Until September, the financial side of this was going surprisingly well — I was getting perhaps a call a week from various sources, and most of them resulted in clients coming to work with me — but this has dropped off since the financial crash, and I need to figure out ways to generate more referrals. I’m working on it.
On the art-making and art-marketing side, I’m probably a 6. I’m still working on finding a market for the flower mandalas (and am happy to hear suggestions / make connections through this forum), but I haven’t created any new mandala work in a long time, nor have I made a lot of headway in finding someone to represent me. I’m continuing work on my Independence Park project (a study of the sea, the sky, and time) and am beginning to broaden the concept in ways I find myself thinking about when I’m doing other things — always a good sign. And I’m starting to appreciate my growing skills as a photographer. I feel that a move to a new level is afoot, though where that will take me I don’t know.
On the spiritual side, I have found a group of people and a teacher who, as I’ve written earlier here, is combining his study of the major world’s religions into a practice that draws on several traditions in an integrated way. It seems well-adapted to our times and the migration of practices from west to east and east to west. I’m not 100% sure this is the way I want to go, so I’m also planning to reconnect with the Thich Nhat Hanh sanga of which I was briefly a member several years ago. Here, too, moving to a new level is afoot.
On the personal plain, where I’ve been about a 3 most of the past year, I’m now about a 7.5 and moving up the scale rather quickly, having found a partner quite different from prior partners. I feel seen and connected in a new way, and I find I’m also able to process, both within myself and with her, old baggage, and I’m starting to let it go. In part, this process is due to who each of us is, but it is also helped by my work as a counselor. I seem consistently to be taking insights from my personal work into my practice and vice-versa, so that each enriches the other.
Overall, I’d say I’m a 7, and on the threshhold of a major move up, as the various threads of myself and my life that I’ve been working on integrating since my near-death experience seem, finally, to be coming together. As Tom Petty said in “Learning to Fly,” the future is wide open….
More anon,
- David
Discussion:
Art, Healing, and Transformation group
Flower Mandalas Project group
Cultivating Creativity group
Request the 15 Flower Mandalas screensaver: Fifteen Flower Mandalas
© 2009, David J. Bookbinder
posted January 9, 2009 at 1:28 am
I love the beauty of the flowers.. a constant reminder of the gift of nature. We are so blessed, if only we remember this more often.
posted January 9, 2009 at 11:37 am
david,
your flowers are lovely, very nice to hear your prospective in numbers on how you are doing.
i too am an artist doing mandalas alot, they are enchanting, rewarding, and healing. Have no marketing ideas for you, only encouragement for you to keep doing your art.
It is what will keep you sane and grounded in creativity and beauty.
your words ring close to my progress as well.
jan
posted January 10, 2009 at 11:22 am
David,
I am new to this amazing site,Beliefnet,having been drawn to it after seeing your flower images out in the world. What I find interesting about your flower mandalas (and to some extent with most mandala imagery) is how they are simple images with symmetrical and repetitive shapes and yet, on the other hand, they are so compelling to look at. I don’t feel that I will ever get tired of looking at them. This year,I hope to begin collecting some of them – purchasing one or two at a time. So at least I am a market, however small, for your work.
There are many topics in this blog that I find pertinent to my life but, I am particularly interested in yours and others search for a spiritual home. I was wondering why you didn’t feel at home in the Unitarian Church which professes to embrace all beliefs? What is your mentor doing differently that seems to be more meaninful to you?
I wish to share a little of my own story:
In high school I was drawn to a group of people who shared an interest in eastern religions and in psychic phenomenon. For many years, and more recently on rare occasions, we have met during the Equinox and Solstice. Those occasions are celebrations that include ritual, meditation, chanting and offerings. Some of us now have teenage children, a few of which attended a recent celebration.
My own feeling about these occasions has changed markedly over the years. In the beginning we were a tight knit group and there was an element of secrecy about our meetings. (Perhaps some would see this as a cult and the question of what differentiates a cult from a religion is something I have often contemplated.) Once I entered the working world ,and especially after I had children, the secrecy began to bother me. In the early days I also felt the need to adopt or justify the opinions and prejudices of people I considered to be teachers. I was afraid to question the validity of their opinions because I felt that I would also have to question the foundations of our beliefs. Once I did that I felt that I would be left with nothing.
Eventually I did reject some of what I now consider to be others biases and along with that I did start to questions some of our common beliefs. I would say that, as a middle aged adult, I am less certain of what I know than when I was in my twenties. On the hand, I am more comfortable with uncertainty and at the same more certain that life is an amazing mystery that should be celebrated with what ever rituals and symbols are meaningful to each of us as individuals.
I also am looking for a group of people that I can connect with spiritually. This time I would like it to be a group that does not meet in secrete but is open to all who are interested.
Pria
posted February 16, 2009 at 10:48 am
Lovely post.