Is Your Past Tripping Up Your Future?

A very common condition

AttitudeAre you living in the past, rehashing past traumas and situations?  Do you feel like you want to let go but just can’t?

“Whether you are experiencing regret, sorrow, guilt, shame or a number of other lower vibrational anxieties, you need to let go and detach.”

So many people live this way and can’t seem to move on.  When you find your mind wandering to situations or incidents that have happened, you are living in the past.  Whether you are experiencing regret, sorrow, guilt, shame or a number of other lower vibrational anxieties, you need to let go and detach.

Detaching from your past

This time of the year sometimes gives rise to uncomfortable ‘quiet moments’ where there is nothing to do and we are faced with the possibility of ‘inner reflection’.  These situations are sometimes mistaken for depression or that feeling of being ‘let down’ by the holidays   for not living up to your expectations, or — perhaps, living up too much to your expectations and now you have nothing to look forward to.  Sound familiar?

“These issues that we sweep under the rug are lessons.”

These times should be taken to explore the residue of past reflections.  Is there something that you have been burying down, deep inside?  Something that yearns to be re-addressed but you simply don’t feel like giving it an audience for fear of having to ‘feel’ all over again?

These issues that we sweep under the rug are lessons.  In order to walk through, or pass, a lesson, we must face it.  This can sometimes be painful but it is necessary.  It may be initially an uncomfortable issue to reconstitute but when you have seen the lesson that you have gleaned from it, you can put it to rest forever.  Never having to face that feeling of unresolved emotion trying to rear its head at you.

“You are always capable of graduating from the class of karma.”

blue butterfly pngWe are here to explore and experience.  Some of these experiences are brought over from past lives or early childhood traumas.  You are always capable of graduating from the class of karma.   You never set up anything for yourself that you cannot handle.  With courage in your toolkit, you can search the hidden meanings of your unresolved issues and find the lessons so that you can graduate to the next level of learning.

You are the driver

Only you can do this as no-one else knows your inner workings.  Never look outside of yourself to anyone or anything to ‘fix’ you.  Only you can do that.  You can seek advice and help along your path but inevitably, you do need to do the work.

“Have both your feet firmly in the present!”

What better way to start the new year than to truly start it afresh?  Face your ‘demons’ with compassion and a yearning to learn from past mistakes and you will be creating a much brighter future for yourself without the need to constantly have one foot in the past.  Have both your feet firmly in the present!

Good luck on your journey into the new year and I wish you all the best life you can possibly dream up for yourself.

Christmas Gift Ideas…Part 2

A little bit of silliness never went astray!

Over the past couple of months my husband and I (no, I am not the queen) have been trying to plant our own vegetable garden.  This is not as simple as it would usually sound as we live near Cape Point and have baboons for neighbours.  And as you can surmise, baboons eat vegetables.

So the plan is to build frameworks with chicken wire around our vege garden to protect it from our hairy adversaries.  A challenge to say the least.

So what has this got to do with art?

Well, during our spates in the garden, we have come up with some witty vegetable ‘catch-phrases’.  I was wondering how to incorporate this new avenue into my art and have come up with a bold solution.

The vegetables have given rise to new unfounded inspiration…(picture opposite – ‘Can you handle me?‘:  Warning!  I come with many different layers…and I can make a grown man cry!!!).  This has led me to create the….*drum-roll*…

The Vege-Tate Gallery

In a moment of pure silliness I invented a joke shop, which I have named The Vege-Tate Gallery, that hosts a number of incredibly cheesy vegetable quotations accompanied by my digital artwork of these tasty morsels.

I wanted to make the designs simple yet effective.  At first I contemplated freehand drawings and then scanning and cropping them into a T-shirt design but decided to go the digital route.

This involved my hand, the mouse and the simple paintbrush program that most Windows packages come with.

I then transfer these crude drawings into Photoshop, where I can put them on a transparent background and ‘clean’ them up.  Finally I add the text and upload it to the site (at the moment I am using RedBubble but you can also do this on Zazzle – see my previous article for all the goodies you can create there).

Voila!

Another gift idea for Christmas in the (shopping) bag…

How can you do this?

If you struggle with the graphics side of things, you can use photographs instead.  Ever taken a funny photo of a child or pet? – well, use that! Everyone has at least one crazy catch-phrase they can use as an excellent and unique gift idea for that someone special.

The wonderful thing about both these sites is you can have the gift sent directly to the person, so it is simply fantastic for those relatives and friends overseas!  No excuses.

Can’t be bothered?

Visit my ever-growing store and have the hassle taken out of Christmas shopping.

This is my first batch of vegetable produce:

Feel free to post some of your creations here for others to see and get ideas from.