What’s the difference between work and vacation if I’m on the computer all day? No matter where my body is, my experience is formed in my mind according to my focus. | Andrea de Michaelis – Creating my own reality, one thought at a time

It’s been a busy few days. This is supposed to be my rest and recupe week after getting the magazine to press, but I’ve mostly worked each day. “What’s the difference,” a friend asked, “between a work day and a vacation day if you’re still at home on the computer all day?” Good question. The answer is: no matter where my body is, no matter what the appearance, my experience is formed in my mind according to my focus. No matter where my eyes are looking, it is my inner eye that sees. It is my mind that takes me on the journey and the mental journey becomes my experience.

I was able to paint only sporadically this week, but I took breaks to watch some tutorial videos. Although I don’t paint in a photorealistic style, watching tutorials is the same as me attending a class or workshop and I always learn something. One tutorial was –> how to paint a nose with acrylics. I like seeing the process go from sketch and underpainting to completion. It reminds me that I may have to go thru a lot of stages where I don’t like how anything looks, but that it’s all part of the process. That’s true with life as well. Mostly the tutorial videos remind me how to see. They make me aware and mindful of the minute details of what is around me in physical form right now: shapes, light sources, shadows, reflections; where colors cross and blend, the red and blue and yellow within the white, the shadow within the shadow.

Think of closely scanning your lover’s face with your eyes, alert to the slightest detail of texture and shade. You become aware of every object around you as if being in love with it. As Rumi says, “Seeing her, my face became all eyes, and my eyes all hands.” And when we look at everything around us this way, with appreciation as if it’s all there to delight us, we begin to fall into the divine Love the mystics all speak of. When we fall into that divine Love, it begins responding to us.

Better said, we begin attuning to the signals It’s been sending out all along. We receive the response as a feeling of being connected to something we cannot see, we feel recognized and accepted and appreciated like never before. We’re used to only feeling that from certain people: our parents, our partners, our children, our pets. It can be disconcerting to feel it come from Within.

Along with feeling comes thought. The feeling of being connected on an inner dimension or plane to something you cannot see yet know exists, begins your mind questioning, “who is that?” and “who am I relative to that?” When you begin asking questions internally, the answers start pouring forth.

If you’re interested in spirituality and/or personal growth, this is a good time to begin a daily meditation practice. Create the time and space to sit and allow thoughts and questions to arise and think them through. It’s helpful to have a notebook to write thoughts and ideas down, that clears your mind for new thoughts and ideas to come in. This is what is meant by having an inner life. This is what is meant by being washed in the Presence. This has nothing to do with religion, it has to do with encountering the creative force of the Universe in a very real and personal way and using it in beneficial ways to improve your life.

And you’ll know when you encounter it, because it will flow through you like a river, like being in love, and you will begin finding many creative outlets of expression. In 1992 I was 40 and Horizons Magazine began. I left my 22 year career as a paralegal, began working as a professional psychic, and also began making gemstone jewelry and tie-dyed altar scarves, as well as my own clothes. I drew, I painted, I taught yoga and meditation, I created jewelry and fabric art, I danced, I drummed, I had many creative outlets.

So now, for me, watching the art tutorial videos remind me to also more closely attune to that flow of divine Love, and one way I do that is by looking at the things around me as closely as a lover’s face. So if you see me sitting and staring oddly, know that no matter where my eyes are looking, it is my inner eye that sees.