The Six Word Autobiography

I was reminded today of the six word autobiography by one of my favorite astrologers, Donna Cunningham. Here's what she posted last week on the AARP "REALLY short stories" website:

My whole life: steep learning curve

You can read more about Donna's recovery from the dysfunction of her childhood in the "My Memoirs" section on her blog SkyWriter, which is devoted to astrology, healing, and writing.

Summarizing your life in six words is a great creative exercise. Our attention is drawn to what really matters. Who are you? What have you learned? What might you inscribe on your urn or your tombstone for your great-grandchildren to read?

I can't find the autobiography I wrote when I first heard of this technique on National Public Radio. (It's likely buried somewhere in my journals.) So I wrote a new one today that feels like Truth:

Once past the fear, unending discovery!

Assignment: Take a moment today to capture your life journey in six words. Ask your friends and family to write theirs too. Notice the feelings that arise. And heal.

How to Talk to A Tree

One of my favorite astrologers, Lynn Hayes, posted this great link last week. It has instructions printed on Beliefnet several years ago about how to communicate with a tree. What a wonderful little ritual!

How to Talk to a Tree

I laugh thinking what my Sensing-Thinking extended family would say about this. (Note to self: Blog about Jung's typology soon!) But it speaks deeply to me.

In fact, I'm headed out right now, to add a moment with the trees in our backyard before I walk our labyrinth.

Assignment: Make space in your life today to connect with a tree.

More experiential exercises

For those who can't find The Mountain Astrologer, or don't have an extra $ 7 to spend to get that article I recommended, I offer this handout I've used with my clients for years.

Exercises from Art Therapy

Gather your materials and put on some gentle instrumental music. Take some cleansing breaths. Relax. Meditate or pray if you wish. Try to rest your judging, verbal mind and see what the experience brings to you.

1. Draw a Bridge

Fold a piece of paper into three sections. Connect two ideas with a bridge in the middle section. (Perhaps, something you want to change, bridging into that changed life, or your past bridging into your future, etc.)

2. Road Drawing

Meditate on roads, signs, detours, crossroads. Then draw a road that reflects where you’re been and where you’re headed.

3. Landscape

Draw a landscape that reflects your life right now. Is it garden, desert, ocean—what?

4. Draw a Dream

With broken crayons (so you don’t feel you must be perfect), quickly draw a scene from your dream. Sketch dream images into your journal.

5. Collage

Cut articles and pictures that interest you from newspapers and magazines. With a glue stick or spray (that may allow easy repositioning), cover a notebook or folder. (You can use the notebook to hold your memories or journaling from this period in your life. Keep a collection of items that catch your eye if you like this exercise and want to do it again. Consider collecting rocks or sticks or things from nature too! You can assemble collections, or make garden art—you can do anything you wish.)

6. Mandala (or Circle Drawing)

Draw a large circle on your paper. Then, without thinking about it, quickly select five colors from a pile of crayons to represent these five spheres of your life (Emotional, Spiritual, Intellectual, Physical, and Social). Fill the circle in any way you like with these five colors.

This last technique is the one art therapist Beth Kean taught me. I use it regularly to "take my temperature," as the great therapist Virginia Satir used to say.

Most often, after completing the mandala, I find that the parts I drew with the color I chose for "physical" is the least developed--and I remember once again to give more time to exercise. At other times, I recognize that I am out of balance in meeting my social needs. I file the mandala in my journal, sometimes with and sometimes without comment. Looking back, as with dreams, I often see more.

Assignment: Choose a technique and see what happens for you.

Experiential Astrology:Bringing It Alive!

Run, do not walk, to your local bookstore to pick up the October/November 2009 of The Mountain Astrologer. And if it's not there--it has disappeared from the shelves of my home town--order it! These folks will get it to you immediately. For those of us who art, this month's article Experiential Astrology: Bringing It Alive! alone is worth the price.

Written by Barbara Schermer and first published in TMA in June 1994, the article begins with this wonderful quote:

When I can't find words to express what I mean, I get up and dance to it.

