Finding clarity is not always easy. I have wanted to be more clear about what I offer people to help them advance with their creativity.

One of the most valuable tools in seeking the next step on the journey is imagination. My mom said I always had a wild imagination, and I’m grateful for the gift! 🙂

How do you use your imagination to gain clarity?

I like to meditate and sometimes I go on a journey with my imagination.  Night dreams are possible guide posts to what is going on in your life, and through the gateway of imagination, you can re-enter the dream and get some answers.

On a journey into the unknown (or known however you see it) it is always great to bring a protector in the form of an animal. You would think bear or tiger or wolf would be the ones showing up, but I got a hummingbird leading the way.

For some reason I had complete confidence that this little bird could protect me if necessary. I don’t know if you’ve seen hummingbirds in action, but they are tough little warriors.

I read somewhere that hummingbirds evolved from a raptor in the time of the dinosaurs, but I’m not sure I believe that. Anyway…

Traveling with hummingbird, I went back into my night dream. I had missed an appointment with a man in a brown hat. I was in a room with my Mom and there was a sink that leaked. A full bucket of water sat under the sink and I wondered why no one had emptied it.

There was more to the dream, and the feeling was that I had screwed up somehow. The man in the hat had awakened me from a deep sleep.

I realized through my dream that I need to wake up and honor my “appointments.” Don’t miss important meetings due to sleep (unconscious behavior.) The water bucket was full and stagnant, and it was up to me to empty it.

Why wasn’t the leak fixed? No one cared enough to fix it.

Those were the major insights from the dream.

I have been at a crossroads for a while and it’s time to “empty the bucket.” Something new has to open up or I’ll be stuck (asleep) forever.

Dreams can tell you a lot of things, and so can art.

Intuitive art is often far from pretty, but it often holds many insights, just like dreams. In a way, they are both the same.

Art = dream = imagination = creation.

To honor the hummingbird I painted this page, and a brown cow showed up as the gatekeeper to the unknown.

We have the power to create something new, something that is closer to the soul’s path.

I would have to say that spiritual experience is the closest to my heart, IS my heart. Art is something I DO, but it can have a deeper meaning, drawing me ever closer to Source.

There are so many variations of spiritual art, women’s empowerment, shamanistic art, religious art, but I don’t feel spirituality has to be labeled, and we don’t have to seek it through some path. We are already THERE.

The key is to recognize that fact and create that which makes us feel connected and feel GOOD in the moment.

Sometimes there are too many paths to follow. The mind says “do that, that artist is successful” or “try that style; it might be saleable.” “Follow the path of that shaman, they seem successful.”

The hardest part is to follow your own path. So much doubt and so many choices. They are all tricks by the mind.

Your heart is always true. Finding clarity in the heart is the purest form of clarity. However, when experiencing the heart there is no NEED to DO or make anything.

However, since we live in a 3D existence we have to move our bodies, so there might be a prompt, a glimpse of something intriguing to do that feels ignited with joy.  There is also a chance that everything will feel blah, but I call that a time of transition.

I made another art journal spread where a sheep (or goat) showed up standing on my neck and obscuring my head.

Sheep are stubborn. Reading the message of this intuitive page, I saw that my image of clarity was obscuring real clarity. I had built the dang sheep as an excuse to not move forward.

But look at the heart that showed up under the belly of the sheep! It was moving into a lighter sense. I had the words Follow Your Heart cut out from a template I had made for another project. I never threw out the words, and they fit perfectly.

I say that all the time “follow your heart.” Well, it takes a lot of courage to follow your heart. Sheep and other stubborn folk may show up to stir up confusion.

They are only images of fear of change. You can’t blame the messenger…

I am more committed to exploring my inner landscape and making art from that. That might be the end of “pretty” art but the goal is to be more open to the mystery and see what happens.

How does that sound to you? Are you ready to delve more deeply into the mystery of you?

I’m going to blog more about it and you can subscribe to my blog or my newsletter (see upper right hand corner of this page to access both.) I wrote a recent blog post about Intuitive art versus Structured art.  

Maybe it will inspire you.

Lots of love, have a great weekend!

Maria