Overflowing heart

Next to the church graveyard in Tranebjerg is a little... 'lund' - I see the English word is "grove" but that implies that it is cultivated, which it isn't, it's a little mini-forest.

My favorite places in all the world are the Danish forests. I leave for the city tomorrow, so I went to commune with nature one last time, while it's still summer. All the seasons are beautiful in a forest, but summer, with its abundant, deep green life and birdsong is, I think, the best.

Cannot describe how wonderful it was. And when you have regained your connection with the transcendent, it can become a very reverent experience. At least that's how it was. I felt an immense amount of gratitude. And quiet, peaceful joy. And I feel ready to go back and tackle the difficult everyday at school and upcoming exams.

“Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?” - Dumbledore

- J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Found this

I went through a pile of old WIPs (Works In Progress, euphemism for started but never completed) of which I have many piles. This seemed so very apt, so I'm quilting and completing it.

Was going to return to Randers and Brutal Reality tomorrow, but have given myself an extra day here at home. REALLY do not feel like going back.

On the design board now

These hypnotic suggestions embed even better when you compound them visually!

Deeper and deeper 2 completed

Deeper and deeper 2

50 x 51 cm

The theme for this one is fractionation.

("Fractionation is based on the principle that when you take a person in and out of trance, they tend to go more deeply into trance when you take them back in. Thus when you have them open their eyes, you are breaking their state."

http://trancedout.com/blog/the-modified-dave-elman-induction-steps-and-explanation/ )

Text for "Du kan gøre"

Translation:

"Everything you try
how you live
a world in pain
a room without light,
Something should have told you, 
how much more, love loses 
when it fears loss

You can do what you like
but never betray those
who live in your soul
You can do what you like
but never betray those
you love


Even more intensely personal than the recent works, this is from a song, sung by Christian Brøns, and written about a friend who committed suicide. It's my formal promise to my daughters and my mom, that, though I tried 32 years ago, I won't ever do that again.

Problem - works are intensely personal

I have a problem with the works that have been pouring from me, since I saw Ines. They are intensely personal and private. They have words written on them, which I haven't done before, but that makes them very revealing of what is happening with me. And I am not ready to talk about what happened.

So I can "publish" them here, but not on my Facebook page. When will I feel comfortable about showing them? I don't know. Maybe everything just needs to settle within me first. I'll go back to finish my course and let them trickle out to the world, slowly. I will keep making what I can manage (there are still many I've conceived ideas for, already), but I don't plan to show them anywhere but here.

I'm just not comfortable talking about how I had a spiritual experience and feel back in touch with the world of spirit and that which is greater than ourselves. I didn't get "born again" or "saved", I didn't hear God speak to me. I didn't see or meet God. I'm not some incarnation of anybody, or have any special mission (beyond the one we all have, to be good, kind human beings).

What I did feel, was a sense of the presence of what I think of as my Spirit Guide, in my mind. I conceive her as a being of light, in human form. All white light, but a warm, muted white light, not the harsh kind of white light that blinds your eyes. I cannot see her face, but she radiates great patience, gentleness and love. She has soft hands and places her fingers very gently on my eyelids when I cry, to soothe them. She stands behind me and puts her hands on my shoulders to infuse me with her light. It has been incredibly healing and it feels like a sort of home-coming to reconnect with a world of what is greater than our physical senses perceive. She is enough proof to me that the spirit world is real. I didn't conjure her up. She popped into my mind, but she didn't come from inside myself. She came to me in a trance, listening to a self hypnosis recording, Ines has on her website. 

http://selfhypnosis.esdaileinstitute.com/self-hypnosis-module-3-2/advanced-self-hypnsosi-approaching-the-spiritual

I listen to those 2 recordings on this page almost every day. I spend some time listening, trying to sense what she has to tell me. She doesn't speak, but thoughts pop up in my head from her.

What has also made me know this is real, are the incredible synchronicities occurring everywhere, now. I was watching a YouTube video about someone who had a Near-Death Experience and suddenly he said something, which spoke so directly to what I am living right now, I said out loud "you're talking to me right now, aren't you?" I stopped the tape. Three words: Gratitude, Faith, Compassion.