-- Zorba the Greek (Nikos Kazantzakis)

Barbara then provides detailed instructions for multiple ways to explore our charts, and thereby, ourselves. She describes the supplies needed and how to go about using them. The techniques she suggests include:

(1) Using an imageboard to display pictures and symbols which express the energies of each of the ten planets in our charts.

(2) Creating a personal mandala by capturing the images which arise as you meditate on your chart.

(3) Making a planetary mask by using plaster gauze from a medical supply store.

(4) Creating a healing image of aspects in the birth chart or current transits which may be presenting difficulty.

(5) Moving physically in ways which express the energies of the planets in your chart, exploring music and your personal dance.

Years ago, art therapist Beth Kean introduced me to the use of the mandala much as Barbara Schermer describes it here, and I use it regularly as an intuitive tool to keep balance in my life. I'll write more about that soon. What enchanted me about this article was its innovative connection to astrology, the inclusion of music and dance, and the clarity offered to those who may be new to these tools for self-understanding and healing. Enjoy!

Right Brain treasure with a Left Brain guard

Perhaps you've heard something about neuroscientist Jill Bolte Taylor, who was uniquely qualified to understand what was happening to her as she suffered a severe stroke. Jill had a dual interest in the brain, one professional, the second personal: her brother is diagnosed with schizophrenia. Jill had long been active in her advocacy for understanding those will brain disorders, and she found it ironic that she used a videotape of herself speaking for the National Association for the Mentally Ill (NAMI) in her eight-year recovery from her stroke. By watching this tape of herself over and over, Jill taught herself how to be herself again, how to speak, how to gesture, beginning with the blank slate of a newborn. She detailed the experience, and the spiritual discernment it brought to her, in her book My Stroke of Insight.

On those days I struggle to creative freely, fearlessly--indeed, on those days I struggle to create at all--I remember Jill Bolte Taylor and what she taught me. I long for some pathway directly into the right side of my brain.

But the left side of my brain stands guard.

I like to imagine that I hear in my own head the conversation between Left Brain and Right Brain, as Jill described it so eloquently. Because Right Brain speaks in images and symbol, and has no language, no grammar or words, I stretch the truth and give her a voice that is barely a breath.

Left Brain says: You don't have time to be creative today. There's work to be done. Things need doing. We've gotta go.

Right Brain, a wisp of fairy dust, a Tinkerbell firefly barely perceived, whispers: Oh, please, come, open ...come with me . . . There are secrets waiting to be revealed, there are parts of you ...

And Left Brain interrupts, with studied authority: Responsibility calls. There's no time today to go into that fog. Important tasks need attention here. We've gotta go.

This dialogue is Saturn squelching Neptune's call. The truth is, they are both right, we need them both. It's tempting to say they are like the little angel and devil in those old cartoons, perched atop my shoulders, whispering in my ears. But they're not. They both serve.

Jung valued both the conscious and the unconscious as necessary to the functioning of the psyche. Again, we have the tension of the opposites, the need to find some balance, some path we can follow which honors both. And, as Jill Bolte Taylor shows us, we must value the very structure of our physical brain and what it offers us. One side holds the memories, the images, the ability to merge with All, and the other is watchful, protective, always planning, always alert and analyzing the data brought in by our sensing organs.

I have discovered that in my case, the Left Brain works overtime insisting on proper Time Management, and this is as deadly to my arting as the Critic we all recognize so well.

Bless her heart, she's only trying to do her job.

Assignment: Spend 18 minutes with Jill Bolte Taylor as she shares her experience. You'll never think of the two sides of your brain in the same way again. You can find it here.

Embracing the Paradox

We are pathologizing what is most human within us. If I hear another friend at a party tell me he or she is bipolar, I think I shall scream and run out of the room, tearing my clothes in two.

(Please note that I am not writing here of the very serious mood disorder we once called Manic Depression, which does affect many people profoundly. I will set aside discussing the history of the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, which grows thicker and broader in each new addition. I will not write of Big Pharmaceutical and its manipulation of our culture. That is food for another day.)

