It took a while to bounce back from last month’s activities. I am just today feeling better after about a week of trying to do as little as possible in order to rehabilitate. I have been attempting to make origami butterflies for a few days with a book my boyfriend had in his collection, but this book gave me just enough information to make me crazy, and not quite enough to enable me to make anything resembling a butterfly. (My last attempt looked like a run-over toad, according to my boyfriend). So I did what all modern women do, I turned to YouTube and found a couple videos that were extremely helpful. One of them was in Spanish, and because I subscribed, I am now getting a lot of ads on YouTube that are really good for me in that it is helping me to re-learn the Spanish language. It occurred to me yesterday while watching these ads that in a certain way I am sticking it to the man by getting some actual use out of these ads and buying nothing at all, which satisfies.
The Pattern
I made this pattern on Canva to put on all of the origami paper so that the purpose and meaning of the month’s theme will come through. This is about the evolution of the human species, which in my mind isn’t physical, but spiritual, emotional, and psychological. It’s my belief that the best way to change is to start seeing ourselves as sacred vessels so that we might consider those around us and the planet as sacred. This, in my opinion, must be the way of our evolution. I don’t believe we need to get all the way there in order to make change, but if we treated ourselves as if we mattered more of the time, we might also then be able to turn that energy outward and begin to be more kind and generous to everyone and everything around us. Some say it’s a pipe dream, others say I’m crazy, which satisfies.
The Key
The key, in my estimation, to changing in this direction is less to become more aware of how awesome we are, and more about becoming comfortable with the aspects of ourselves that are less wonderful. I call these the “sticky bits” because they seem to stay stuck within me until I am able to take a good look at them and even own up to their presence and expression. For instance, I have this horrible tendency to procrastinate and then find myself in a position where I’m having to make hundreds of flowers in 5 days. (For instance). I also have a tendency to be judgey, greedy, jealous, and somewhat hateful, in no particular order of importance. These colorful attributes often show themselves at the worst and most public times, and sometimes at the worst and most private moments. After I act out on these feelings of lack, I feel really horrible about myself, and have to remind myself to be forgiving of my less favorable qualities. It’s my most challenging task, especially when I’m fighting with my boyfriend.
The Future
I am teaching twice as much this summer, and a couple of the classes I am teaching are ones I have just created, large scale ceramic sculpture and ceramic figure sculpture, both which I am quite good at, both which I am having to re-address my teaching methods. To this point, I have taught basic skills to people then, have mostly helped them discover their greatness through the practice of their craft. These classes are much heavier on the skill part, so more of the classes will be instructional with the discovery element coming through at the very end of each class.
The good thing about revealing greatness early in the class is that the students tend to stick with it for longer. Figure sculpting in particular can be very frustrating so my plan is to focus on small victories, (capturing the relationship of the shoulder to the wrist, or the chin to the collar bone) so that they stick with the grueling task of sculpting a figure from clay.
This is what my strategy for teaching/training has always been about, showing people their power as early as possible within the lesson so that they may find within them new and unexpected gifts they didn’t know they had. Learning a new skill will always reveal some weaknesses, and many people will quit because they are incapable of seeing through this to the other side, which is almost always some form of greatness.
This is the gift of learning a new skill, a re-invigorated belief in one’s skills and abilities, and hopefully, level of intelligence and emotional depth.
This is why I teach. Watching a person unmask powers they didn’t think they had feeds my soul in a way nothing else ever has.
Things I Love
Go Forward and be epic.
And don’t let the bastards get you down.
Sara