Life is not always an easy road, but it can be quite exciting when you put your mind to it. These days, the energies at work around me are positive, upbeat, invigorating. Back in a good place, I am trying to understand why things are changing so drastically sometimes.

But then, I think, what’s the point, let’s just move forward. It’s life’s teachings being processed.

I have shaken off my lethargy. I am back “on the wire”. Creating, thinking, meditating, communicating. This is good. Started a new series of paintings back in November and did not realize it would be so long and difficult but am working on it at the same time as four other projects.

I have been working on reconnecting with my inner self and I believe it is paying off. Us women must commit to rediscover ourselves later on in life, when the children are grown and the demands of everyday life lessen. For most of us, the years between 25 and 55 are so full of obligations and things that MUST be done that there is no time left for ourselves. I feel that I am only beginning to see this and am actually doing something about it. Us women grow up trying to please the world and this is an impossible task.

I have finally decided to stop trying to accomplish this. I am breathing a sigh of relief thinking that it’s OK not to be perfect, it’s OK if I displease someone. I, more than anything, want to be myself with no apologies.

I see it all around me, people that blame their dissatisfaction on everything, from careers or lack thereof, relationships, families, the weather, anything but themselves. This feeling of discontent should be the catalyst to look at our life, to stop and think: Why am I feeling like this at this moment? And do something about it now, take one step to change something you know isn’t right, do one thing to improve your life.

Reconnecting with our inner-self, with our deeper nature, with our soul and feeling like we are actually living exactly according to this inner nature is one key to happiness. This confidence may need to be reaffirmed every morning, the path redrawn, but it is worth it.

Surrender to who you are. Choose to respect yourself, your thoughts, your life, as you would your dearest friend. If we live according to our inner-self even if you don’t have all the answers, we will still experience a sense of peace.

It is up to me which direction my life is taking. Each minute decision influences the next one. I have to make choices and be the master of my own destiny.

Constant transformation and the reinvention that makes up life are what makes it exciting. If we look at it more globally, we see that every time we suffer a loss, and experience anxiety because we are facing change, this is an opportunity to grow and discover something new, to take another step towards learning something new, get out of our comfort zone until the new state becomes another comfort zone. Then, life throws something else unexpected at you, another opportunity for growth and discovery. We must not see this as a negative event but as a growth opportunity, a chance to learn, to expand our consciousness.

Let’s not let events and outside people destroy what we have built, the road we have traveled. We got to the point that we are today because life is a giant classroom where everything and everyone can teach us something. We get too caught up with the nitty gritty turning of the wheel, the mechanism and the time spent on survival, to take good notice of what is going on around us. We should take some time each day to reflect on what we have learned during that day. Reflect on what was good and what was less good but take courage when things are not the way we want them to be. Take courage and look at everything from the outsider’s perspective, the observer. Detach yourself from your situation and see it with someone else’s eyes. Drop your personal filter. Observe as you would observe someone else’s struggle, without all the emotional involvement and attachment to the situation and circumstances.

Let’s be gentle with ourselves, be patient and kind, loving. After all, if not us then, who? We should be out biggest fan. What would happen if we loved ourselves, if we treated ourselves the way we would treat someone we really care about, if we totally accepted and forgave ourselves for our mistakes and weaknesses? This is a difficult one. We all grow up with someone else’s expectations and we anticipate from ourselves to meet these expectations even if we know deep  down that they are sometime impossible to meet, and even if often, we would not even want to meet them because we don’t even agree with them. Yet our internal voice keeps hounding us and demands that we obey unless we feel guilt and anxiety. This should not be. We must work to silence the voices from the past that command us to live according to someone else’s standards, to live someone else’s life when you think of it. How much of our standards, our thinking, our demands are our own? How much comes from our parents, friends, siblings, mentors? How much of our time is spent fulfilling someone else’s vision of what our life should be?

