I read once about a practice where you offer a blessing to all that you come across in a day, as way to let down our guard of otherness. Not a new idea. We live in a “soulful” time with the wisdom of ages available on Amazon’s busy bookshelves and Oprah always there like the perfect friend with the perfect thing to say, and my facebook feed always has some good tip for being a happier, more content person.
So, why post this spiritual-type thought on a design blog?
Well, there was a second part to that practice that caught my attention. It was the idea that before blessing, we must also allow ourselves to be blessed. Receiving. Does that word conjure up memories of bows and boxes at birthdays and Christmas time (Hopefully not mailboxes with bills or email feeds with tasks to follow up on!) ?
What about drawing? Did you ever enter the act of drawing, or any art, with the expectation of receiving?
This idea has touched me. The sweetness of it makes me pause and smile and appreciate art, for something more than I expected. Perhaps, “looking” is the receiving of a blessing? When we see because we’ve looked with intention to know, we open ourselves, to the presence of something of aliveness– a color, a gesture, the light of the day, new leaves on trees in the spring, a child at the beach enamored with the water and sand, maybe the abstract qualities of an everyday object we might normally notice–all these awarenesses are like a blessing.
And the act of drawing, perhaps that is our way of bestowing a blessing on that which we’ve seen.
I’m always on my soapbox about awareness! But, sometimes I find I’m aware of more than is easy to be aware of, or aware of things that confuse and upset me. Opportunities to learn, these are all good challenges, but so are the times when we can “fill up” again.
Today in the woods everything was technicolor-uber-green, green of every shade, hue, saturation….and this of course made the reds and browns incredible!
The walk in the woods today offered a short time in a busy day full of deadlines and client needs and budgets and print and screens, for a lovely practice of awareness, a breath in and out, letting those things affect me in a way that feels like a blessing. And of course, I offered my blessing in return. A thousand tiny little thank you’s for each leaf, piece of bark, lichen, rock or moss that I met.
Today my art was my blessing and the seeing was felt like being blessed. It was delicious!
