Breathless soul

In honor of all whose breaths fed and keep feeding my soul. Thank you!

No pages for the last few (or has it been several already?) days. Clarity is missing, direction, breath for my soul, it seems.

Three pages of stream of consciousness writing every day except Shabbath first thing in the morning and for what? Nearly six months now. The morning pages Julia Cameron calls them introducing them in her trilogy, The Artist’s Way.

It’s difficult to point to specifically one thing that came only because of them. Much like Jonathan Safran Foer describes in “We are the weather” all that contributed to winning WWII wasn’t one thing alone, but everything that was done, at home and over there, was in the end needed.

The morning pages for me are like deep, conscious breathing, like Pranayama for my soul. I write and hear and see my soul alive, its state, its needs, desires, wants, its processing of things long ago, its knowledge gained within, its care, it’s there, here, real, close, like breath itself.

Thank you Julia Cameron for writing The Artist’s Way, for the morning pages, for not stopping after one book but keeping the trickle, the irrigation on, recognizing that like a plant, one big soak might be refreshing on a hot summer’s day but it does not sustain. Sustain what? Life, growth, the cycle! The walks, the writing, the gratitude emanating, the focus on what matters, then broaden, play, how marvelous it’s been! Playing again after all these years, just for fun! Oh, but no! You’re wrong! She says. For life you play, not fun alone!

The succulent, the flower pot, the rocks in front of me, the basil, it’s all oxygen. Playtime only was the door, the gate to a vast and private garden, like a dreamland for my soul to bathe, to play, to doodle, noodle and regenerate, to breathe deeply and get lost within, discovered and found again to take on another day and move, one rock, one drawing, one post, one book, one page, one recipe further and closer to my center, to my world, to joy, to away from others’ expectations, my perception of them, labels, musts and shoulds to coulds, wants and dos right now, right here.

Thank You G-d, for the universe, the lights, the colors, the wisdom hidden in black holes, the earth, the canopy of the cotton wood above, the sky, the clouds, the birdsong in my ear. Thank You for restoring breath within my shallow breathing soul to carry out what it must another day and grow.

These were my recent torch holders on my path: Leah Chamish, who introduced and gifted me with The Artist’s Way and her own published BS”D 30 day gratitude journal, which brought joy, real deep, true joy back into the open for me. Julia Cameron who wrote those books and didn’t stop at one. Simon Sinek, who’s TED talk I had heard years ago, and for commenting in an interview to go back to Viktor Frankl’s Man in search for meaning when COVID-19 hit and by doing so, leading me to finding my own Why with new clarity, for making the process easy, affordable and practical with help from David Mead’s and Peter Docker’s examples and instructions in Find Your Why.

If any of them didn’t write or say what was within my journey these past 6 months would have been a very different one.

Who knows what my piece is exactly?! In the meantime I write what’s here right now with gratitude, no judgement.