The Great Turning

We are all growing and evolving. I just turned 30. I just moved out of the city and into an ecovillage. I have just claimed my life-work as artist, gardener, healer. It's just time to upgrade to a new space. 

All my reflections will now be posted on my website: http://www.createartheart.org. 

Thank you so much for being part of my blogspot journey! 

Love,

Sarah

Compass Check

What do you do with 19 years of love letters to yourself and to God? Had to deal with up more than 30 journals compiled since I was 11 as I let go of clutter and possessions while packing to move out of Metro Manila 

After 18 years of writing in my journal, sustaining the energy to pen in my thoughts and reflections has become a challenge. Because I have been postponing to write for months as I learn to get to know this new mode of communication, I had this growing need to express. 

A shift in language is coming forth. There is this strange lull in my expression process. More and more I am conversing with myself in thought with a growing desire to talk to people directly rather than write. When I was most attuned, I used to converse with people in my dreams with matters they need to share and express to me. Lately, I am learning how immediate synchronicity with intention that manifests immediately in real time which required me to be more mindful and connected with my thoughts. Thus I spoke less and less and wrote less and less. They say the frequency of the time and space waves are making heaps of changes. I would say the same from the inner perspective.

I turned 30 last week. For two years, my life has undergone major earth quakes. A lot of clearing and sifting took place. This is a natural part of entering the 3rd decade as developmental psychologists and even clairvoyants would say. A Saturn Return as some astrologers would call it - a time of disintegration and integration. The great changes from my 28th year up to now was just really part of leaving my youth and entering adulthood.

I entered a big pause. 
This pause led me to deeply reflect on my direction.

After sharing my energies to do arts relief for Typhoon Sendong survivors last January - March in Cagayan de Oro where thousands died and were displaced, I felt the burn out of non-profit work. I realized doing a heart-based process for an INGO like Save the Children took so much energy because of their fast paced and output based intensity. After working for 10 years with the non-profit world and losing all my savings in it, I realized I need to be able to sustain myself while I work for sustainability. 

Many lessons also came forth after this wake up call. I chose not to go to Switzerland for the 2nd year of my Masters program because I felt the call of the earth in so many ways.

After Typhoon Sendong, learnings from years of working for the environmental movement surfaced again. 

If I was focused on conflict and peacebuilding, how can I also share my energies in ecological healing and restoration. Most importantly, should there be a divide in my work in these two fields?

And then it dawned to me. The wisdom of the earth is calling for an integrative approach. What if my theory of change is how we see the earth’s reminder to look at how conflict is also rooted to how we see nature as resource or as source of identity? As resource, most conflicts look at it as a source of unlimited income or power - thus so much violence stems from resource based perspective on nature. As a manifestation of identity, it looks as land, water, minerals as ethnic identity, as nation - thus so much military bases are built, indigenous peoples' death in defense of sacred mountains, so many generations of wars because of fatherland motherland histories that have not been healed and are carried over again and again in new forms of conflict.There has to be some common ground, a common language the earth can heal and help people transcend... the common ground is the soil beneath us, our shared resources, our shared identity with the earth body. ......the environmental component in the peace agendas. I believe its the common ground that can unite all in transcending the barriers. The elements of the earth are the third space where people can dialogue and overcome.

While I ponder on these questions, I decided to move to an ecovillage in Palawan called Maia Earth Village. I wanted to see holistic and integral way of addressing transformation. I realized after all these years, I have been focused so much on the doing and less on the Knowing and Being. For now, the Earth is my school, my Masters degree is documenting and writing 10 years of modules and activities with my self, communities, leaders through artmaking. My intention to continue my Masters Degree is there but for now, essential life questions are needing to be looked at. 

I have lots to share on how my journey from Switzerland has turned out. I went to Sri Lanka to undergo a training on interfaith education for children. I finally fulfilled the dream of doing art with UNICEF. I have shared presence with so many indigenous elders during a 492 year old peace pact reaffirmation and a School of Living Traditions conference on indigenous knowledge, systems, and practices. I shared my experience on art and peacebuilding for the Asia - Europe Alumni University forum on peacebuilding. I did lots and lots of mandalas and art as ritual spaces for indigenous wisdom gatherings and workshops. 