Then there's the fact that, just yesterday, I was offered the opportunity to buy a complete, well-functioning clinic right here, once I finish my course. Space, equipment, health department provider number and client base. All I need to do is take bookings and start working. It's startling, very startling. But that is a story for another post.

So many other things just seem to happen and become apparent, because I am receptive, listening and watching, intuiting. Seeming co-incidences, but they're not. All quite mind-blowing and while I am still busy with integrating everything, I am not willing to talk openly about it to anyone around me.

So the work will be kept under wraps and released gradually, once I feel comfortable with my new (regained) world view.

Self-employed

Yesterday, I committed myself to buying a fully up-and-running podiatry clinic. Lock, stock and barrel, complete with provider number, which ensures a guaranteed client base, because I will get the (subsidised) doctors' referrals.

I can't write any more right now. It's too huge for me to talk about it yet.

Det er koldt herinde (It is cold inside)

This was left on my design wall last time I was here, not sewed together, so I had to complete it before I could start on the current spate of works.

Det er koldt herinde

It is cold in here

112 x 112cm

The text is a corruption of a Danish song "It is cold out there", about winter.

I have written:

"Det er koldt herinde

Kun med sagte sus fra vinden

melder Håbet sig i sprækkens træk."

As poetry it doesn't translate well, and since I have kept much of the structure of the original, it doesn't have the same impact in English, but it says

"It is cold in here

only with soft whistling of the wind

Hope appears in the crack's draught.

And it was started in December last year, in the Christmas holiday, when the depression began.

I've begun another blog.

Yes, I have. It's madness to have two to keep up! But I mean to make "I Art Therefore I Am" my own journal and keep it private. The other one will be public.

It's called "Our Golden Threads", subtitled "Artmaking as Spiritual Practice". I won't put the link here yet, as it's under construction and there are just drafts everywhere in the setup structure and pages. It's over on Wordpress. 

I've called it "Our" golden threads, as I'd love to have a bit of a community going there in the future, where we can inspire each other in Artmaking as a spiritual practice.

I'm madly inspired by Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth (who has a similar blog running; her work is very different to mine) and Robyn Gordon of Art Propelled.

My summer holiday will soon draw to a close. See my very, very sad face. Back to reality, back to no time to make art, back to getting down again because I have no time to make art, back to tons of material I have to get into my head, exams to pass and worse of all the practical in the clinic that I am so NOT good at. Why am I doing this to myself???? But just 9 months to go - then I'll have a baby!

UPDATE: I've moved it to Blogger and renamed it "Mended Cloth".

Journey

Well, the top is finished. Who knows when it will get quilted and completely finished..... :D

Journey

114 x 106cm

Journey, piecing detail

I started stitching when I began the journey to Portsmouth to see Ines. I stitched on the way home and finished the text shortly after I came home.

 Stitched on the way there:

Stitched on the way home:

Stitched just after coming home:

On the road between the hotel where I saw her and the train station, I found this. Feathers are always handy to imbue with all sorts of meaning!

Soul Fragments 1

This was just a "sketch" for a bigger one, I'm planning, but then I thought I may as well finish it.

It's about my soul retrieval.

Soul Fragments 1

20 x 30cm

What came back to me, was the core, my spirituality, from which the illumination radiates. Stitched with golden thread, from which the name of my other blog derives.

The colour Red

The colour Red

69 x 69cm

This is from the script of one of Ines' self-hypnosis audios. Specifically one that deals with spirituality. Near the end, there's a post-hypnotic suggestion that whenever you see the colour red, you will internalise the words (below). It embeds even better when you write it out and put it up...!

BP and spirituality

I googled the subject and found some good articles.

The best, is this one: 4 spiritual traps of bipolar disorder. 
In fact it's brilliant. It talks of the 4 traps and the antidote for each.

1. Grandiosity.  Antidote: Humility. 

2. Isolation.  Antidote: Community.

3. Urgency. Antidote: Trust.

4. Perfectionism.  Antidote: Compassion. 

And here are 2 more articles

Intuitive Empathy

The martial art of managing BP

And just so there's a picture in the post as well, here's the start of something I haven't yet thought through, just embroidered the words for: 

In a nutshell...

