Counting Down

Count down has commenced for my final days as a permanent stall holder at The Fremantle Markets.  One of the benefits though, is that as the conversations unfold, new ideas emerge about how I will use my fantastic new space at Cell 18 in the Old Fremantle Gaol.  In recent weeks several FIFO workers have ventured in, all artists in nature and often profession, all looking for some way to keep their art alive whilst out on site and also when they have returned to city life.

So I am thinking that one of the initiatives I could create is a FIFO Artists' circle scheduled each week in which we can play with journalling, both visual and verbal.  Journals are a great, cheap, portable way of giving expression to the imagination, feelings and thoughts.  This concept needs to be developed but in the meantime I am recommending two great books to my FIFO customers.  Part of my reason for having a variety of books on the stall is to offer different points of entry for people to get engaged with journalling without feeling overwhelmed. These two are two of the best. They are Journal Spilling by Diana Trout and The Journal Junkies Workshop by E. Scott and D. Modler.

I have said more about these books on my other blog space www.georgina-mavor.blogspot.com.  That blog goes beyond art and craft for creative purposes into its connections and life affirming relationship to our mental health and spiritual makeup.  It represents more of the bigger picture - something that will unfold with my move to Cell 18.  With more time at hand my writing, creative and circle work will expand.  Roll on end July.

End July 2012

The time has come for me to move on into the next phase of my life and so The Paper Muse will complete it's life at The Fremantle Markets, end July 2012.  I am moving into the unknown and on this occasion it all feels very right.  Professional premises are currently under negotiation, fresh new 'circles' are being developed, blogs are being posted under www.georgina-mavor.blogspot.com and I am packing away my bookmaking supplies.  So make the most of the time I have left at Fremantle to purchase papers and journals.  After end July I have thrown caution to the wind!

Journalling Groups Term II 2012

In addition to my regular Wednesday morning journalling circle at The Meeting Place in Hilton I have created a new group to be conducted within my home in Spearwood.  Commencing Wednesday 2 May to 4 July 2012 (10 weeks) it will run from 11.30 am to 1.00 pm.  The cost is $135 if payment is made up front for the entire 10 weeks or $15 per session if people wish to participate on a casual basis.  Included in the cost is a visual diary for everyone and creative materials when visual prompts are used.  Everyone will need to bring along their own personal journal and writing tools.

Each week I will introduce a structured journalling exercise and we will see where it leads.  Whether you are an experienced journaller or a novice, join me in nourishing time out and reap the benefits that come from settling the mind, tapping into inner wisdom and igniting latent creativity.  For further information and registration contact me, Georgina, on 0417 949 179.

The Power of Within to Create

An unseen web of thought operates behind what we call life.  I'm convinced of it.  It amazes me how many times I notice that I write "I would like ..." and within a matter of days I find myself flow writing in response to an event in my life or some thinking that has crossed my mind and what is revealed in that writing is directly related to the request I made days before.

Like the time I did the "I want ..... " 100 times exercise.  (Must be done in one sitting.  Essentially a list with each point commencing with the words "I want ...".  The trick is to write, don't censor, write what comes to you, repeat yourself if that's what comes, give yourself the freedom to write whatever comes to mind and don't stop until you reach 100.  Something in that list will feel qualitatively different.  Use it as a journaling prompt and flow write.)  It was a shock to me to find the words "I want to let go of the remorse in my heart."  I was thinking my list would primarily be about my work or my parenting but not about love gone wrong.  A lot of 'letting go' or 'release' surfaced in  that list.  36 hours later a senario presented itself to me that was to change my relationship to 'love gone wrong' forever.  In an instant of facing 'love gone wrong' my thinking shifted about the place of pain in our lives.  I shifted, my whole being shifted, for the first time in my life I had emotional freedom and compassion at the same time.  It was  a huge shift.  It was not old thoughts that needed releasing, it was the clarity slumbering within that needed 'releasing' and liberation into my consciousness and therefore my life.   I am experiencing the effects of that liberation more and more each day, broadening way beyond 'love gone wrong' to anyone innocently caught up in their thinking.

When I did the "100 times" exercise, it was in one of my journalling circles.  After I had read out the poignant entries a member of the circle asked what I would do to make that deeper truth come true.  My response was "nothing".  I would simply observe how the words that had come, that truer depth from within, would play out.  3 days later my 'call' was answered.