Today we explore a central concept in Jungian thought: the tension of the opposites. Carl Jung saw that the Self--the archetype of the Whole, our most true and integrated Self--is a union of the Conscious and the Unconscious. In those rare mystical experiences that may come only once in a lifetime, we may glimpse this union briefly. The ego stands as the center of our conscious life, but our unconscious remains exactly what it is: unconscious, unknown to us.

We can describe this as the Rational opposed to the Irrational. There is a tension here which cannot be resolved, a tension we all have experienced in the push and pull of our inner worlds. Jung described the psyche as having many parts--archetypes and complexes, memories and images--some which we accept and celebrate, and some which we deny. The disowned, primitive part of us he called the Shadow, which some describe as "that which I do not wish to be."

When the Shadow is denied, we are at risk of acting out. Recognizing and working with the Shadow is the heart of Twelve Step practice, which Jung assisted in birthing.

We live in a culture which celebrates control and power and the rational. Our national ego admits no wrongdoing. On this planet fundamentalist religions are expanding. Mystics are mistrusted: direct contact with God must be mediated by a cleric or a book, must meet certain rules, must conform.

Jung wrote that this is exactly what happened in Germany in the Thirties. Nationalism--egotism on a grand scale--led to the eruption of an entire people's Shadow, and millions died.

He believed that a swing too far into one side of the polarity will result in a compensating shift into the other. So too may we erupt unskillfully in our personal lives.

We humans have within us many energies. In our dreams, in our art, we can explore the tensions of the polarities within us. In expression and acceptance, we allow a flow between them. We embrace the paradox.

Sharing Ourselves

Early this summer, my husband and I were invited to dinner with friends from our church to get better acquainted.

I took gifts: a bottle of wine for the hostess, and a tile magnet for the others, a business professor and his accountant wife by vocation, chefs by avocation. They art by leading us in "Feasting with the Saints" several times a year. We become their kitchen staff, as they create sumptuous gourmet meals which celebrate the traditions of a particular saint, according to the season. The little tile spoke of wit and warmth, birthed by a good meal in community.

I was surprised to find a fifth guest. But I had brought along a poem to amuse my husband on the drive. It was the first poem I had written in at least two years. Laughing, I presented it.

And this lady pleased me much as she gathered her things at the end of the evening, making certain we located her gift so she could be sure to take it home.

Here's the poem I gave her that night. Synchronicity! Our intention was to get better acquainted, and only hours before, I had remembered:

It’s hot, and they say red alert don’t breathe the air today—

But the katydids sing like they always did

in the trees at Eagle Mountain Lake

When I was a child who thought myself grown—

An old pickup truck, with a bed chock full of long teen legs and arms and hair—

bouncing down an ill paved country road toward Dido’s marina,

where motor boats buzzed like moths around the fishy pier—

And you smelled the water and the sweat

That sweet sweat smell and katydid song

And the glistening lake called us to wet our sandy suits again—

Summer in North Texas—

Sublime.

When we share our art, we share ourselves deeply.

Assignment: Share yourself--write a poem before you sleep tonight, and again when you rise. Share yourself with you.

Making Space and Time for Art

I was channel surfing one day a few years ago and landed on Nancy Zieman's Sewing with Nancy. And she gave me a jewel.

She said that it is possible to be creative, even when you have no time. The trick is in being prepared. I recall: "If you have a few minutes, fill a bobbin. When you have a few more, cut out one piece of the pattern. In time, you will make a garment."

The other day, in his public radio newsletter The Writer's Almanac, Garrison Keillor remembered a novelist who completed his book in the 15 minutes he waited each evening for his wife to come down to dinner.

Such achievements are possible only when we are organized enough to seize those precious openings.

If instead we must search for our materials, or clear the cluttered kitchen table to make room for the glue gun, or dig in our briefcase for the notecard that holds that glorious beginning of a poem, or risk life and limb in that overstuffed closet to drag out the electronic piano . . . we're not likely to do it. It's just too much. There's not enough time.

We must prepare; we must make space in our lives for art. We must say to ourselves: creating is important and deserves an honorable place in my home.

