Popping out for a meal I spotted a dandelion by our front door, inspired I picked it and blew the seeds and made a wish. A childish tradition that I don’t know if it translates to other countries but I liked this lightness about me. I read an amazing story on Facebook recently about and 83 year old lady becoming a mature student and a quote she made during here graduation made my heart skip “Remember, we don’t stop playing because we grow old. We grow old because we stop playing” I feel carefree and playful and believe the source is my writing and blogging.
I like being a fruit loop as I was just described as. I was car dancing as one of my favourite tracks came on the radio! sorry Van dancing as we can’t trust our car to get us to our destination and my partner looked at me, shook his head and said “you are a fruit loop”. I think I am perfectly normal but people often make comments that indicate they feel I am not of the normal vernacular and having the nickname ‘Spooks’ has never bothered me. I’m just dancing to my own drum !!
I had a brilliant car dance earlier whilst enjoying the miracle of the Universe in the colours in the trees etc. I love travelling but I also love living here. I love the seasons. Right now we are having some gorgeous balmy Autumn days and evenings. I love the atmosphere of a September evening or morning. The mist in the air. The quality in the sun light. The colour of the turning leaves. I love the structure of bare trees in winter and the promise of the miracle of spring and the knowing that buds will appear and the miracle of new life emerging again. Blossom is one of my favourite things and who couldn’t love summer for all it’s vibrancy.
In 1999 I was fishing for an idea for the finals of my Art degree. A previously non spiritual kind of person (spirituality was not to be mentioned in front of my Methodist mother, it was banned and I remember one conversation with my sister, it was about a spiritual experience we had both had and recall how we discussed it in very hushed whispers like it was some blasphemous taboo) however I couldn’t escape the fact that I was interest as we were coming up to the millennium and people were discussing ‘New Age Philosophy’ but I found it interesting that these so-called ‘New Age thingy’s’ were not new age at all but thousands of years old in some cases and I knew I wanted to base my finals about it. I started to play around with some ideas then a sequence of events happened and my finals were a done deal.
Knowing what I know now I can see the synchronicity of events at play but back then I just thought ‘Wow that’s Spooky!’ I was playing around with these ideas but must have put out there a subconscious request for help or asked a question because during a tutorial we are informed of a lecture by an artist at my local college ( I was studying out of town).
A week prior to the lecture I had uncharacteristically caught a cold and had been holed up at home. The day of the lecture was actually my birthday and fed up of being stuck in doors and as it was my birthday I thought I will go to the lecture. Oh my !! The artist Anthony Frost (son of Sir Terry Frost) was the most inspiring, funny, energetic human being I had ever come into contact with. I’d never met someone who was, it seemed so in love with life as he enthused about what most people would see or not even see as the case maybe as mundane nondescript items. He emanated an energy so strong it filled the room and I felt super-charged by it.
As I walked home it was a very grey day and it was a route I hadn’t walked since leaving that college and a previously condemned bridge was now replaced with a beautiful new blue bridge that stood out of vibrantly on the grey day and as I was about to cross it a bright yellow van whooshed past and instantly an abstract image appeared in my mind. As I walked down the other side of the bridge I spotted one solitary beautiful loan poppy in the middle of a patch of wasteland and another abstract image appeared in my mind’s eye. When I got home to my surprise I was presented with a gorgeous bouquet of flowers which in themselves were a joy but unusually when I unwrapped them to place them in a vase they had another bunch of flowers hidden inside. The secondary bunch was a small posy of Lilly of the valley. For no apparent reason I inhaled the scent and I was instantaneously taken back to a memory of being a small girl sitting in a favourite spot in the sun hidden away in the corner of the garden where every year a Lilly of the Valley grow in a drain. I had completely forgotten this joyous memory but it was if I was transported there again and I could feel every detail, then another abstract image was born.
From that moment on I knew I was going to produce these three abstract imagines. I could actually see them finished hanging on a gallery wall. I was quite passionate about my images despite being encouraged by well-meaning tutors to try this and try that. To me they were already finished and I was not changing from the originals. I felt so strongly I didn’t even care if they failed me for defying them. They had to be done and they had to painted ‘MY’ way. The other day I read “You should never love anything that can’t love you back ” but I truly loved these canvasses and physically missed them when I had to leave them in the studio and get on the train home. I was never more in spirit than when I painted these canvasses. It did develop slightly because the theory behind them were that we are all rushing around with more and more hectic lives, focusing on all the negative events and becoming more and more stressed (the social decease) and my aim was to remind people to notice the small miracles in life and that the hope would be these events would escalate into more appreciation of life and more positive experiences. This was before I knew anything about the Law of Attraction or quantum physics however I did have a quantum physics moment during 1999 that struck a chord that never left me despite me not knowing then what it was – An artist , a previous student was invited to give a talk and explained that his work was inspired by reading a book that said everything is energy, tables, chair, us were not actually solid but moving molecules of energy vibrating and different frequencies. Everyone else thought he was a ‘Fruit Loop’ but inherently I knew what he said was true. I have an album at home and there was a track on it I loved and one Sunday morning whilst it was playing during the time of producing my babies it struck me. Record this song over and over again and put a tape machine (it was 1999) on a pedestal, put a statement about looking for the joy in the daily routine on the pedestal then suggest the viewer place headphones on whilst looking at my three equally proportioned, equally spaced pieces of art and it so inspired me I was sure that I would pursue this ideal after college and call my art, business etc “Ali P Positive Art”.
