Shadow Work October

After a month without challenges I felt like participating with the "Shadow Work October Challenge" by Mnomquah on Instagram. She has come up with a question or assignment for each day of October, related to working with shadow parts of ourselves. We start with checking in with ourselves by making a mandala: “who Am I” at October 1th  and evaluating the challenge by making another mandala “Who have I become”. At the end of the month.

Who am I

Making  the first mandala felt so great. It has been a long time since I have created something with my watercolors.

Of course everyone can do this challenge for himself and you don’t need to be on IG to participate.  Mnomquah even insisted on the following:

“If you feel like any of the questions/tasks are pretentious, triggering in an unbearably negative way or too personal -- feel free to stop at any time into the process; share publically as little/much as you feel comfortable with.”

Reading this made me feel very comfortable to join in. I feels less obligated to finish this challenge or to post a picture each day on IG. I am planning on posting parts of this challenge on my blog and if you want to see more of it please check my Instagram widget in the right upper corner

Diving for Light

For today I've pulled “Diving for Light” from the Sacred Rebels Oracle. We see a beautiful dressed and coiffured lady, who has taken the leap and plunged herself into the waters of her subconscious. She has wheat in her hear and seahorses as adornments. For me it says that she is still awake and aware while being guided on her spiritual journey.

This card calls us to find our inner Light deep inside us, in places where we will expect to find them the least: In the dark corners of your heart, in the shadows of your soul and the cobwebs in your mind. The places you've “forgotten” all about but still have a strong grip on you during your daily life. Each difficult experience and period of your life brings also gifts beside the grief and the hurt they carry. All too often these gifts get overlooked because we are so busy trying to coop, to forget or to repress.To discover  them we have to find the courage to dive deep, to accept the darkness, embrace the pain and gather the gifts.

Yesterday I felt inspired by Kerry’s post on Neopagan Priestess where she told us she was inspired by me talking about mandala’s.  Right there and then I picked up a piece of paper and started drawing too. First I drew three concentric circles and a few lines as guidelines but  I found the courage to skip the drawing of a “perfect” mandala with pencil and started right away with paint and crayons and colored pencils. It was so much fun to do . 

Feeling creatively blocked is kind of a dark place for me. Not feeling good enough, feeling unsecure and afraid of failing is always lurking in the corner of my mind. I feel like I have dived deep and found a little fearless gem by making this mandala. J

Creating a Tarot Mandala around the Seven of Cups

This morning, when I was driving home after visiting my husband, I was thinking about this reoccurring theme in my daily draws: “Dream, dream,  dream….”

I thought it might be a good idea to play around with this theme and see what would come up. First I started to write down everything I wanted in life. And I wrote quickly without censoring. Next I grouped similar wants and needs together, making small clusters. For  the more abstract dreams I added some practical implementations:  For instance living a creative life will require some practice and dedication on my side.

Then the fun part came: Creating the mandala. I used the Morgan Greer Tarot for its beautiful simplicity, bright colors and up close imagery. (You can imagine what this mandala would have looked like if I had used the Joie de Vivre tarot  J)

I flipped through the deck several times, pulled out a few cards out, put others back again and so on. And all this while putting them in some kind of layout. I deliberately choose the Four Queens  with their Aces for the corners of my Mandela as an indication of my strive to become a more balanced woman. The rest of the cards are my hopes, my dreams and my challenges....