Julia and I met during our days in the Art Department at Humboldt State University, we ended up hitting it off and at one point even lived together! We have been connected ever since and have shared creative, wild, and fun times. Lately, I have been so inspired by her writing and her daily writing practice. I asked her to share her inspiration and how she got to where she is today within her art forms. She is an amazing photographer, creatress, cook, dancer, poet, teacher, among many other things! I wanted to know how writing has shifted her life, how it plays into her many art forms! It is such a joy to read her daily musings through her instagram posts. I will link her instagram handle and website at the end of the article for you.
Grab a cup of tea and enjoy…
To live in a world that prioritizes progress & development, it takes our own doing to carve out space to indulge in our own essence. As well as an appropriate belief structure that supports our worthiness to simply be in a state of beingness . Most of us have been born into a culture that is designed to make us believe we have to get somewhere, to become & achieve something. There is an agenda in this engineering that distracts us from the essential purgative of all living things, that is to occupy one’s place in the web of life, the order of being.
There are so many forms of temptation to lure us out of our connection to self. I have learned in my life, it takes a constant nurturing to stay presently connected with my experience. I have tended to yoga, as my oldest practice in staying connected, and it has been the backbone of my spiritual practice for the past 7 years. Yoga was a door that opened me up to a whole new way of being with myself, a path that continuously leads me out of anguish, trauma & judgment. It gave movement to the calcified pain bodies that I had accumulated along the journey to now.
Yoga guided me into dance as a form of spiritual & artistic practice, which is my most cherished way to commune with & explore the depths of my being. Art is both an expression of presence & an offering back to creation. Dance is my celebration of deep gratitude for this beloved body, in this precious life. The same inquisitive longing that has inspired my movement journeying has called me to the ritual of morning writing.
Each day is a new ceremony & when we treat it as such, by revealing to spirit our willingness to acknowledge our life as a scared gift. The mystery acknowledges us.
I first came to my writing practice from the work of Julia Margaret Cameron, in The Artist Way. I attempted to do her work in entirety but “failed” after the second week. But I did adopt her morning pages exercise as a tool for anchoring & awakening daily creativity.
Creativity to me is so much more than the act of making art, it is the act of thinking, speaking, cooking, loving, forgiving, understanding & being artfully.
To me great art is honest.
My writing practice shows me everyday where I am at.
I have come in & out of journaling over the course of my life, but over the past year I really chosen to devote myself each morning.
If, for some reason, in the morning I don’t create a big enough window to sit down & write, I try to fit it in at a later point in my day. But the morning is the sweet spot. This practice has become both a way for me to take inventory & express my needs to spirit.
My typical flow begins with describing personal history, I.E. “Yesterday I ran into so & so, it made me feel ______, I forgot to pay my insurance, I will do it first thing after breakfast…. Etc. Then somewhere after the first page or so I begin to uncover a deeper layer of happenings. Feelings of sadness, or excitement of a potential outcome that elude to a more soul oriented experience.
I then use prayer to call upon support & clear my field in both a physical & psychological sense.
“Higher Self, I ask for all the help I can get to stay on task & focused on completing ..____XYZ”
“I break contact agreement or vow to host any belief that perpetuates self-criticism”
“Higher Self, please help me to get out of my own way & devote all of my energy on being of the highest & clearest, through the expression of my gifts & abilities, please help me to be compensated generously for that expression”
After doing the prayer work I feel an immediate expansion in both my perception, energy & the remainder of my journaling feels more like transmission from source. I can feel into the most appropriate language by feeling into the words as a poetic embodiment, but each day is different, & that’s the beauty of it.
I feel, any daily practice is a ritual. It’s a platform that we come to & allow our own wisdom to reach us. By creating a habit of respectfully showing up for ourselves, more of our power comes to coalesce. Paying reverence through a practice is indication of our spiritual maturity, not in achievement but in our level of honoring. To gain greater traction on our path of interconnection with life, we start by respecting our resource of time. Giving structure to our faith & waiting without demand for spirit to reach us there.
Sitting down with a cup of bulletproof coffee, & journaling has become my favorite part of my day. This wasn’t always the case, it took patience & diligence to sit down and make it to that 3rd page. But like all things we tend to, it gets easier & more fruitful with time. What I love about having a “practice” is that there is no end point, & how we come to and away from it is just as important & informative as doing it.
There is a deeper layer of subtle energy we learn to feel when we spend time with a practice, greater pixels of our experience are made visible. Writing for me allows for a development of sensitivity as well as an anchor to hold down, & create structure for my wild non-linear mystical feminine nature. I also practice yoga everyday to further support a more effective use of direction in my creative flow. The older I get & the more time I devote to my practices the more I see where I can surrender. To get out of the ideas I have for myself, my life & how I think things ought to look & simply allow myself to embody & express the truth of what is.
I am wild about writing! & it only continues to open me up more deeply to myself as well as to opportunities & ways of connecting & collaborating with others. I wake each day and can know one thing that is for certain,
I MUST WRITE!
If I were to impart any piece of truth I have discovered for myself it is this, follow your curiosity. Show up for what excites you, consistently. For we are attracted to certain practices for a reason, methods of uncovering & retrieving our personal magic ☺
XOXOX,
J U L I A M U S E