You are an artist

How would you describe yourself if someone asked you?  Would you say you are a computer person,  a retailer, a banker, an accountant, a teacher, a reporter?  Would you describe your job in an effort to say something about yourself?  But, what if these financial times drive you to work at a Wal-mart?  Would that be you?

The single one description of you, beyond anything else that you think you are, is an artist. In fact you are a powerful and magical, creative artist, far more creative and powerful than you realize or admit. Whether you like it or not, you are the artist of your life. When you look around your life - your job, your home, your clothes, your health, your family, your friends - you can see your art displayed before you, on the canvas of your life. 

So many of us have assembled some kind of a routine for our lives.  We went to college, figured out what we could do with our talents and what we wanted to do (maybe some through default or some through real focused creative intention) and then pursued jobs that best reflected those talents and went to work.  We may have put that train on the track years and years ago and have continued to ride it throughout our lives, only occasionally wondering if it's the right train for us, or if it's going where we still want to go.  

I think that we need to change tracks as often as we grow and evolve into a clearer expression of our true selves.  When we're 21, fresh out of college, we are just beginning to take hold of ourselves and direct ourselves in life. Some of us then had only a dim understanding of our awesome potential as creators, and even less awareness of the staggering power we have in our own ability to create an external world that reflects our inner soul realm.  

Many of us focus so hard on conforming to the outer world's standards - a habit picked up in high school as we try to fit in with the peer group - that we don't stop or dare to get off the train running nowhere.   We're even afraid to stop and do nothing for awhile - especially if you're an eastern American with a strong work ethic, who self defines based on usefulness, a sadly utilitarian view of life.  

I suspect most of us are fairly useless and rather than fool ourselves into thinking that what we're doing "out there" is of any big significance, we might want to take a moment, an early retirement, a break in the action to meet our inner artist and reach for authentic lives which more clearly reflect our joy.

As an artist, you are not necessarily a fine artist, or a musician, or writer, dancer, poet, filmmaker  You are a creator and you are the creator of your life.  If you want to see what kind of creator you are - conscious, intentional, or unconscious or ambivalent - look around your life.  Look at the condition of your home, your belongings, your clothes, your furniture, the art (or lack of) on your walls, your gardens, your car, your office and most of all - your relationships.  

Look around you.  That is your art.  How you express yourself outwardly, into the world, is your creation, a reflection of you.

Do you take responsibility for your life?  Or, do you blame its lack on someone else, something else, or life in general?  Do you say, because you don't have a job, "this unemployment is due to the economic downturn in the country?"  Or, rather, do you say, "this is a blessed time off the out-of-control train, to really redefine my life's direction?" 

While you may or may not be working right now, you can be evaluating how your outer world expresses your inner world.  Often, when we're evolving from one level of awareness to another, our outer world changes first into a state of chaos before coming together as a gorgeous masterpiece.  

Also, when we're young, we're typically unaware of our power.  We are on auto pilot and don't realize that we have so much power to make our lives the way we want them.  We just have to give ourselves permission to be who we want to be and reach for that power, often through prayer and meditation, to give birth to it.  And, as the midwives of our lives, we are both creator and deliverer as well as the art itself.  

We also have the right to change our minds, over and over and over again, until we get things the way we like them - like Monet painting a water lily,  and then another and then another - until he has  filled all the galleries in France with a hundred paintings of water lilies. The differences in the water liles may be imperceptible to us, but to the artist, the differences are significant.  Maybe we're all water lilies and how the great artist paints us - all different, yet all the same - is significant on levels we don't comprehend, yet.

Your love is in your art, on your canvas, everywhere in your life.  If you are depressed, that dark cloud blocks the light in every part of your life.  If you are happy, the sun dances off the dashboard of your life.  When you realize you are an artist, you will take care to stay alert and aware of your feelings, listen to them, talk to them, give them voice and guide your life canvas to reflect what YOU want it to express - not necessarily what anyone else in your life wants it to express.  

You are responsible for your art - no one else is.  You are responsible for who you are, the revelation of your true self, your authentic inner artist who is revealed in your art, which is your life. We are each responsible for our lives and have to be careful not to tell someone else how to paint their lives or let someone else tell us how to paint ours.  Therein lies the whole definition of "boundaries." 

Sin (if there is such a thing) is trespassing on someone else's boundaries.  When you see how important it is that you create the work of art (that is you) in the time given you by our creator, you see how important it is not to let someone tell you how to paint your life for you, or for you to tell someone else how to paint their life.  It is your assignment by God and you, and only you, can create it.  You can paint people in or out of your canvas.  But, you must be the original artist.

If you were an actual artist, would you let someone throw a can of black paint on your canvas?  No.  When you let someone control you, manipulate you, boss you around, devalue you, that's what you're doing.  When you love yourself, love your art, see your beautiful masterpiece before you, even as you are making changes to it, you protect it at the same time. When you are aware of this, you will not let someone take your paintbrush away from you. However, it would be beautiful to post your canvases side by side and paint together. Perhaps we can share painting styles, but never take the paintbrush from another. That would kill the originality of the other's art and steals something life-giving from them.

We are free creators and I think "God" may have intended for us to be that way, since S/he is that way.  

Last night, I was talking to a friend about my job search.  He said that I'd better figure out how to tell a potential employer how I lost all those jobs. I was surprised and reacted to him a bit.  How could he not realize that I didn't "lose" a single job I wanted.  I chose to move on because I was clearly aware that my life was a fast train to authenticity and I wasn't going to stay on the wrong track for a single minute.  In the early years, I moved quickly from one boring job to another until I realized who I was. Then, I began to be more intentional. Today, I have a clearer idea of who I am and what work I want to do.   

I think, if a potential employer ever asked me to explain "how I lost all those jobs,"  I would say that I am an artist.  Those jobs are just discarded canvases.  They reflected who I was for a time, but not who I am for all time.  Maybe the only thing that would say who I am for all time, is that I am an artist who paints the world in shades of love and compassion, always reaching for the higher brighter shades of our common life experience.  It's an ongoing portrait of life and how intentional I am, or you are, the better your skill is developed to make the art that best reflects who you are, or choose to be. 

When you realize this, when the thought finally awakens in your head and heart, nothing is the same again.  Your innate autonomy kicks in and no one gets to take away your paint brush or tell you what colors your world is to be painted in.  You are the artist.  It's up to you how autonomous you want to be, how powerful you want to be, how important your life canvas is to you.  You start by creating the artist and then you create your life.

Love yourself, honor where you are today, this minute, and give yourself the time and personal space and appreciation to make the next thought, the next word, the next action a conscious kind of tai chi.  Let every movement of your body, every thought in your mind, all be a choice made out of love for yourself and all of creation.  Out of that love, you will paint the most beautiful work of art - You.