Reminder Art

An art cure that I play with fairly frequently is capturing a bit of advice for myself, usually I do this in music, but it can be done in any medium. The challenge is to craft a piece which serves as a reminder of a specific attitude or approach to life.

The process of making the piece anchors the needed perspective. All the attention and time that goes into creating the work helps the message become more securely settled within. Reflecting back on the piece after the fact has the benefit that it refreshes this packet of information in awareness. 

My invitation for you, today: think about what you most want to remind yourself of at this time. What would you like to have more permanently installed in you? Then make an art piece that captures that message. It will help stitch this attitude and point of view more firmly to you, help you feel more as though you have chosen what your motto is on this matter.

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Here’s my example - a song addressing the issue of a common sub-personality many of us have, the Taskmaster, a fragment whose main emotional vibration is anxiety and stress. This part, a time bully, causes the rest of me to feel imprisoned and under duress.

Taskmaster is obsessed with prediction and control, and wants to know exactly what's going to happen, when and where. Her main motivation is to get out ahead of something so she can reduce the risk of unwanted circumstances in my life.

I do have compassion for her, as I understand she is quite desperate and fearful. She is one of the "distorted protector" parts within, who takes her job of keeping me safe very seriously and takes things a bit far if I let her take the wheel.  

Now that I am grown up, I do not want to have my life lived through the filter of her point of view, for many reasons, not only because it is a painful way to live but also because I believe that her approach to success in life is actually wrong.

She believes survival is all about prediction and control, whereas I have learned a different truth to be fitting for me. So I crafted this Reminder Song for myself, to remember what other parts I can be. 

You can be wondering where this goes. You can be the wandering aimless flow. You can be the wondering how this turns out. You can be the wandering and what it plays out. 

You can be the knowing that it doesn't need to go anywhere. You can be the knowing that you don't you need to know. 

Shining waters moving wide, are you contacting me? Are you letting me know how rivers flow to the sea? 

Little fragment like a splinter of mind, I think I know what you're after. You little fragment like a splinter of mine, I guess I know what you're after. 

You could be the knowing that it doesn't need to go anywhere. You could be the knowing that we don't need to know. 

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Thumbnail image reverently appropriated from Ruth Heller's Animals Born Alive and Well.