If the house is small and shared with others, this space may be a simple laundry basket, big enough to hold paints, or fabric, or notebooks, or music sheets--a simple laundry basket good to go at a moment's notice. Collapse your easel beside the door nearest the best light. Make your guitar part of your decor.

If the kids are grown and off to college, don't let that spare room become a shrine, unless it's a shine to creativity. Give birth again to something new. Invest in your soul. Make room for re-creation!

That's what I did all day Monday. I took the day off from the office to reclaim our home from too many weekends away arting. I cleaned. I organized. I thought as I worked: this too is art. This is Hestia energy, she who tends to the hearth. This too, however mundane, is making beauty.

Jung and the Zodiac

People often ask, "Do you really believe in astrology?" You might just as well ask if I believe in psychology, or archeology, or biology, or any other body of study.

Now, ask me if I "believe" in archetypes. Yes, as much as I believe in air and water and earth. We can see across all cultures on this planet certain images and symbols that express energies we have experienced ourselves, if we are introspective enough to have noticed.

All human beings know the Mother, the Lover, the Warrior, the Mystic, the Demon, and more. We resonate to the Hero's Journey. The difference between a great book or film and a merely amusing one lies in its evocation of deep archetypal meaning.

Jung saw that the zodiac is in fact our projection of inner archetypes into the sky. In an earlier age, the night was dark, darker than we in the West can now imagine, and yet brilliantly lit by millions of stars. People looked up, and just as we play games with clouds overhead, they pointed to the shapes they saw. One identified an Archer, another the Scorpion, another the Lion. As the stars appeared to move around the earth in its seasons, meaning attached. Over time, those who studied the stars codified their understandings and taught.

What is the zodiac? One way astrologers think of it is as an imaginary ring or band large enough to encompass our solar system. This band is marked off in twelve segments, one for each astrological sign, from Aries through Pisces, turning counterclockwise. We say a planet is "in" a certain sign when our gaze looking up at that planet would continue on past the planet, to that sign's segment in the imaginary band, turning out in space. Another way is to imagine that the zodiac is a transparent band or ring that surrounds the earth, and as we look up, we look through the sign's segment above us to see the planet "in" the sign.

Astrological influence is not about the actual planet's gravitational pull on our bodies. I have no doubt there is an effect--how else can natal charts ring so true?As yet, we can't prove it. But there is still much science can't prove; for example, we cannot yet describe the Unified Field, which will marry quantum physics with Einstein's. (If the Scientist is an major archetype for you, check out astrologer Rick Levine on You-tube, describing astrology's connection to quantum physics.)

Astrology is the study of energies and archetypes and the very depths of our interconnection in the Collective Unconscious. I am an astrologer. I'm not a fortune teller. I use astrology, and the Tarot, as projection holders--technologies to explore archetypal energies that evoke the wisdom of the right side of the brain. I do an end-run around my much too busy frontal lobes. I open, to something greater than this concrete, macro physical world I think I know.

Jung taught me this.

Creativity as religion

In the very beginning of his terrific work The Creativity Book, Eric Maisel recommends making creativity your religion: "You can either make it an important supplement to your Catholicism, Judaism, or Buddhism, or you can make it your primary religion. Why choose creativity? Because creating is soulful work."

He reminds us that having no time is no excuse. "We can carve time out of thin air, or we can fill up even infinite stretches of time with nothingness. These are our choices. You can make a quarter hour appear from nowhere if that's really your heart's desire; wanting it to appear is proof that you're becoming an everyday creative person."

I was in a terrible funk toward the end of July, and on the way across the kitchen to get some coffee, something snapped and I quickly learned what my friends have been telling me about back pain. I know I didn't "cause" my back to hurt, but I understand the mind/body connection, and I heard my soul's message: Change is needed, and will come. How would you like it? Sunny side up, scrambled, or fried?"

I've chosen creativity. Every day. This morning I took a moment to replant a few pots: the impatiens that can't take the heat and has lost her two sisters; the aloe vera that has once again grown as far as he can. I weeded our prayer garden, fed the birds. I created beauty.