Different people, different goals, different ways to look at life. We have to try to be true to ourselves and let go of expectations. Expectations towards life, expectations towards people, expectations towards circumstances. We cannot assume to know what will happen next. We cannot assume to control anything but ourselves. Live each minute with anticipation and openness. Open yourself to receive teachings from our fellow human beings, but also from what surrounds us, nature, animals, plant life. Teachings are all around us. We have to be in a receptive frame of mind in order to receive them and feel this permanent transformation that is going on  a cellular level each second that goes by.

It is up to us to enjoy this transformation, be aware and energized by it, to learn from it and create from this awareness.

An unknown author once said: Dare to fling out into the great cosmic mind greater assurance about yourself. Dare to have greater confidence. Dare to believe in yourself and in your mission.  Have a grander ideal, a nobler aspiration.

This is what we should all base our behavior on. You must have faith in what you are trying to do, in what you are trying to get or to accomplish. You must have faith in what you are trying to create. Nothing or nobody can rob you of success but yourself.

Dare to love and appreciate yourself. Dare to believe in your abilities. You can learn anything. You can do anything you set your mind to.

Be happy today in the knowledge that you are alive and that each day can be miraculous. Be open to new possibilities. Be open to life and to people around you.

Dare to believe in life!

I have been researching how I can influence the first thought of my day with the idea that if you wake up and your first thought is joyous, then the rest f the day is off to a good start and should have a joyous background that can probably be maintained throughout the day.

Looking into this, after asking many people what their first thought of the day was, I heard a lot of simplistic things like I am hungry or I have to pee, but this does not depict the first mood of the day. This only speaks of the body. Although, I found that in general, people are not starting their day with a very positive thought, unless they are on vacations. As a matter of fact, a lot of us wake up thinking “Oh no! Not another day at work, I’m still tired and want to sleep”, basically equaling: “I’m pissed off I have to get up, I’m resentful I have to work”, things along those lines.

It has happened sometimes that I have awaken exited and wanting to get up and accomplish something right away. I am trying to figure out what is the key element between these two states. Why are some days starting off better than others?

Sunshine is a big influence in our moods and how we feel about waking up. After a few sunny days, life just seems better and more exciting. But it is not all. I am convinced that our last thought before going to sleep and our adventures of the night, dreams and nightmares, are influencing our general mood when we wake up, our first thought and our day.

Have you ever had a wonderful dream, full of love and tenderness? You then wake up feeling great, or you come back to reality and are disappointed. But at any rate, you did experience it and you know it exists somewhere, and at some level, it fills you with hope.  What about a terrible nightmare that sends your heart racing and really scares you, giving you a glimpse of hell? In our mind, these experiences are real. They are night adventures which are sometimes difficult to leave behind and should not be left behind altogether. I find dreams are great teachers sometimes.

One of the ways to influence the first thought is to control the last thought. To reflect, as you go to sleep, on the people and things in your life that you are grateful for, no matter how small and far between, gives you hope. This becomes a building block on which you can start to construct the life you want. The only way, or at least the best way to effect change in your life is to find yourself in a positive hopeful mood, so it is of the utmost importance to be able to influence this first thought and, if we find ourselves waking up in a negative mood, have a strategy in place to turn this around as quickly as possible.

To go to sleep with thankful thoughts will influence your first thought in a positive way.

Think less about the people, things and events that bother you. Replace these thoughts with people, things and events that make you feel happy. Sounds simple enough but not that easy to do some might say. Yet, we have to make it a habit to think about our successes and relaxing things instead of moping and ruminating unhappy thoughts. When we feel overwhelmed with negativity, we have to reach down inside and pull out what makes us happy. Reach deep down, make the effort. It is worth it. There are positive things in your life.

Although we cannot ignore what bothers us completely, since it might be a problem that needs straightening out, once you’ve given it your full attention for a period of time and have brainstormed solutions, let it go and relax a bit. Life goes on. Try to picture yourself down the road from your problem, next month, next year, in ten years. Will this be as important then?

We must keep things into perspective and try to do our best.

