New painting of my friend's mom.

I'm feeling the urge to write a blog post this morning. So here I am. I've been doing a lot of life review lately, thinking back over the past several years. I just recently finished my classes at Southwestern College for a Masters in art therapy and clinical counseling. I have not technically graduated because, although I've finished all the coursework, I am required to complete a total of 300 "direct client contact" hours, and I have only completed 150. So, I have 150 left. This requires setting up an interview with an internship site, arranging a supervisor who has the proper credentials, and having everything approved by Southwestern Colleges review board. I feel the hard core need for a break. It's not really a break from visiting with clients per se, it's more a break from academia. 

My heart longs to get back to making my own art and growing that as a career and a business. I'm taking classes through Marie Forleo's online business school for women called "B-School". I bought this extensive online course while I was in grad school. It's not cheap. It was $2,400. I paid in installments. So, I do feel it is worth taking the time to watch all the classes and do the homework and get my money's worth. I like that it is geared towards women. I always do better with things like that. She emphasizes integrity and she knows that her audience wants to create businesses that are honest and that are genuinely contributing positively to the world. It matters to me that she makes the point to notice this and comment on it. There are so many things about marketing and creating a business that I feel sensitive about, like learning about human psychology for the sake of selling things. Did you know that according to studies, people are more likely to buy things when the price ends in a 9? How weird. Does this mean that if I price my art prints and paintings with a 9 at the end I am manipulating human psychology? Or am I just helping people take the leap towards having something beautiful in their lives that would genuinely benefit them? These are the questions I ask myself when I watch these classes. 

I am a person who notices manipulation strategies and feels an immediate strong aversion to them. They are all around us, particularly in commercials, billboards, anything that is marketing anything, the news, and in the conversations we have with people we know personally. I grew up in a family where manipulation was everywhere. It is a very destructive and dangerous thing. At least that is my experience. And it took me a lot of time, therapy, and hard work to free myself from it. The antidote to being manipulated is to listen to your own inner guidance. This takes practice and learning. It's a skill. 

I remember when I first read the biography of Christo and Jeanne-Claude, environmental landscape artists. I worked on "The Gates of Central Park" in New York right after I graduated college in 2005. I learned about Christo in one of my art classes at Wheaton College. I was immediately drawn to his work because I love flowing white fabric. Really, that was it. I just thought his Running Fence project was beautiful and I was drawn to him. Then, when I learned more about him, I remember being struck by the way that he was clearly listening to another kind of authority. At the time, it seemed to me like an unseen authority and I didn't really understand where it was coming from. When he did the Running Fence project in California, he was sued. There was a whole group of people who got together to resist it. He was also told that he could not have the "fence" go into the ocean, but he did it anyway. Someone interviewed him about it later and they asked him how he could do that. They said, "Aren't you worried about your reputation?" He laughed and said, "What about my reputation as an artist?" 

Now, this makes perfect sense to me and it's hard for me to understand how I didn't understand it at the time. But I did not know the concept of inner authority at the time. I believe now that the pull that I felt toward this conversation and to what Christo was doing and what he said in that interview in his biography was Divine Guidance. I believe it lit up for me so that I would pay attention so that I could learn about listening to my own inner guidance. It was a first step. I remember it so clearly though, how what Christo said jumped out at me. 

Now I believe that listening to our own inner guidance and living according to our own inner authority is the most fundamental element to health and healing. It has been more important to my own healing process than anything else. I believe the whole point of meditation is so that we can get in touch with this inner voice. And that when we live by it, nothing else really matters. We can be poor, we can be rich, we can have hardships, but everything else pales in comparison to the joy that listening to this inner voice brings. I believe this is what heaven is. 

Maybe I should put a picture up of the Gates or of Christo. I have one. 

Here it is. It might not be the best quality. I screen shot it from my instagram page. I don't know where the original is. 

Anyways, there's the proof. Me with Christo and Jeanne Claude at The Gates of Central Park. Let me know if you want to buy my "Gates smock" for $100,000 so I can pay off my student load debt.

I love you. Check back in again and I'd love it if you left a comment of some kind. 

Love,

Suzy.