My funk has floated away like mist on a fresh morning breeze. I wake up excited about my day, wondering what I will choose to make/create/begin/dream today. Drumming with raindrops? Stitching a seam? Shimmying to a Latin beat? Or perhaps, writing this blog. The possibilities are endless. What's possible for you?

Creative Assignment: Think of something you do that makes you feel alive. Do that thing today, even for five minutes, even if only in your daydream.

We were born to fly

I wrote my closest friends to invite them to this blog. I am coming out as an astrologer and writer, I told them. As a therapist, I had listened to many artists speak of their fears of being seen, known--I knew it was important for me too to confront that fear.

My friend, poet Robert Brandt, sent me this in response:

we were born to fly
but mostly we forget
and bind ourselves
to earth, thinking
that the nest is safe
and that we need not
indeed cannot
venture out of
this place of comfort

so fly, leap boldly
from the nest
feel the wind
lifting you high
and rejoice
in the freedom of the sky.

Strong image, for living and for creativity. Many thanks, Robert. I will.

Playing with Sound

I've found some sites (see Chispa Websites in the left hand column) to spark creativity in art, writing, and play. But it's not so easy to find sites for ways to play with music.

Here's something fun that's turning up in every recreational music group I follow. You can create your own song with a swish of your mouse:

http://lab.andre-michelle.com/tonematrix

And you can play with nature too! I received a wonderful sound-gift this week. After a welcome summer rain, the water running off our roof played a compelling rhythm on the top of our compost bin on the back porch. Two drips collaborated:

DOUM ta ta ta DOUM ta ta ta

Yesterday, after another shower (a miracle in itself in July!), I had to skootch the bin a little to the left to capture two new drips. And there it was again, this time faster, more complex. Nature, drumming! And I helped.

Best resource for awakening your ears to environmental sound: the documentary Touch the Sound, which follows the great hearing impaired Scottish percussionist Evelyn Glennie and her creative process. Immerse yourself!

Creative Assignment: Listen mindfully today. Join in.

The Moon is strong in her own sign . . .

I've written two posts in two years, both in October. As the Sun transits my First House, I remember to blog. It does seem logical: the First House is our persona, the face we present to the world. Only in October was I emboldened to blog.

This past month, astrologers noted a very significant event. The New Moon occurred on June 22, at 1'30" Cancer, at the Summer Solstice, with a second New Moon in the last degree of Cancer (29'27") on July 22, together with a Solar Eclipse. What could possible scream louder This is important! The entire lunar cycle was completed within this single, lovely, nurturing sign, encompassing nearly its entire 30 degrees, and underscored by a solstice and solar eclipse. This indicates a powerful new beginning, a recognition of the coming of the Feminine into our corporate lives.

And in own life, with my South Node in Cancer, and natal Jupiter and Uranus conjunct this Eclipse. . . the time is now. The change is now.


In June I heard Rick Levine in Grapevine, relating astrology to quantum physics and celebrating the vibrations of the Universe. And he made one small comment which electrified me. He was talking about Venus and Pluto in square aspect. In my chart, Venus in her detriment in Scorpio squares Pluto in Leo, on the cusp of my Twelfth House. Of course, I knew this, but because Venus was in "detriment," and I'm quite comfortable with Aphrodite energy, I gave it little thought. Rick was saying: "Venus is the Goddess: here is Isis, Inanna, Astarte, Persephone . . ." And I realized, I had been very literal in my thought about Venus. I had memorized plenty of interpretative keywords, but I had seen her only as Aphrodite.

And I told him at break: "I have always related to the archetype of Persephone, and I never knew why. Now I know. Venus square Pluto: Persephone." He looked at me as presenters do when someone identifies the smallest thing as the most important point they heard. I've had that experience myself.

Toni Wolff, Jung's student and lover and a noted analyst in her own right, would say were she here: What are you going to do with this? If patients told her of a dream, she would ask them at the door when they appeared for their next session: What have you done with the dream? She wanted something concrete, a ritual, a response. If they had dreamed of a hamburger, did they go bury a hamburger--what did they do? If they had no answer, she would say Go away and don't come back till you've done something. I've never dared be so bold with my clients. Will I be so bold with myself?