The Experiment: Day 18 ~ Potent Possibilities Abundant…


One of the most thrilling sights to me are poppy pods, the dried seedpods of the poppy. They look and feel like old, dried twigs, the pods themselves feel light and hollow, but those seedpods are filled with hundreds of poppy seeds. One seedpod could plant a whole garden of poppies. Contained in the most humble of nature’s true miracles are what I have always called “potent possibilities abundant.” There is no end to the magic that can be created from these poppy seeds. They are a glory beyond compare, and so, too, are there potent possibilities abundant in life. And many of them have “seeds” in front of us every day but they are so humble, often non-descript, everyday ordinary things we look right past them, often feeling lost, and forlorn, sometimes even hopeless when the tools are there to begin again.

What if you started by keeping a pad of paper and a pen or pencil by you all day. When you feel stuck, or forlorn, what if you just sat there and doodled. I don’t mean something whose intention is to become a work of art, no, I mean just doodling, shapes, stick figures, random patterns. The moment you start to move the pen across the paper something happens in your brain, you are creating, it can lead all kinds of places.

Or what if you kept a pile of old magazines and had a “cut and paste day.” I’ve written about this before. I keep magazines, glue sticks, scissors, an x-acto knife, nearby, and days when I am just lost I can rip the magazine apart, page by page (very satisfying, the act of destruction followed by an act of creation) and then cut out images, words, or phrases that mean something to you, spark something in you, make you smile. My friend Katya does amazingly beautiful collages in her journals. I do them in mine sometimes, but you know what you can do? You can go to the Dollar store and buy a package of kids construction paper, the kind that is cheap and comes in all kind of colors. You can just take one sheet in a color that sings to you and make a collage on that. You can make lots of collages like that and hang them up around the house.

Some days all you want to do is rip the pages out, one by one, cut out things you might want to use one day, and put the pieces in envelopes. A large legal sized envelope for bigger pictures or whole pages, smaller letter sized envelopes for words. You can collect these things so when you feel like collaging you’ve got pieces ready. And making a collage can help you work things out for yourself in your mind, or just create a colorful, creative picture that lights you up. What if one day you just sat for an hour tearing apart a magazine and cutting out a pile of words and images that caught your attention. Synapses are lighting up in your brain. Now glue them all down in any random fashion and look at it. Out of thousands of possibilities in one magazine you chose these things. What does that mean? You can write a story and include everything you have glued down in some way in your story. It can be funny, fun, or deep and thoughtful. The brain is full of potent possibilities abundant and the more we use these areas of our brain the more we awaken creativity inside of us, the more we bring creativity alive in our lives. I am going to do this myself. As I said the other day, in the “I don’t know what I think till I see what I say” frame of mind, the images that interest you enough to have you cut them out and paste them down are saying something to you. Look at a whole page of these things that you’ve glued down. I’m telling you, there is magic there.

Can you take a look around your house today? Go room by room, peek in closets and drawers, be a detective, have a scavenger hunt, and find all kinds of little things that interest you. In the process those synapses will be firing in your brain again. You can make a list, room by room, of things that you find so you won’t forget they are there, or you can take some things you find and put them all on a table. Why these things, why now? They are speaking to you for a reason. What can you do with them? I’d really like to know if you do this? Leave me notes in the comments about what you find and what you decide to do. THAT would light ME up! I love for you to share with me. I want us to become a community, taking time to leave comments, reading the comments of others, being inspired by other people living their lives and doing things that help them can be life-changing for us.

That’s it for me today. Today I go to my appointment to have my meds checked, but this evening I am going to cut apart at least one magazine, I am going to fill a page with words and images, and I am going to see what makes my synapses light up. There’s a story there. Tell me your stories. And doodle! Let’s get our brains glowing, lit up, engaged. Draw me a picture. Doesn’t that feel good?

Love to one and all. You matter to me, you really do, thank you for being here with me on this journey…

 

The Experiment ~A 365 Day Search For Truth, Beauty &
Happiness: 
Day 1 ~ Introduction To The Project
“Do or do not. There is no try.”
Yoda

Comments

  1. Claudine Denert says

    Hi Maitri, ripping a magazine a part will have to wait until tomorrow… It’s evening here… And I am kind of tired. But I have again a project on my mind that involves ripping up magazines… I need to stop at the thrift shop tomorrow to get some very cheap specific magazines… And I will be ripping it up, cutting it to pieces… But always with the creation of something brand new on my mind…
    Thanks Maitri for being here again today… Big hugs…

    • Oh Claudia honey, I can’t wait to see what you create. This is so exciting! Just do it when you feel like it. You can send it to me on Messenger on Facebook or email it to me. I think every new way we get our synapses firing we begin a journey into out whole new way of being. Hurrah! Onwards and upwards sister. Let’s do this together!!! 😀

  2. how synchronistic! i am having a collage event at my home tomorrow – five “creative artist sister goddesses” — inotherwords, friends, are coming over to play with scissors, rubber cement, magazines and construction paper. i used to have a collage session in every long-term creative journal (or lifestories) class i taught. the creative spark and the visual reward is SO SATISFYING. so thank you for “touting” (“tooting???”) collage in your happiness blog today. i hope your many readers respond with glee to the assignment… i’ll be thinking of you maitri during our 2-4 playtime tomorrow. maybe anyone reading this can join us “virtually” — for one big orgy of creation… YES! xo ka

    • My darling Ka, how exciting!!! And if you ever have some kind of event online that people can sign up for to work with you PLEASE let me know so I can share it here on my blog and on Facebook (I have nearly 5000 followers so it could reach a lot of people.) I love you sweet pea, ONE BIG ORGY OF CREATION, INDEED!!!!! 😀

  3. Maitri, I love the idea of this. Having consolidated to a smaller place a couple of years ago, as you know, I went through a very deliberate process of deciding what I could keep and what needed to shed, both in a clutter-reduction mode, but also very much in a “is it useful, does it make me happy, does it have meaning?” – sort of way.

    In recent months, as we’re doing home exchanges now, there’s been another interesting layer added — why do I have this tattered old potholder? Why don’t we use our nice plates? Etc. It’s provided a totally different lens, looking from a fellow home owner’s perspective about what you see in your own space. The beauty of it has been that, although we’ve never been untidy, particularly, it’s totally streamlined, again, how we live, and has me wiping down the drawers and inside the refrigerator and making sure the spices are up to date, and everything is especially clean, while we’re away (and another couple is in our house). And I’ve never been a house caretaker sort of person, interestingly.

    When we leave our HomeExchange partners houses, too, I find myself tidying, cleaning, etc. in ways I never had before (dust on top of the spice jars, gone! – for example).

    How curious.

    There are so many things in our house that make me happy to look at. They’re the survivors of the curating process, I guess.

    • Lisa, I find this home exchange thing absolutely fascinating! What adventures you must have had! And I love you finding things in your house that make you happy, you know I think we all have them and forget about them. In these hard times I have found myself “shopping for gifts” in my very own home. Things that were never used, things other people have enjoyed. And something so fascinating to me about “the curating process.” I’d love to hear more from you along the way as you find “new” things in your own home that make you happy. Such a wonderful concept! Take care honey, I’m sending you love and a hug…

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