I am coming full circle with my own inner peace while healing with my old childhood wounding. I am now facing a deep process while my mother undergoes her own healing from cervical cancer, an acquired condition from so many unhealed parts of herself as this has never been in my family's genetic history. It is becoming a purging and healing experience. So much life wisdom is flowing.

There’s so many stories to share especially the development of two projects - Project Rainbow and Green Relief Initiative. I will write more soon as soon as I’m done with my portfolio website.
This blog too will change its design and format. How it will look like and how the stories will be shared is still being observed in its highest potential. 

Thank you so much for continuing to witness me in my life journey through this blog. 

Piece by Peace

I've been in the Refusal of the Call recently, a stage in Joseph Campbell's Monomyth particularly with this art for peacebuilding calling as part of my life - work. I felt I could turn it down and I could choose not to do it as I value integrity in my process particularly with inner peace as I come to terms with heavy release and healing work these last two years. 

Children, guided dream messages, and what is possible for new ways of healing and transforming the self, community, and the earth have always been there to remind me that what I need to speak about is already from within - what I experience, what the people I know have already done, and most importantly what important life lessons are there to share about the whole story of creative peacebuilding. 

Up to the last minute resisted but on the day of the talk fully embraced for this has always been not entirely about myself but something bigger at work. I spoke  about Art for Peacebuilding for the Asia - Europe Foundation University Alumni Network's (ASEFUAN) annual conference and meeting last August 1 at the Ateneo de Manila University. 

Here's the link to the conference overview:

11th ASEFUAN Academic Conference and Annual General Meeting: Conflict Transformation and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes in Asia and Europe

Here's the link to the program:
http://www.asefuan.org/docs/agm2012_programme_public.pdf

I felt that talking about art based peacebuilding was not enough. I'm a firm believer of experience in the work. I asked the organizers to allow me to set up an experiential artmaking process. They gladly accommodated my request to be designed alongside their photo exhibit entitled Shared Heritage: As We See It. The photographs are part of a traveling exhibit featuring the works of European and Asian delegates of last year's ASEF University program. 

Alongside, I set up Piece by Peace: Weaving Shared Heritage and Shared Future an interactive "tapestry" making installation.

Piece by Peace is an interactive artmaking installation inspired by the indigenous weaving traditions around the world. Tapestries are transformed into clothing that serve as social and political identities symbolizing uniqueness and diversity. It symbolizes IDENTITY as what causes some conflict in many parts of the world. Reframing this old way into reconnecting to the essence of the cloth as an interwoven process of many elements, it becomes a process that engages more than one person in dialogue with the other. The whole process emphasized Co-Creation within Third Space between Self and Other and Self as Other in a Shared Space. 

Because its a contemporary piece inspired by the traditional craft of weaving, it is a space where Past and Future meet - where Shared Heritage and Shared Future create a Third Space for dialogue. 

Mangyan and Maguindanao weave lead the way to a path of peace, followed by new ways of weaving stories and peacemaking together as symbolized by new patterns (Photo by Louise Far)

A long blank tapestry of boxes divided into two is a continuation of traditional weaves. As visitors of go around the photo exhibits, they will find elements that are a response or symbolic of the photo panels that they can collect and bring into the tapestry. Working as a dyad in front of someone, they start engaging in a dialogue process of artmaking - combining their elements together to create a new mandalic pattern based on the principles of order, balance, and harmony.

Cross-Cultural interaction with natural elements, fabric paint, feathers, leaves, etc. ( Photo by Louise Far)

Gratitude to the dream messages about this tapestry. 

One was of a woman wearing a large cloak with an image of a woman on its design indicating its source from the Talmud. Another was of young people protesting about a violent massacre and their young spokesperson talking about the nature of things and the many layers that provide meaning to it. 

EartHeart Wisdom

That's me near the horizon dancing to the Spring Equinox Sunset at the beach near Maia. A beautiful release after throwing up on the beach as part of my raw food detox. Photo by Doreen Jose

I love this image above. Its exactly how the beach near Maia Earth Village looks like and how a rainbow shone on this part as I was swimming toward shore.

It has been a long journey. The storms have been beautiful and have forced me to stay indoors and lock myself within... and I am I am I am so grateful to the beautiful cave I've lived in for two years now.  The sun is about to shine soon and the rainbow will paint the sky. Painting my cave walls some love and gratitude.