Truth be told Ali P got quite a few knocks backs and was never the most forth coming confident person and took the knock backs very crushingly. Again not knowing how we attract stuff to us by our thinking or attitude to experiences I wasn’t experienced enough to know how to overcome these events so ‘Ali P Positive Art’ has never really taken off. Maybe my timing wasn’t right?
I never knew anything about self-help books until another change sequence of events happened and I was handed a book “Feel the Fear and do it anyway”. That book changed my life, from coming from a family actively discouraged from taking risks so as to avoid disappointment I was willing to embrace the fear. I’d already been defiant by going to college as a mature student despite wanting to go previously in my teens but I was faced with a choice of a certain surgery or exams that I required to make entry and ‘I’ chose the surgery because at the time could not see myself make any way forward in life without it and had always planned to go back later.
From ‘Feel the Fear’ I quickly became aware of other authors via more sequences of events. My favourite at the time being Louise Hay and I can quite honestly say Louise helped me pass my driving test first time despite having a muscle injury in my leg by laying on the bed the night before and visualizing going through all the manoeuvres in my head perfectly. Despite loving these books and devouring them one after another (habit that has only increased with eBooks) I went through sequences of joy and pain joy and pain as each book made me believe I was really going to make it this time however shortly after nothing had changed and normal life was resumed sometimes more depressingly than I thought I could bare and one such time was in 2010 but what was one of my lowest times turned into truly my most joyous times and has also totally changed my life for the better. Various things had been unpleasant but the most was to lose a very dear friend, who at only 33 with a young son and passed away before life support was being switched off and robbing me of an opportunity to say goodbye. Life just seemed to cruel and unfair to cope with any-more. I was also being bullied at work with no support and on the Saturday morning, the day after her passing I sat alone on my sofa rocking backwards and forwards angrier than I had ever been before and praying to a God I don’t (didn’t) believe in. I gave him (it) !! An ultimatum. “You better show me a sign to tell me its all worth while or I want out too!!” when a voice inside of me said “buy The Secret” and then a peace came over me. Pure Peace. All anger had drained out of me and I felt totally relaxed, I even felt forgiveness for my bullier and pity, wondering what made them have to do this to people? What hurt had they suffered?
Now The Secret had come in my awareness several months earlier but I hadn’t purchased the book. It started with seeing an article in a tabloid Sunday paper by a TV actress saying her dream had come true because of post it notes. I didn’t read the article but when it came to throwing the paper away for recycling ‘something’ told me to pull out the article. I slipped it in-between the pages of a book for safe keeping and forgot about it. Several weeks later I came across it again read the article and looked up the book on a famous website. At the time I had no finances to buy it so put it on my wish list, promising myself I would buy it on pay-day but forgot again and again (probably subconsciously on purpose, timing and all that) but now I lifted myself off the pity pit and logged on, logged in and bought two copies. Even though in those days pre-eBooks I had to wait until the following Thursday for delivery I knew this book had something to with changing my life and I was energized.
On arrival, I read it and read it and read. Faster than any book I had ever read. Read stories on the website and bought an audio CD series for my car but something was different from my previous books. I don’t know if it was the book it’s self or a change in me because since reading it I now knew I was reading about the Law of Attraction, Quantum Physics in many of my previous books but I never got it in then and the other thing that hit me that I hadn’t realized before was ‘Me’ what my biggest failing was. I’d read the book, think wow, finish it put it down and never actually put into practice or adopted the methods explained or advised. I just went back to normal life. This time I was made aware that I was responsible for it all, and it was my thinking that was going to dictate if I was going to have a good day or a bad day or more importantly a bad life or a blinking amazing one and the one most important thing I learnt from this experience was that I had to make this a conscious effort on my part to work on controlling my thoughts and therefore my life experiences on a daily basis for ever. Not just put the book down. This time I had to take action.
Now I might not being doing all the things I had set out to do … Yet !! I know there is still a lot more room for growth, ingrained thinking to shift but that doesn’t bother me. What I know now is my life experiences are far better now than they have every been. I Am a far happier person than I have ever been, hardly ever stressed and when I find myself turning away from my source I can now recognize my anxiety and adopt methods to get me back on track. I Remind myself I Am never alone and I Am in fact God myself so what have I got to fear anyway.
And as if by acknowledgement of my appreciation in the perfection of it ALL a formation of Geese fly towards, besides then over us on ‘My’ journey.
