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Carol Mackay Mertz Art is a home to Carol’s art, writings, and life processes. It is also a store from which you may buy art, and a number of processes that have been developed into a set of cards, a series of small paintings, and a soon to be published book. There is also a blog which touches the heart of the artist’s life.

For the next little while, I am sharing a new e-book I created. It came from meditation and daily work with my guides. It is called, “The Little Practice Book of Creativity. I will be publishing it soon with more art, so watch here for your very own copy.

Part one…the book of challenges

The challenge is to remember…
who you are without money
who you are without a mirror
who you are without social media

The challenge is to remember …
who you are in the moment of witnessing a sunset
who you are in the moment of witnessing death
who you are in the deepest part of your being where no one else can see.

The challenge is to remember…
that everything is in movement
that breathing is a practice which grants life
that blessing water with love and affection is a sacred practice

The challenge is to remember …
there is no time
beauty is a feeling
life is a decision only you can make for yourself

The challenge is to remember…
perspectives change
the heart creates on a higher level than the brain
infinitely small micro-movements create new worlds

The challenge is to remember …
that unity is not a new concept
that the underlying concept of all successful sustained living systems is cooperation
that balance is the integrative desire of all life

The challenge is to remember…
that words can create or destroy
that intuition is more accurate than the internet
that listening to your body will give you all the information you need to make all kinds of decisions

The challenge is to remember…
that creativity is a human trait we all possess
that creativity is an integral part of evolution
that creativity is non-directional, boundless, and infinite …

The challenge is to remember…
that singing and dancing connect you to your soul
that inner contemplation paves the way for soul conversations
that stillness and silence connect you to All That IS

The challenge is to remember…
that practice of any kind gets you to a new place
that many small movements create a larger movement
that there is always movement; it is inherent in everything…everything…absolutely everything…

The challenge is to remember…
that there is a manual of instructions for “how to be a human” authored by your soul buried within your biological being
that you have access to this manual as a child
that you can regain access to this wisdom through any contemplative practice

The challenge is to remember…
that there are certain rights to being human
that love, liberty, and happiness are but three
that respect for all life, clean water, food, and shelter, are basic to the moral rights of being a living being.

The challenge is to remember…
that life is a cycle which is never ending
that life has a beginning, a middle, and an end
that birth, living, and death belong to everyone and everything
that after the death part of the cycle, the birth part of the cycle happens and on and on

Part Two

Acts of Awakening

This is where we start when creating new worlds for ourselves. We start with the basics, with the inalienable rights of ALL LIVING BEINGS.

We remember the basic, integral understandings of life.

We build on that.

We stand up for kindness, inclusivity, and a higher vibration which gives each living entity the right to be here to get born, to live, and to die in their own time and place.

We start small.
Micro small.
We remember how to feel …good… happy… well.

(This may take some time. There is an uncommon amount of bad, unhappiness, and sickness that is arising in our world at present. When forging your own path towards the more positive aspects of life, take small steps.)

When we find what makes us feel good, happy and well, or even just turns us away from bad, unhappy, and sick, then we take it on the road.

We ACT!

But you must start small. Committing to the practice of small acts of goodness, happiness, and wellness is how you begin. It is important that you remember that they be very small ones, trust me …teeney tiny ones.

Doable acts that come from your own understanding of goodness, happiness, and wellness. These acts are so small that only you know they are happening. Don’t TELL anyone you are practicing micro acts of goodness, happiness, and wellness.

There is no list here or anywhere really, that can give you hints about the kind of micro acts of goodness, happiness, and wellness that you might try for yourself. This is an important micro idea. You have to unlearn a lot of stuff to get down to the feelings of what makes you happy, looking only to yourself to define what happiness is in this moment. That’s why you start small and in the moment.

Check in with yourself on a regular basis about how you feel about this new practice. Be creative….make a list, make a secret symbol only you know what it means, put these symbols on your refrigerator, or your e-calendar, or on your mirror. BUT DON’T TELL A SOUL……your own soul will know.

When you feel ready, make a larger commitment to the “baby step “ level of acting from your very own well of goodness, happiness, and wellness. Someone might see you acting from the baby step level of reclaiming your own birth rights, but just smile and get that really good feeling inside your self that the baby step was noticed.

And don’t be surprised if your baby step was shared by that other person, because your goodness, your happiness, your wellness is a positive vibration in the world that affects others. So if they smile at you, or acknowledge in some human way they perceived your baby step, just FEEL how that feels in the moment. Don’t say a WORD about your practice!

You will eventually move on, when you are ready, to the intermediate level of acts of goodness, happiness, and wellness. This happens in its own time in a natural flow of living. No need to panic about where you are in the levels and layers of your practice, by now it will have taken on a life of it’s own, it will give you a solid place, a platform from which to live and act.

You may, as others have done before you, integrate your practice into your life,
into your family,
into your workplace,
into your community,
even into your nation, your planet, and the cosmos.
But don’t let that daunt you, because that
NEVER HAPPENS RIGHT AWAY.

You have to stabilize and integrate each step before you move on to the next level. Trust me, it is no where near as immediate a leveling up as the computer games you might have played. Life takes time to stabilize and integrate so that what you built within yourself is with you forever. NO ONE can take away an operating system built on goodness, happiness, and wellness.

Besides there is a sweetness to your beginning micro steps that are tender and precious, and that only you know about. It is exactly like planting a seed and watching it emerge from the soil and seeing its tender leaves unfold. How did that happen, that you planted a round seed and this other structure emerged from it? Scientists will tell you it is the DNA in the cells of the seed which informs the other cells to create a new differently shaped life form, and they would be correct, AND the other ingredient is the MYSTERY OF LIFE, the desire for change, the basic drive of creation itself.

So you see little tiny micro movements, little tiny shifts in trajectory, little tiny decisions can change everything. If you want to see change in your life, make conscious decisions to change something. Invent ways to act that require that they come out of a desire to experience goodness, happiness and wellness.

I will add here that my three words are not written in stone. Choose your own concepts and the words which best express what your life is to be about. There are many in this time who might be telling you what your life should be about. They do not have the right to tell you what your life SHOULD BE ABOUT. It just leads to confusion, as you are the one, the ONLY one who directs the course of your life.

Only you get to choose what your life trajectory is to spring from……

In this age of chaos and confusion, the best practice is to build a strong home, a secure platform from which to live your life. Build a place you enjoy, feel at home in, like yourself in. It’s just you and life.

Here is where it gets ironic. Life loves irony. So while it IS just you and it IS you that is creating your life…….you get to do it in relationship with other creator beings. All that stuff about only you create your life is true…AND there are some really great creator beings who might be at a different level of creation than you, and you might like to surf alongside of them for awhile to see how they made their paths, earned their mastery in the life they created for themselves. AND DON’T BE SURPRISED IF THOSE SAME CREATOR BEINGS ARE INTERESTED IN YOUR LIFE AND YOUR CREATIONS. IT HAPPENS, JUST LIKE THAT.

So that is cool, in fact that’s just about the most fun we have here is the learning from others and then applying it to our own creations, our own unique creations.

and no one needs to know, until, of course, they will start noticing how you act in the world. Others will see how happy and well you appear to be. Others will see how happy you make THEM BE, just hanging with them or even standing in line in the grocery store with them. Trust me, this happens, but not until you are ready.

the end…or the beginning…you choose!

From the menu in the upper left corner, you can go to my Posts for that look into the mind/spirit of the artist. You can view the Large Art, both paintings and sculpture, as well as the small, smaller and smallest series and their store fronts.

Feel free to email me if you have any questions and leave a comment if you are so inclined.

Carol