If you are stuck with negative thoughts, break the pattern by going out for a walk trying to think of nothing, and observe nature around you. It does not cost anything and you will see beauty and how ordered everything is in the universe. It has a very calming effect. Try to focus on your breathing and feel the fusion of your body and mind. Feel yourself walking and being part of the universe around you. See that you are part of a whole and that everything is as it should. Everything has a purpose.
Give yourself the permission to not think about your problem for an hour or two. You can get back at it later and may be surprised that this break woke up your creativity and you found a solution or a new direction you had not thought about before.

Finally, I feel like I am slowly but surely getting back on track. My energy is almost back to normal, things are better organized in my head  and I feel my creativity coming back with a vengeance !! Great ! Got up at 6 this morning and it is the best !!

I have been reading “A return to love” again by Marianne Williamson and I find it very inspiring like the 1^st time I read it. There are a lot of annoyances in our lives and things we cannot control or predict but she really brings home the fact that you need to surrender at one point, relax and let God take care of you. It seems difficult to make such a statement, especially after not going to Church and after the way we were thought to pray and respect “Le petit catéchisme” growing up, which was full of falsehoods really and exaggerations, but it does feel good to think that there is an order of things in nature and that there is also an order of things in things we don’t see or comprehend.

It is true, and especially as a biologist, it is clear that our thoughts and feelings are probably originating in our brain and can be explained scientifically through neurones, nerve endings, connections and electricity (activity) etc. There is a physical cause to everything that is going on in our bodies and in our brains, whether physical or mental but, we should ask ourselves why it is set up this way, why your particular brain and body are made the way they are, why you think the way you do.

You have to be in a special mood to open to what she has to say. You have to be in the right place but this vision of the world and indeed of our lives, as individuals and as a community, is full of love and peace. Isn’t it what we are all looking for really? I know I am. When it comes to love, peace and happiness, all the visions basically, whether we talk about The Tao, Buddhism, God (not the religion version of it) are about living in the present and looking at the world with eyes not clouded by the past, and not fearful of the future. Like some masters have said: There is only the present and we should start each and every day with a clean slate. Not too easy to do sometimes but if we manage to trust in the future and surrender control, peace washes over us and it is possible to live in the “here and now” and see what surrounds us with new eyes. 

The past exist only in our heads really and is valuable for having brought us to the present moment. We have to let go of it and forget about the future. Since our life is the result of our perceptions and reactions to events touching us, it becomes our choice to regain Ourselves and let go of the negativity and toxicity that sometimes surrounds us. If is difficult, then we must work at it. It is important not only for ourselves as individuals but also in order to contribute properly to the world around us, being our family, friends and community, to bring this loving aspect, to improve the world.  

When we feel lost, when our mind is spinning out of control, we need to give ourselves permission to just stop, even for only 15 minutes and empty the mind. Through meditation, it is possible to get a glimpse of ourselves even for an instant. It is that realisation that gives hope , when we can find this little corner of peace, that place inside where everything is calm, that place that is always there but is at times buried under all the worries and anxieties.  Give yourself the permission to stop for 15 minutes a day and observe your thoughts as thought they were not yours. Realize that, in fact, a lot of them are not yours at all. They have entered your mind through someone else. Sometimes thoughts are accepted without even thinking about it, examples of this are prejudices and dualistic thinking. Meditation helps to bring your Self to the center of your life. It is a refreshing pause in your day. If you can just clear your mind and open it like an empty vase, open it to all new ideas and inspirations, you will change your life. What inspires you? Where does the light come from? Is it God, the Great universe?

One thing is certain. There is an order of things in what we see, nature and such, and there is an order of things in what we don’t see but understand, like the laws of physics or gravity. There is also an order of things in what we don’t see or understand yet. Our happiness depends on respecting this order of things. Humans are now destroying nature since they decided at one point that they were to rule and control everything around them instead of respecting and protecting it. Destruction of forests and habitats, exploitation of tar sands, and pollution from cruise ships are a few examples. We already feel the consequences of these events.

