Tag: Coherence

It has been a little over a year since I officially left my design business and went back to school, and what an experience it has been! Where 2020 broke me open, 2021 gave me the transformation I was hungry for. Now it is March 2022, and I truly feel like a different person.

When I first attended college, I was ill-prepared, immature, and very unwell mentally and emotionally. I didn’t care about much; I went to college because it was what you did after high school. After a couple years, I dropped out easily with no forethought and no plan. Returning to finish what I had started over twenty years prior, I really didn’t know what to expect. All I knew was that I would give it my all, and if after the first semester I was miserable, then I could always reevaluate.

Well, I must’ve been more ready than I knew, because I took to the school work at CIIS with a voracity and zeal that was thrilling. Suddenly I was thinking critically, challenging old preconceptions, expanding my capacity for knowledge, and redefining how I saw myself. CIIS makes room for every kind of learning style and encourages creative expression; I fit right in.

My senior capstone project was on Dreaming. Yet, because I still needed a handful of elective credits to graduate, while I had reached the end of CIIS’s Bachelor’s completion program, I was technically not complete. Currently, I’m earning those remaining credits through an online platform called Study.com. My student life at this moment looks and feels quite different than it did last year. One might say I’m in the final slog, the last leg, the darkness before the dawn. I am as committed as ever to finishing this degree, and forging ahead to the Master’s program, and towards my new career…committed, but also more easily distracted (I should be studying right now).

Lately, I’ve been making heart patches. Why? I have no idea! Sometimes this is how the creative process goes, no final vision or end product, just a deep longing to birth what is coming through. To be an artist is to be a vessel; the muse dictates the work. This reminds me of something Julia Cameron says in The Artist’s Way, and I’m paraphrasing here, ‘It is not my job to judge the work, only to do the work’. So yeah, heart patches. Many times, when I’ve altered a sweater, or cut the length off some jeans, I save the remnants. This has been going on for years, which means I’ve collected quite a basket full of fabric bits and bobs. Some years ago, I had an idea to just make some heart patches and give them away. But who has the time? Instead, I’ve plodded along in stages, just cutting the hearts, or a background, then putting them in a pile, in a box, away for another time. Cut to, I saw this post from Bertice Berry, sewing heart patches into jackets that she and her friend donate, and I felt newly inspired to return to my heart patches, too.

I’ve been watching a lot of astrology talks on YouTube, usually while cooking dinner. (For many years, I made a willful attempt to not know about astrology simply because of my name. Like, I can’t be named Libra and know about astrology, too. That’s too cheesy! But I’m over all that now.) Astrology has helped me learned more about archetypes, planetary cycles, and energetic patterns; and how these combined elements of archetypal energy exert influence on us personally, as well as collectively. My Youtube people are all saying that shit is changing rapidly. Of course, we don’t need to look to astrology for confirmation of this, obviously. But being a student of psychology, I find their insight fascinating. Apparently we are in the change years, 2020-2024, and we can continue to expect radical shifts. A lot of upheaval, a lot of change, yet the more we can connect to our hearts, the more we can align to the higher frequencies that are being birthed right now. (Here’s who I follow on Youtube).

We are witnessing a lot of pain in the world and the antidote to this lies with our heart. The heart is our home plate, our connector and grounder, our regulator. For my final paper in Neurobiology, I wrote about ADD and the power of sound healing and that’s when I discovered the science of Heartmath Institute. Heartmath has done extensive research on the power of the heart and coherence. We all have a biofield, which is the energetic field that surrounds every human, animal, and even our planet Earth. Our biofield is affected by our emotional, internal state. We can learn how to use our heart and our breath to shift from a chaotic state into a coherent, ordered state (the technique is similar to meditation, but also different). Heartmath’s research has substantiated the invisible stuff that us feeler types have always felt (and sometimes seen) but had no material proof. In the realm of science, everything must be backed up by studies and must be replicable and Heartmath has done that. They have bridged science and spirit, and shown us that raising our consciousness is tied into our heart connection. It is not woo-woo jargon, but part of energetic cause and effect.

The wisdom of the heart reminds us that we are all connected, and by cultivating that still point of peace within ourselves, we are also sending that out into our day, into our surroundings, and into the world. If we want to make this world better, we are going to have to start checking our judgements so we can move through the world with an attitude of equanimity.

The future is about We, not Me.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for now.

Keep creating, keep dreaming, and keep shining your light!

🌈  🌎  🌳
Beauty is a bridge that can put us squarely in the present moment and it can do it quite quickly, reminding us of our connection to Everything. Nature is the ultimate source of beauty. A winsome daisy weed grows through a crack in the sidewalk. A cool breeze against your neck. The smell of rain soaked grass. A stunning sunset, a hummingbird that pauses and looks right at you. This is not superficial, magazine glossiness I’m talking about. This is beauty as an experience, as a doorway to wonder, as a creative practice. 
-Libra