REVERB15 (Day 18) : Accessing new worlds through creative portals

PORTALS, PAST, PRESENT, FUTURE.  I see you! Do you see me? Do you see yourself? Are you at a threshold? (Art by Hallelujah Truth)

Hallelujah for DOORWAYS, OPENINGS, or PORTALS that become passageways for transformation. Hallelujah for knowing when to cross the threshold or to acknowledge that you have indeed stepped into another world! 

Hallelujah for NEW WORLDS being accessed! Today's REVERB15 prompt comes from C. Streetlights and celebrates the ALCHEMY of gateways!

REVERB15  (Day 18) Prompt: Haven’t you ever been caught in a moment, a magnetic swirl of a moment, when you knew – just knew – that something magical was taking place? You might feel as if a portal into Something has opened at your heart to release a sort of energy into your own private universe, telling you, “Remember your magic…” 
Think of three important portal points – one in the past, the present, and one you hope to have in the future – and join them together into one powerful and personal gateway into 2015. Where will walking through this gateway lead you in this upcoming new year?

DANCING THROUGH PORTALS.

People have always provided important passageways for me. As an educator, I used to repeat to my students: 

"Remember, it is the people that you meet in your life that matter and will transform it. You never know who it is going to be, so keep your eyes and heart open! You will do the same for others." 

In my life, there have been many significant human beings discovered in books, movies, travel, on the bus, in the park, at the gym, in a lecture, at a dance, around the corner, and on the Internet. I cannot name them all here.

Instead, I will concentrate on how they have appeared in my life through structured CREATIVE PORTALS (yes, created by women) that have significantly impacted who I am as the SPIRITUAL ART PILGRIM, Hallelujah Truth. 

This pink photo of me stepping into the UNKNOWN was taken by my boon companion and husband, Chiboogamoo at the children's section of the Jepson Museum in Savannah, Georgia, while I was playing around with clothing with symbols on November 17, 2015.  Symbolic play is one way to step through DOORWAYS.

PAST CREATIVITY PORTALS
My experience as the founder and leader of "Spiritual Art Pilgrims," which lasted three years, was the culmination from engagement with the resources or past creativity PORTALS listed here. Explaining how they helped me cultivate my creative practice is a lengthy discussion, perhaps a book to be written or a course to be taken with me. 

Writing Down the Bones (1986), Natalie Goldberg

The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity (1992), Julia Cameron

Artist Conference Network, founded by Beverly Cassell in 1983)

It was empowering to hunger for and create the "Spiritual Art Pilgrims," a group founded for three years as a way to explore creativity through different modalities. This important PORTAL creation was also influenced by Shaun McNiff and his book, Art as Medicine.

PRESENT CREATIVITY PORTALS
These present PORTALS are the creative engines driving the dance of my life currently and forging new ones:
 

Coffee with Hallelujah
Begun in 2009, this blog is my PORTAL to the world community in my search for like-minded SOULS. When one's surrounding community doesn't seem big enough to find creative companionship, look farther outside its perimeter, I tell myself. 

My GOALS? While developing my voice through image, word, and persona, I connect with other CREATIVE SOULS. If you have fifteen minutes for a cup of coffee, then you have time to create! I've been successful in sharing my daily creativity with others through this blog.

The Daily Creative Practice
Understanding that my blog, Coffee with Hallelujah, was like an isolated island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean unbeknownst to anyone, I knew that I needed to go to New York City (Facebook) and invite CREATIVE SOULS back to my island. Thus in 2013, I gave birth to the PORTAL, The Daily Creative Practice on Facebook, which now has more than a 1,000 members. 

In addition to connecting my blog island to a big city on FB, I have also succeeded in creating a warm online community, one in which there is support for each other's unique offerings and everyone receives a "hurray"!

Women's Caucus for Arts Georgia (WCAGA)
What a delight to discover this PORTAL in my own metro-Atlanta community in 2009! The members comprising WCAGA are compassionate caring creatives who are feminists deeply engaged in their own work while connecting with others and fostering social justice.

InterPlay 
Hurray for my beloved InterPlay and its co-founders Phil Porter and Cynthia Winton-Henry! This improvisational system has transformed my life, by allowing me to integrate my body, mind, heart, and spirit all together in what is expressed by the word "bodyspirit"!

My BODYSPIRIT is comprised of infinite DOORWAYS that can be accessed through movement, voice, story, and stillness, alone or in community with others.

FUTURE CREATIVITY PORTALS
So! FUTURE PORTALS are opening, incorporating all that I have learned from the past and present PORTALS. 

In 2016, I see my creativity coaching business, InterPlay Art & Soul Creativity Coaching, expanding to online coaching and group play. 

Also using the deep and rewarding improvisational system of InterPlay, I will forge a CREATIVE SOJOURN which will be a quarterly journey inspired by my deep experience with the Artist's Way and Artist Conference Network. 

And, yes, I will launch my website, that has three PORTALS through which others can reach me.

That's Coffee with Hallelujah! SOUL BLOG with me about where you intersected with me, which portal you came through and what we have created together. Or tell me about your own portals!

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS: Gracias to my beloved Chiboogamoo, who makes so much magic possible in my life. Today, we are celebrating our 11th wedding anniversary. Kisses!  And without Lesly Fredman, friend and creativity coach, I would probably not have named myself Hallelujah Truth and started this blog. 

PERUVIAN HONEYMOON 2004. Happy 11th Wedding Anniversary Darling!