This physical destruction, consequence of the lack of respect for the rules of nature, for the greed of man, should be a lesson that we must value and respect our inner self and energy, our light, if we don’t want to destroy ourselves. We must respect this light and keep it alive. Our happiness and indeed, our life depends on it .

I just came off a large project in which I felt engaged body and soul for over a year. Finally some time to think and create something else. Finally, here is the time to skip and jump and let my imagination take over.

It is difficult nevertheless, once the commitment to complete a project is no longer there, to recuperate the wealth of ideas that entered my mind during that time. When you are blessed with a fertile imagination or an affluence of ideas and you are limited in their expression either by convention or because you are fulfilling a contract or because of lack time, the release of all these ideas can be quite mind boggling. Several opportunities and routes suddenly open up and choosing between all these alternatives can be quite paralyzing and cause much anxiety.

I find myself in such a period right now. Although I am so so happy to be free to starts a multitude of new projects, I am not sure which one to pick, which one to concentrate on. The easiest way out is to not paint and use the lack of time as the perfect excuse.

Instead I choose to meditate and try to choose instinctively, intuitively between options and especially, to keep on painting and writing everyday.  I am trying, as best I can, not to let other people influence my artistic journey. I like to work on several projects at the same time which permits me to work on what I feel like doing every day and lets my mind resolve problems without overload. The challenge is to complete projects. I think a lot of artists are in this predicament.

After having this large project occupy my mind, literally squatting in my mind for over a year, I feel very excited at the freedom to create right now. As I tried, over the past several months to complete small projects as a distraction from the famous mural, my mind kept on wrestling subconsciously with ideas and dilemmas, with artistic questions, with technical problems. Now that I have some time to find answers or to experiment on paper, I find myself frustrated with the lack of time and the lack of energy that I am experiencing, by the choices that must be made, by the limits that are imposed on me.

So many ideas and concepts that want to explode on canvas. At the same time, fear of failure must be conquered. Since all these ideas and concepts seem quite perfect in my mind, it is a real challenge to put it to canvas and see it come together. The process, while being very exciting is also anxiety ridden.  We must fight this anxiety every day if we want to continue on our journey and see at least a portion of what we imagine become reality.

The idea of dualistic thinking, that there is a good and evil way to be, that people and things should be categorized according to certain standards meets the idea of toxicity and purety of thoughts.  Dualistic thinking is the way most people think and act, it is the “us vs. them” syndrome. It brings to some the internal comfort to know that they are part of the inner circle. They then feel reassured that their thoughts are the correct ones and feel vindicated that they are right and others are wrong.

Dualistic thinking is a toxic way of thinking because it does not take into account the fact that there are two sides to each of us whether we like it or not and that we cannot deny one over the other completely. It does not take into account the fact that between these two sides there is an enormous range of grays and that some thoughts or beliefs can be changed instantly according to the perspective of the moment. How can we become more aware of the way we use our mind and be conscious of when dualistic thinking takes over and we are in a mode of not seeing anything realistic, all the while thinking we see the truth?

Dualistic thinking spells judgment; judgment that we are better than the other, that we know better. Yet, once you decide to suspend judgment and really look at what is around us, we see that everything is the way it should be, and that life is unfolding one moment , one minute at the time. We see that the flow of it is perfect and that we don’t need to interfere. There is no reason to judge or assume anything. It is when we doubt, when we want to control everything that things fall apart.

Prejudging people and events is a very toxic way of thinking because it does not allow you to see the truth. I really like Wayne Dyer’s analogy when he says: ”Prejudging thinking is treating your mind like a rental space for the thoughts and beliefs of others”. What a way to put it! It really brings it home that we don’t want to let other people control our thinking. We should be the masters of our domain like they say. So why is it so easy to let others take over our mind this way? Society sometimes put us in situations where we feel we need to be “part of the gang”. Usually, when we grow up, this dualistic way of thinking is stronger, especially in the teen years where you must feel like you are part of the group, whether the popular ones, the intellectuals, or the smart ones, etc. It is again the “Us vs. them” attitude, pushed to the extreme when bullying enters the picture. But as adults, why is there still some lingering feeling that you must act this way? Why does the bullying take on a different form but is still present?

