Rhythms and Cycles

This post brought you to courtesy of reading The Artist's Rule by Christine Valters Paintner as part of Story Session's Story 201 e-course. 

I've spent years searching for balance. That one magic point where my house stays clean, I stay sane, the budget is honoured, and my creativity flourishes. I've yet to find it and now I'm becoming grateful that I never found balance. If I had, I would have tried to turn it into a performance metric, one more thing to unsuccessfully strive towards. One more way to feed the lies of not being enough, of being a drain on my husband.

There isn't one point of balance. There are many. It's not this mystic magical place where I make it all happen, but rather it's slowing down to sink deep into the season, to honour the cycle of my life, my season, my month, my week, my day. The idea has been creeping into my awareness through nature walks. My spirit sensing the truth, seeing that everything around us was created with a rhythm and each piece is necessary for nature to thrive.

I've been reading Paintner's The Artist's Rule and soaking in the ideas of not searching for a balance point, but instead of honouring the season that I am in. I recognize that right now that's hard because my inner artist and my inner monk are in two different seasons. I'm not sure yet how to bridge the two. My Artist is in Spring - coming fully alive, bubbling with new ideas and new life. My Monk is in late Autumn, shedding beliefs and lies that keep us from the rest and faith that nourishes us. I'm not certain how to live in two season at the same time.

Recognition though is the first step. I'm choosing to sink deep into the awareness of my seasons, to honour them and not force Spring to be Summer before it's time, or to run back to Summer because Autumn is painful.

As a monk and artist, I want to rise and fall like the ebb and flow of the ocean. I want to shed parts of myself in autumn, to go deeply inward in winter, to blossom into spring, and to shine forth and be radiant in summer. I want to live my life in healing rhythms that honor the lmits of my body, the pleasures of rest, and the delights of play. +Christine Valters Paintner, The Artist's Rule