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Expansion

By Shelley Hawkins-Clark, EFT-ADV
© 2008, All Rights Reserved, Cadence Enterprises, LLC

"Focus on expansion. Let's throw our arms out and populate our world with creations that feed multitudes of souls with joy, beauty, purpose and the blessings extended by our expressive spirits." "Creation is a movement of spirit. We must take the leap." ~Robert Yehling, Author

"Then, in a small town in Italy, the first mechanical clock was built. People were spellbound. Later they were horrified. Here was a human invention that quantified the passage of time, that laid ruler and compass to the span of desire, that measured out exactly the moments of a life. It was magical, it was unbearable, it was outside natural law. Yet the clock could not be ignored. It would have to be worshipped." ~Alan Lightman, Einstein's Dreams

"If we have learned one thing from the extraordinary and inspiring people we have met on our journey, it is that healing is as much wild as domesticated, as much raw as cooked. It requires a certain daring, a willingness to explore many dimensions of wholeness. Only a handful who get well do so without coloring outside the lines." ~ Kenny Ausubel, When Healing Becomes a Crime

My mother still has a picture I drew and colored for her when I was a child-maybe 8 years old. I sat at the kitchen table watching the sun coming threw the windows and felt the urge to draw a bowl of fruit showing the light from the windows shining down on it. I used felt markers for color and asked dad for some help to build a frame. The picture remained on the wall for years.

Soulful creativity tends to be an early casualty amidst growing adult responsibilities, time-managed days, painful pasts and general life experiences that draw on our energy. We may feel reluctant to give ourselves permission to follow the urgings of creativity that rumble from our souls. We may have forgotten how.

We are by nature creative beings, so where does all this energy go when it has no form of expression? We expand our waistlines instead of our lives, watch our debt grow instead of our vision, create conflict for distraction, perpetuate lifeless relationships, and increase our activities instead of enjoying the fullness of nothingness.

In my early business training, I learned I was supposed to make the most of time, every minute utilized for organization and opening up my potential. This training has served me well, but it can also foster a limited view of time, with fear creeping in about those "wasted," unplanned or underutilized moments. It stood in contrast to my childhood days where I had the freedom to daydream and wander and time seemed endless under an expansive blue summer sky. When I was sick for several years, I had yet a different experience of time. It seemed to pass me by without consideration. I felt left behind in a world hurling forward.

In the middle of a fulfilling creative act—trying a new recipe, building a boat, writing a story, making love, whittling a pretend fishing pole from a stick—time magically expands. It becomes irrelevant in the expanse of expression. It is in this expanse where we taste the abundance and possibilities for time. Einstein said time doesn't exist. In creative expression, we discover what he meant.

The "what if" questions to stimulate our thinking about time have become so commonplace they've lost their effect. They seem instead to reinforce an idea that there is a lack of time perpetuating desperation to get it all done… "What if you only had one day to live…" "What if you were stuck on a deserted island…"

Consider instead, what if you opened yourself to a new idea for your life, one that expands your experience of time, one that opens the possibility for more creative expression? No matter how good or energizing or unfulfilling your life may be at this moment, what if you could expand your idea for it a little further, a lot further? Where would it take you? Are you willing to color outside the lines of what you've imagined or drawn for yourself?

My personal word for 2008 is "expansion" to further transform my view of time and experience its expansion in the creative process of my life. In 2008, may the Spirit move you to take the leap of creativity, to experience time in a quantum rather than a quantified fashion, to paint outside the lines in a new adventure, a new vision for your life.