More recently my writing has 'honed in' on being present, of knowing where I am and what I am doing in the moment, instead of getting lost in my habitual thinking.  I have written in response to 'bigger' prompts like 'Who am I?' 'Why am I here?' and 'What do I want?' or I've simply written my journal as diary of my day noting what I did, who I met, etc. etc.  I found this style of writing real 'feet on the ground' stuff, allowing me to 'see' how I was living my life, much like reading an autogiography.  It also allowed me to see the 'hubris' I often innocently create about my life and life in general.

A week ago I wrote the words  "I want a more intimate experience of thought from the Divine" (accessible from within).  Again I find myself very unexpectedly being attracted to that theme in my writing, in my observation of myself and in my observation of others around me.  I do not consciously take my thinking to this topic but in the moment words start pouring out of me I know they are related to the desire that revealed itself last week.  When I start my journal writing, the thoughts dominating my mind are usually ongoing ones.  But from deep within me, my soulful request for greater intimacy with thought from the Divine is being answered - and depth bubbling up through the hubris.

My observation is that if we tap into thought at the core of our being ... the noticing of it, brings it to life in our life.  Conscious 'seeing' releases 'truth' from inner depth out into the world.  I don't know how the Law of Attraction works nor the secret behind The Secret.  But it seems to me that underneath the surface of living there is a powerful, mostly unseen web of truth, or thought that runs through everyone, ready to support our living if only we pay a little attention.  My hope is that journalling can be a vehicle for many to realise the depths at the core of their being.  They just have to be willing to look, willing to liberate from within.

Truth or Fiction ... and Blossoming

Recently I have had cause to reality test my thinking - and therefore my feeling state.  A couple of 'occurrences' captured my attention.  (For those of you not familiar with how the human psyche-ology works, thought is a spiritual - creative, energetic - gift with which we have been graced so that we may create and navigate our lives.  And, the quality of thought moving through us in any moment is what creates our feelings and emotional states.) 

In the first scenario I kept feeling as if I didn't know what to do next to take my life, particularly my working life forward.  When caught up in this thinking I was plagued by a feeling of anxiety.  In another scenario I was persistently feeling harried and exhausted with everything I had to do in my life, particularly as most of it appeared to be done for others rather than for myself.  In this train of thought I continually felt lethargic and exhausted.  The fact is that both these feeling states were caused by my thinking  - and without awareness of the creative power of thought, all thought seems real - we have not been raised to question its validity.  But then the thought crossed my mind "Were my feelings an accurate response to the machinations of my life or was my thinking in some way constricted and inaccurate thereby warping my feeling state?"  It was time to check their validity.

In the first scenario I took a blank page in my journal and wrote down every fresh thought that had surfaced about possible actions I could initiate to enliven and develop my business further.  To my surprise my list was quite extensive and I had in fact alrady completed several of the fresh ideas I had listed.  Wow, I was a bit shocked.  Instead of staying focussed on the fresh thinking that had emerged in my mind, I had remained stuck on a narrow train of old and staid thought.  Instead of feeling the freshness and possibility of the new thoughts I had innocently dismissed them and returned to 'old news' and reaped the anxiety that came with it.

I was then inspired to examine my feelings of exhaustion.  Sure, with a child, a home and a business to run, there is not a lot of time 'spare' in which to do nothing.  But was it true that none of my time was devoted to me?  Was my constant feeling state an accurate reflection of the ebbs and flows of my life or was I again falling innocent victim to narrow and habitual trains of thought?

An interesting truth was revealed in my journalling on this one.  As it turns out a lot of what I do is for me!  More deeply than that, a lot of what I do in my life 'is me'!  Nearly everything that I do has surfaced from within the core of my being and I enjoy those things - because they are me.  Which of course makes sense, if we are doing what unfolds from the core of our being then this is who we are and will naturally bring joy - the core of our being is joy!  In doing what comes from the core of our being we are experiencing our true self - who we really are - unless of course we get distracted via our thinking - and then we would experience that.

So then I asked the question "What else would I like to be doing for me?"  The answer came that instead of picking 'things' to do, I simply had to keep listening for the fresh thoughts that surfaced from wthin me, to see them, write about them if I so chose and do them.  The word 'blossoming' surfaced.  All I had to do was keep 'blossoming' and my cup would overfloweth with joy and enthusiasm for life.

The power of that word.  BLOSSOMING. Feels completely different to 'working out', 'working harder' or even 'working differently'.  My experience of life had got a bit derailed with those two old trains of thought I identified.  How curtailed and therefore inaccurate that thinking was.  But in reflecting further upon my feeling states and their relationship to my thinking, I got something even greater - an opening into seeing more deeply the core of my being, my uniqueness and how easy it is to unfold that.  Being open to within is all that matters.