I had a transformative experience. Something has shifted within me. You know how you are the same person as the day before, yet have become much more? Nothing has changed but everything is different?

I am not sure I will be able to explain this to anyone. I suspect I will lose most, if not all, people along the way, as I start to speak about things outside people's paradigms. Or maybe I just think so because they were outside my own, and if I had heard someone say this before it happened to me, I would have thought they'd lost their mind.

I've been mining YouTube for hypnosis videos and audios. Doing self-hypnosis every day. Then I found this hypnotist, see............. 

She has developed a new technique for hypnotherapy, working in much deeper states of trance than is usual and I watched several of her videos. I cannot even describe what a powerful reaction I had. My mind blew wide open. I KNEW, with a wisdom far beyond my own, that this was IT.  Her name is Ines Simpson, her technique, Simpson Protocol.

I scoured her websites and saw she was on a teaching tour in Europe. I wrote to her asking if she would see me as a client. I don't know how I found the courage to do that (!), but I was driven by something beyond my puny little conscious mind. I cannot even describe how driven I felt; I was being led by something. Long story short (and it is long, but I'll expand later, just want to get this down) she said I could meet her in Portsmouth the following Monday morning 9.30. I booked flights and 2 days later I set off on the journey to England. In her hotel room, just before she left there, we had a session. It was long, over 2 hours, and I was dazed and exhausted afterwards.

What happened? I remember very little. For a good week after I was in a daze, feeling things shifting and processing in my head, beyond my understanding, but letting it happen. It felt very benign and I trusted it was right. I was prepared to be led. Day by day, my mind blew more and more.

Another long story short: she did soul retrieval. I had heard the term long ago and dismissed it as far too "out-there", but I did not need to do anything in the session but let it happen. And over the days after, I realized a piece of my soul had come back. A piece I lost some... 25 years? ago. The piece of me that held my spiritual connection.

For a long time, I've been yearning for that connection; for the ability to believe in something greater than myself. I had it once but I've not been able to let myself believe. I've found myself envying those with faith. Even if I suspected they were deluded, I envied the serenity and the meaning they had.

It was not what I went to Portsmouth to find, not at all. I was depressed, overwhelmed by negativity and looking for help for my spectacular lack of self-esteem. But what I thought I needed, was not what my higher mind knew I needed. I went to find some mental and emotional help, and what I got was my spirituality back. This was not anything led by Ines at all, she merely facilitates what the Higher Mind wants to work on. Though I didn't know it consciously, this foundation was what I needed.

So here I am now. It's a tender little seed, just planted, just starting to grow roots. I am gently and quietly nurturing it. My spirit is soaring. Art is pouring out of me, much faster than I can get all the ideas into physical form.

YES, it looks like a hypomania. And yes, it feels much the same as hypomania feels, in some respects. Spiritual revelations, insights, expansiveness, overflowing love, connection and gratitude. But just because it may bear resemblance to hypomania, does not mean it has to be hypomania. It's a spiritual re-awakening, which feels the same. The difference is in how grounded I feel. How the feelings are arising from a deeply restful place within me. My spirit soars, but it is bound to the earth by a golden thread, so it will not fly off to the sun and then crash and burn.

And I know the long, long hours of daylight in summer mean I sleep less than I should. I'm not doing it deliberately, my body clock is exquisitely attuned to the light outside, even if blocked by blackout curtains. So, less sleep also helps my spirit soar. But I KNOW this is not just a hypomania. Something has shifted inside me.

That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

So much to say...

So much has happened since last I wrote, I could write walls of text. How to condense it? This blog is not meant to be a journal of my every thought and feeling and every event in my life. It's about my art and how it is informed.

But when a dramatically altering event has happened and so much develops within, in a short space of time - and will inform most all of the art I am, and will be making, at least in the next while - it needs to be mentioned. I've thought and thought and written some, but there is no way to shorten all that happened. I will have to write it in "headings and subheadings" form.

And I'm sorry to do this, but I am going to publish this now. I hate cliffhangers myself, so will try hard to write more very soon. It's just that my mind is blown and I've needed, and still need, to let everything settle.