This blog will be transforming as www.eartheartwisdom.com.
My life-work portfolio will be moved to www.createartheart.org.

One Peace at a Time. 

Sprouting.

Giving Birth.

Soon :-)

Aurora

Fetus and Dragon Sunrise,  Palawan 2012

Spiritual growth is so much the artist’s journey. Our inner world is soul art, our lives its heartfelt canvas. Like true artists, we have to find that delicatebalance between willfulness and surrender—whento act, when to still. We have to allow our form tochange as intuition demands. Home is where the art is. Chaotic Magnificence… - Jeff Brown

It's 3 am. I just came out from a bad flu.  My eyes are a bit bruised but I'm wide awake from all the sleeping for the last 3 days to recover. I shouldn't keep my eyes open yet something from the tradition of storytellers that document the stories of humanity urged me to write.

When I was in gradeschool, I used to wake up to a dawn procession called the Aurora which my Lola (grandmother) would join in from her living room. She would light a candle and open her windows. I would stay still in my bed or join her and curl up with her on her rocking chair often in awe at this dawn time ritual with people carrying a statue of Mary with candles, rosary beads, and flowers.

This Aurora ritual has never left me.

In my university days, I would be able to study for my exams with a clear head at this time of dawn after an early evening's rest. Years on, I would find that the best time to work on my paintings is at this beautiful time.

At about 3 am is also the time when I would wake up with deep epiphanies, my own conversations with God. I haven't talked to God lately. I have broken up with him many times over the last two years as I did my inner work. But this early morning, I found myself just like in my early 20s waking up at this time feeling the embrace of the universe. I cried like I never cried before but also just cried like I did before. However this one is new. I was finally releasing deep anger at God.

I once asked elders who God was when I was young and I was warned not to question God's identity as it will be considered blasphemous. Having followed different yoga, tantra, and mystical paths since I was 17, I thought I had some kind of idea who this being was.

Who is God is a clear voice within me now ungraspable but graspable. But that's just who s/he is as s/he has always been. Sometimes this is a love-hate relationship. I hate the silence. I loved the signs. I hate the new direct messages. I love the affirmations. I hate the dark night of the soul. I loved the epiphanic break throughs like this one. Just like this - heart opening, tear-jerking release. It's a dance of call and answer.

Maybe its the chaotic magnificence as Jeff Brown says. Maybe its kundalini rising as my friend and inner dance teacher Pi would say. All I know is that its all part of my own shifting. I have to thank myself for the huge leaps I've done over the last two years. Saturn return: your orbiting journey is almost done.

I haven't been awake at this time with a good rest behind me. Most often lately its the time that I would catch some sleep. It's really a nice feeling to be in this peaceful zone. While studying an introduction to the I-Ching and oriental cosmology, I learned that this time is the spring time where wood energy prevails, a time that monks find best to wake up and meditate. The day actually begins here.

Maybe this is a trailmarker for a new day. 3 days of flu broken at 3 am on the 3rd day.
Not bad for a mini resurrection.

But then again, everyday, we die and get reborn again. It's a matter of how much one pays attention to this process. It may not be related but it's interesting how the recent shootings in Aurora, Colorado showed the Dark Knight movie. Maybe its saying that the dark night comes in tandem with the breaking of dawn.

Many say we are entering a time of great change and this change involves all these inner shiftings and lots and lots of dark nights. It is in these dark times when we are meant to shine our light for ourselves and for everybody.

Taking it one rebirth at a time.

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” - Rabindranath Tagore

This large angel cloud appeared above Sunday's prayer vigil in Aurora, Colorado. Photo by Crystal Fuller as shared by
Angel Intuitive Doreen Virtue

_____________
Now as Jack Kornfield says "After Ecstacy, the Laundry" : What to do with 3 days of backlog to wrap up an aid report, prepare for an international conference, and finish a mural for a streetchildren shelter?

Bathala Na. Bathalanawa.

Seeds of Dreams

I was going through my Father's stash of photos today while celebrating his birthday at his new house. Found these 3 photos that I've been looking for memorable snapshots of.