I have observed a group of people demonstrating that dualistic way of thinking very clearly for the past few months. Their outlook is dualistic and judgmental… toxic. In their minds, there is a clear right and a clear wrong, a good and evil. I am looking at all of this with surprise and sadness. Not only is this way of thinking using a lot of energy that could be used to create and work, but this way of thinking does not lead to deep living either. All that energy used to protect, consolidate and condemn is no longer available to observe, to live, to enjoy, to love and to give.

This way of thinking only separates people, making them feel like they belong to different camps when each individual should only try to do their best without being judged. Dualistic thinking results in groups that try to eliminate and banish everyone and everything they deem is not acceptable or part of their vision. This expands into societies that are intolerant towards the weak, the sick, the unproductive, and the simply different. And this also creates self hatred when one recognizes a trait associated with the other group within themselves, as they will, inevitably.

How much time and energy are being utilized towards this end, attacking others, trying to protect a virtual territory. When we put energy into fighting, trying to feel like we are better than others, it is ourselves that we destroy. What pushes some people to act this way? Is it insecurity, is it unhappiness, is it greed?

When dualistic thinking has become your habitual way of thinking and you become aware of it, it is not too late to change. It is never too late to re-assess our way of thinking and listen to our inner voice. What we need to do is shut down the external noise and listen to this inner voice. Let it guide you and be aware of the fact that you are not your thoughts. You can change them according to your own inner truth.

I read and kept on reading yesterday on decision making, What makes for a good decision, one that one will not regret? What makes a real decision, one we will commit to?  Two things really are important about decisions: long term vision and action. A real decision triggers an action that brings someone closer to the goal. For example: If you want to lose weight or stop smoking, a real decision means that you will not take that cupcake, that you will not have that one puff that would bring you back down the path you don’t want to go.  A commitment from body and soul is what makes a real decision.

I now have some decisions to make or I should say, I forgot my last decisions and am now going down a path I don’t want to be on. Adjustment: it is easy enough when we realize we deviate from our target. We can very well get back on track. What is sometimes difficult is to figure out what path to take to get to our goal when we are faced with two options. It is also difficult sometimes to ensure a decision is good or bad until you see the results.

And it is also important to remember is that it is OK to make mistakes and we must be open enough to learn from them in all humility. Mistakes are the way life has to teach us. We are not born with all the skills necessary to succeed in all spheres. It is often by making mistakes that you go forward. Not acting ensures you won’t make a mistake but isn’t it the greatest mistake after all? When you commit or promise yourself to look at long-term results rather than short-term gratification, you have made one of the most important decision of your life. Not making that decision will ensure that everyday ups and downs will get to you and you’ll feel you are forever dissatisfied with yourself and your life.

Make the decision to commit to yourself. Create a vision of yourself in your future that is not dependant on other people but that translates your own values and qualities and then think of ways to transform this into action.

Remember: Life’s delays are not Life’s denials. Sometimes, the path seems sinuous and long but, along the way, experiences add up that make you who you are and who you will become. If you believe in your dream, you must take action to carry yourself towards it even if it seems impossible in the short term. Nothing is impossible unless you decide it is impossible.

It is possible to make each moment, each minute in our lives a work of art. It is possible to take the time to just be without any artifice, without trying to influence anything. It is possible to live to the best of our ability without scheming or trying to influence anyone or any situation. I feel this detachment right now about things, others, projects. Not detached meaning I don’t care, but detached meaning I care enough to let it happen. Detached, as in curious about the unfolding of events, excited about the wonder of it.

Let life happen, follow your instincts and be. If you live with mindfulness and are trying to be aware of yourself as a part of the universe, if you are capable to be in touch with yourself and just be, it is the source of much happiness and calm and creativity. Feeling free from what surrounds you, you can observe the world and yourself as part of it, without judgment and decide what is good for you as a person, as a part of a family, of a circle of friends, of a society, of the world. Just be and let others be.