CULTIVATING AND DEPICTING SOUL: Image making and the daily creative practice

EXPLORING POSSIBILITIES of BEING THROUGH REPETITION. Who or what might I be? Where might I go? I draw daily to find out. Welcome to my soul depiction! (art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for exploring new possibilities through a daily creative practice!  Hallelujah for repetition! Hallelujah for writing, dancing, playing, and making art to explore who or what I might be and where I might travel!

Just a few days ago I joined a new Facebook Group, Inspired Blogging, and am so delighted to meet a new group of bloggers, people I suspect I have much in common with. Social media has given me a way to connect with like-minded souls worldwide over the five-plus years I've been blogging, yet still I have yearned to find a solidified tribe with who I could "commune" deeply with.

Inspired Blogging, might be that Online Social Commune for me. Who knows? But it is definitely a possibility. I would like to know more about the person who created the group and launched it. And about the people she invited. The members write wonderful deep meaningful blog entries and leave heartfelt comments on each others blogs!

I learned about Inspired Blogging from a member in my own Facebook group, The Daily Creative Practice, a diverse group intensely creative souls, who I love dearly. Thank you Vickie for posting the link to your Inspired Blogging community.

A new possibility I'm exploring these days is that I may make a short animated film using the images I draw each morning as part of my meditation for my "daily creative practice." Several years ago, Spencer Moon encouraged me to learn about animation and started mentoring me in film making; however, at that time, I did not have a compelling story to tell, and I was still working my day job at Georgia Tech as an ESL instructor. My nerves were all in a jangle!

Since then, ocean waves of life events have swept me into new worlds of being, and I have been documenting my journey through the cultivation and consistent image making depicting my soul. 

Ah ha! I bet I have surprised you! That is such a huge pronouncement to make! What does a soul look like? And how do we understand it?

My answer to that? A daily creative practice, one that might be grounded in repetition. For years, I journaled and then refined the technique by practicing the "morning pages" Julia Cameron style in The Artist's Way. 

 "Morning pages" is a writing practice, one founded on the belief that writing upon waking could help one secure thoughts, ideas, and images closely connected to the self, the subconscious, and the intelligent stuff of dreams. As I honored my desires to express my ideas in visual images instead of words, my morning pages became pictures instead of words.

And in the same way, that Julia Cameron gives writers of the morning pages permission to repeat words and phrases each day as they write until something new emerges, I repeat my images with loving dedication until something new pops up.  

And in the same way that Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones urges us not to cross out our words in free writing but to gently embrace them in parentheses, I don't cross out or erase my images. They are what they are! They are soul stuff.

Drawing each day for about five years now has cultivated my vision. I can see my soul and am showing you one small aspect of me here in these images right here! 

And now, the idea of making an animated short film no longer seems as daunting as it did three years ago. There is a great deal I need to know. But I now know that I would it would be about! Here's the working title: GENESIS OF HALLELUJAH TRUTH!
 
That's Coffee with Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me and share your possibilities! What are you exploring you might be or a place you might go?