It was only when I got home that I realized the significance of these 3 images. I'd love to believe that the seeds of dreams have been planted more than 2 decades ago shaping the path leading me to a life work of art within the earth and heart :-)

Heart Angel for Flores de Mayo (1985), Earth worker harvesting beans at my mother's farm (1985), Little Artist  on my first  painting workshop (1988)

My Feet as Compass

When we walk like (we are running), we print anxiety and sorrow on the earth. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the earth... Be aware of the contact between your feet and the earth. Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

Two weeks ago, I joined the 3rd Kapwa Conference. It was an international gathering and symposium for Schools of Living Traditions and an academic conference on indigenous knowledge, systems, and practices. This was held at Baguio City, Philippines from June 25-July 2. 

The view from my apartment facing the Alpine Glaciers from last year's summer program (L)
The beautiful Baguio horizon, pine trees, plus freezing hands and feet (uncaptured) (R) 

Upon arriving, I immediately got the cosmic joke - I was in a parallel dimension! There are important reasons behind why I was in a gathering of indigenous elders, wisdom and culture bearers, artists, and healers and not in my Graduate School's campus on the Alpine mountains for the 2nd year of my Masters summer program. I am in the process of outlining them out for formal purposes (updating my donors and supporters for one) but the pine trees and the freezing mountain weather were enough to remind me about my true intentions for being where I was and not somewhere else. Knitted mittens, layered clothing; pine trees; and staying at a European styled apartelle were enough to tell me there is no difference: both places taught about transformation inside the earth, heart, and art school - only that its taught by ancient wisdom bearers 6 hours ahead and probably hundreds of feet lower in altitude. 

On the last day of the conference, a gathering of organizers, volunteers, and guests took place at the house of one of the conference co-founders- the amazingly inspiring Katrin de Guia. An inspiring speaker and advocate of indigenous knowledge applied in expressive arts therapy Mila Anugluan- Coger led a circle of dreamweaving as we shared our reflections together. Looking back, it was healing for me to participate in this circle and interact with her as she is taking her Ph.D in Expressive Arts Therapy at Lesley University where most of my professors at the European Graduate School teach too. So it also felt that I was still in the same classroom up in Switzerland despite that I was really thousands of miles away. 

Together as a circle, we did some toning and came up with a beautiful spirit song which I recorded for us to remember by. 






Escaping to a garden outside the house, I spent some time to put into words what I experienced. I ended up finding a perfectly shaped circle blister on my left foot and drew a red simple mandalic flower sun design around it. Perhaps it was truly what "embodied knowing," an indigenous wisdom in practice, truly meant. The sacred most often speaks in symbols first then it is our human gifts that shape them into language, culture, and meaning. I honor the sacred wisdom the unspoken is "trying to say." Maybe I'll let my feet do the talking :-)

To this day, I am still listening on how to put my reflections and learnings to share together. This is starting to become more of a normal process for me after a deeply moving experience. It's not about being with more than 30 tribes from all over my country and around the world that dumbfounded me but its about how our shared humanity and shared divinity reflected through the universal yet uniquely expressed symbols, myths, metaphor and  wisdom continue to reveal themselves in my thoughts and interactions with nature, conversations, places up to now. In short, its speaking to me in so many levels particularly about how and where my life-work will take shape. Maybe that's what the message of the circular blister on my left foot is about. I'm still boggled as to why my right foot doesn't have one as I was wearing a matched pair of hiking sandals the whole time. Interestingly, my left foot bears my  only birthmark: some brown freckled speckles sprinkled across my foot. Perhaps this is a mythological Achilles heel story that I have yet to discover.

Time is also a factor for the sharing while I balance my commitments with packing (or rather unpacking as I'm letting go of so many things and attachments (materially and metaphorically) for Maia Earth Village. I have to finish a temp job for a bilateral aid program to support me financially. Most urgently, I am preparing for a presentation and an interactive art installation on art and peacebuilding for an upcoming 11th ASEFUAN Annual Academic Conference and General Meeting on Conflict Transformation and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes in Asia and Europe in August.

So for now, I'm sharing photos of my beautiful experience through this Facebook Album: Kapwa Dreamweaving and this beautiful video of Maria Oyog Todi, a T'boli elder and culture bearer guiding me and a Japanese guest on how to dance their dance. The T'bolis were one of the first indigenous groups that inspired me about the sacred process of artmaking. Weavers wait for a dream to guide them on a design to be woven on their Tinalak cloth. Thus, they are called "Dreamweavers." 

Maybe the feet's message was made for dancing first! More deep reflections to come.