Today's Awakening: The Gift

When we shine the light onto a shadow, a gift is revealed....this is duality...this is the blessing. This is grace.

DATE: Saturday, May 19
Time: 4 pm - 6 pm
Venue: CCAH R2 Gallery, Round Room, Suite 9 at the 3rd Street Center 
More information: Sue Drinker 945-4321 

The TCE project, conceived and executed by George Stranahan of the Flying Dog Studio, Sheri Gaynor of the Creative Spark Studio, Sue Drinker of Drinker Durrance Graphics and Karen Lanier,  continues to strive toward giving young artists the opportunity, the equipment and the software to explore and develop skills photographically, technically and aesthetically.

The artists involved with this project have been using their digital cameras for the past 3 months to express their own rendering of this year’s project title, the Good, the Bad and the Beautiful.

The 2012 Child’s Eye curriculum was developed around the proposition that we live in our various worlds… of community, of friends, of family and of self. Each of those circles are a dynamic interweaving of good, bad and beautiful things, people and places. Without judgment, but with creativity and honesty, the participants were asked to share the experience of those dynamics of every day life.

Venue Directions...
Third Street Center, CCAH R2 Gallery (room #9), located at 520 South Third Street in Carbondale, CO 81623

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Photo credit: http://contentinacottage.blogspot.com/2009_09_13_archive.html

“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake
is to be continually thrown out of the nest.”

― Pema Chödrön

Today's Awakening got me thinking about the muscle and courage it takes to be
FULLY alive, FULLY human and COMPLETELY awake. 

For me to stay alive, human and awake is like committing to an exercise program

It takes flexibility and muscle...

Am I up to the task? 

Someday's yes...someday's no

The trick is that I don't get to beat on myself if on one day...
I'm just not up to the task

Now...if I string a week of not up to the tasks together then I"ve got a problem
and I've got to be willing to take a look in the mirror and ask...

"So, what's up?"  

It is when I can answer that question with honesty and self-compassion 
that I can generally find the answer 

No shame, no blame just...

SIMPLE AWARENESS

For me, awareness is the first step on the journey to my creative awakening....

What does it take for you to be FULLY ALIVE?

FOOTNOTE: After completeing this writing, I went to take Blue for his morning walk. On the sidewalk was half of a tiny blue eggshell...TRUE STORY! 

It has been a long journey through the darkness of grief and into light of Spring. Like Persephone, I can feel myself rising from these last 11 months of processing my mother's loss, stronger, awake, more alive and sure of my path than ever before. I have traveled many miles this past year and although it was filled with sorrow and it's eventual release, I am grateful to have walked every step I have taken. 

As I leave to begin my EPONA training, I am leaving you with an article I wrote in November 2008. This is the 3rd time horses have come into my life as a possibility to healing and heart. As I look back on and integrate this deep understanding,  I am stunned to see where I am now and know that the time is NOW. I know this is the WAY. 3rd times a charm..."The belief that the third time something is attempted is more likely to succeed than the previous two attempts. It is also used as a good luck charm - spoken just before trying something for the third time..." 

Enjoy this article, there will be more as we move into revealing the new and exciting programs we have for you as part of Creative Awakenings. We are getting ready to launch a new interactive site and the Creative Awakenings Facilitator Training is going to be announced in June. If you are interested in becoming a Licensed Creative Awakening Facilitator, please fill out the form at the bottom of this page, and be sure you are on our private invitation list. 

My heart to all of you for your love and support, as I traveled the distance to arrive in this very sacred place...Embracing My Heartsong and Shining MY Light!

Sheri age 5...It was always there waiting....

Happy Trails,

Sheri

For digital work or licensing contact Sheri

Illumination-Bella
by Sheri Gaynor
November 9, 2008 

As we inch toward 2009 and what appears to be new opportunities and hope for all, I notice an intention surfacing. Each year I try to create an overall intention for the year as well as the monthly intentions I set on a smaller scale. This year's theme...COLLABORATION!

As a solo-entrepreneur, it can get pretty isolating working alone every day. No one to brainstorm with, no one else to set intentions with and no one else to dream with. I can feel all that changing since the book. The book was a huge effort in collaboration. With 11 other generous artist's giving of their time and experience, I was shown what is possible even with geographical challenges.

Saturday I had an opportunity to experience a very profound morning with some amazing women up at a local horse ranch. We have been kicking around the idea of bringing our gifts together to offer some cool and unique offerings for transformation and I was able to to experience what it would be like first hand.

Sheri on horseback circa 1963

One of my first loves was horses. That is so for many women. The relationship between horse and young girl can be a very powerful and healing experience. I know it was for me. I sat on my first horse at age three. FEARLESS....and gals...it is the only thing in life that has ever been that way for me. It has been almost a lifetime since I have spent any regular time with these phenomenally intuitive creatures and on Saturday, I was reminded of the power they have to transform often hidden issues. Before we began I used a deck of horse cards that one of the women brought with her to create an intention for myself. This was new to them, but familiar and important to my own process. I was grateful that Julie had the foresight to bring a deck I was unfamiliar with! I pulled Rasa Dance and Illumination.

In the photo collage I created, you see Bella, a wild mustang living her life on this beautiful ranch. Bella came toward me, without my being aware,  after we walked by her, on the way to another pasture. I was already feeling flooded with emotion following an encounter with Trigger-the Yellow Horse of Illumination-so I was not completely present to my surroundings as we walked.

The women I was with invited me to turn around and see who was trailing along and then told me a bit about her story. Bella and I spent almost 30 minutes together (with her friend Jesse one of the leaders daughter) nuzzling and "talking" to one another. At one point Bella reached for my jacket and with her teeth, lovingly nipped my heart. I almost heard her say to me, "Come back wild thing, we have missed you." That was no accident ladies...I can tell you that! 

They asked me if there was anything I could see in my imagination. I shared with them that I had an image of jumping up on her bareback and riding her through unfenced tundra, both of our manes flying freely behind me. I shared that I believed that Bella came to remind me of my shadow side. The wild nature and spirit that lives inside me, that in many ways in the daily grind feels tamed and domesticated. That wild nature used to act out and rage against herself, because I did not know the gifts my shadow nature carried, but I learned along the way that I could in fact be a wild spirit without self-harm. Sometimes I forget my wild child is there and that she needs daily doses of freedom and creativity...to stay healthy. I believe Bella and Trigger-the yellow horse of Illumination-came to remind me of this on Saturday.

After returning home, I reached for the medicine card book. I wanted to learn more about the symbolic meaning of the Horse, after coming to my own understanding of why Bella chose to communicate with me. I read these words,"...Over the rise of the hill Dreamwalker, a medicine man, saw a herd of wild mustangs running toward him. Black Stallion approached him and asked if he was seeking an answer on his journey. Black Stallion said, "I am the Void where the Answer lives. Ride my back and know the power of entering the darkness and finding the Light." "Dreamwalker thanked Black Stallion and agreed to visit him when his medicine was needed in the Dreamtime." 

I do not remember reading about Horse before and I am going to share something with you...Are you sitting down...I am grateful that I was when I read it... DreamTime is a part of the process included in the book...that is currently in production and went to press last month! And in that amazing paragraph and my own personal experience with Bella, is everything I believe about the collective unconscious, the power of intention and what we can tap into when we are awake and present. I am so excited about what is to come in this new collaboration. The unfolding of it is almost more then I could have hoped for. Thank you Julie, Mel, Jesse, Trigger and dear Bella...Happy