Personal Development for Creatively Conscious People

Life is… let me think a minute… alright then, here’s a picture for you: life is a ball of tangled elastic bands with something really special buried deep inside. The lure is to find the hidden treasure.

Life is like that; full of intriguing discoveries. Like those cereal boxes when I was a kid with the baking-soda-powered toy SUBMARINE–FREE INSIDE. It was a hook, and who could resist?

Back to the ball of elastic bands though: when I was a small boy I wondered why golf balls bounced so high. My Dad was a golfer, so I took one of his golf balls and dissected it to find out why. I was exhilarated as I cut through the casing; like I was splitting the atom or something. What would happen? Would it explode in my face? The energy of that ball had to be locked in there somewhere, and I was about to release it.

Today is a soft and sunshiny day and I want to share it with you. It isn’t officially spring yet where I live, but through the window today, the sky is blue and winter’s colors are gradually moving out of phase.

Green shoots and flowers-to-be are pushing through the brown of winter, the birds are creating homes, and the sun is caressing my heart–reminding me of all things possible, bright, and beautiful.

Winter is gray where I live. And I feel winter’s grayness because it reflects the low clouds that swirl within me; the socked-in system of unreconciled emotion.

But the sun is shining now. I feel its warmth. I see its clear light. There is nothing more beautiful than the warm rays of sunshine in the winter of your heart.

Do you feel it also?

Detail of painting by John Rocheleau

Satisfaction is our primary objective in life. Everything we do, we do to satisfy ourselves in one form or another.

This self-gratification reflex of ours is far from self-fulfilling though. Everyday, we make choices to satisfy our desires, and what we choose while under the influence of this intoxicating human imperative, is often unwise.

Short-sighted satisfaction carries a steep price tag, and willing or not, the debt is always collected. Our drive to satisfy ourselves can then seriously damage us.

The clouds were low; silver-grey with blushes of violet to the west, and an intense blue-grey to the east. It was 1994, and spring was about to bless us with some needed rain.

“The garden will love it,” Rosemarie said. I agreed, though not with the same hard-won conviction as my Wife’s, after all, it was Rosemarie who created our garden and it was she who mainly toiled in it.

We had a large garden (and still do) filled with plenty of delicious raspberries, gooseberries, currants of all sorts, and most of the vegetables we needed for the year ahead. For Rosemarie, the garden was her labor of love; her way of connecting to life at its purest, and to who she is at heart.

It was a quiet day, and every living thing seemed to be in their own separate world, including us. I was taking a break from a new painting I was working on, Rosemarie was finishing some planting, and the ravens were dive-bombing Jones, our black cat.

Seduction is a big part of life for us mortals.

Seduction is in our genes. We’re programmed to seek satisfaction but when we talk about satisfying our seductive desires, most of us automatically think of sexual seduction.

And sexual seduction is powerful stuff for sure. Is there anyone out there who has not fallen under the intoxicating spell of some god or goddess who has targeted us in their sexual sights?

But sexual gratification is not seduction’s main target. Believe it or not, we mostly seduce ourselves and it has nothing to do with sex.