The Colour of Angels

Gee, such a great journalling circle this morning, not sure whether to put this post in this blog or my other one about Inner Wisdom http://www.georgina-mavor.blogspot.com/. As the group settled in we about the Jewish religion.  I asked what made it different.  As part of the answer I learned that the Jewish people were chosen to protect the Word of God.  This was interesting.  I know about the power of the Word.  I feel for it when I write.  What was revealed in our writing was even more interesting.

We decided to tackle some pretty heavy feelings and habits, including deep lethargy almost somnolence, the other being ongoing intolerance and general crankiness.  I know from my deepening in the nature of Thought, that in any moment we are LIVING our THINKING!  i.e. that in any moment the feelings and degree of vitality we are experiencing are directly related to the quality of thought permeating our Being in the moment.  With such deep, entrenched and stagnant feelings, the question for me was which way to go with our writing?

Deep feelings need deep questions if we are to release the inactive enlivening thought.  "Who am I?"  "Why am I here?"  and "What do I want?" were the journalling scaffolds for some.  I started with "What I Know" about the state of Being I wanted to explore.  We had our points of entry - rather like diving off a diving board - I felt for angles that would allow clean entry to engaging with depth.  We wrote for an hour and by the way our pens were scurrying we could probably have written for another.  The 'rules of engagement' were to follow our thoughts, to give ourselves the freedom to allow them to flow, to trust the process of Thought - if given the space it will always move towards LIGHT. When working with the 3 questions it is useful to keep repeating the question and if necessary to answer each time from a completely different angle. The 3 Questions platform is a more structure and contained platform. This approach loosens up the restrictions we can place on ourselves when we aren't used to allowing ourselves freedom of thought ... of flow.  In starting with "What I Know" platform I knew I had to really follow thought as it surfaced.  None of us knew the answers to our dilemmas  - a bit anxiety provoking in itself.  But if we allowed faith and trust to guide us, we would be well rewarded.

Whatever was in that room today, it really hummed!  We were well rewarded.  What was revealed was the presence of a black thought in each of our Beings.  A thought so deep and murky and negative about ourselves it was like mud.  We didn't actually articulate the content of it (no need) but we did sense it's presence. We also entertained what we truly wanted - those thoughts I imagined as being orange in colour.  Orange is the colour of healing so any thoughts that were contrary to the blackness of death had to be orange!  And there was the gap, the existence of a thought dark and oppressive, and the posing of thoughts that reflect a different state of being - but how to shift our Beings out of the oppressiveness and into the light?  And in they came - questions and ideas of the colour green - Angels!  Questions that asked "but is this true?", questions that asked whether to explore the black or follow the orange.  And in responding to those green questions and ideas, purple wisdom flooded in.  "Follow the orange, forget the black!"  "Go on that holiday, it makes sense!"  Wisdom from the purple was individual and accurate, Truth hears Truth.

And then the connections between our earlier conversation about the Word all came together.  One of the group members recalled  "If you don't believe, you"ll never see."  Spiritual beings don't exist simply in metaphor.  They exist in the Word - and they have colour.  When journal writing, see the thoughts you are living, feel their sense of vitality and whether they might be black, orange, green or purple.  Don't reject any of them for fear of exploring - reveal them, be courageous.  And listen/feel for the green ones - the questions and thoughts that open up, don't toss them aside or ignore them.  Articulate your thoughts and then look at them.  Sense those that will lead you to greener pastures.  More and more I am seeing that we are always supported to move through life, ebbing, flowing and changing with it contours and pathways.  But we have to wake up, see, and re-member again.  You only experience the thought in your Being.  See it with the respect and awe it deserves, not as some intrinsic quality of you but as a power flowing through you (and everyone) and which we can consciously engage.  The Angels truly do speak to us - just have a look at your green thoughts!

Exciting New Recycled Things!

Lots of new things added to my stall!
First up, is the fantastic collection of greeting and gift cards plus wrapping paper from Blueberry Cards. All are produced on 100% recycled post consumer waste.

This coming weekend sees two new additions.  Cards from Gaby at Stilelemente, completely different to Blueberry cards but once again on 100% post consumer waste papers.

Based on the ABC children's show by the same name my second new addition is the dirt girl range of cards and birthday invitations from Earth Greetings.  Not only on 100% post consumer waste paste but also containing a message about the value of our earth to all our young people.



I am really excited to be stocking a wonderful range of Australian made and designed 100% recycled products. When I first began importing handmade sustainable papers it was a concern for our environment that sparked that initiative.  Over a decade later I am now very pleased to be stocking Australian products concerned for the environment.