Focusing as part of finding Dreams

Focusing on what?
Inside or outside?
Where are dreams found?

Although I do oil painting, I also enjoy painting with the computer which is what the above work is. With my desire to find a new dream, I felt a digital self-portrait might be a possible tool. A self-portrait could be as simple as a stick figure with things around it or something more complex.

Finding a dream is about looking outside for inspiration but also inside for what resonates-- and when it does, why does it? What would be food for my soul at this point in my life? Self-portraits have a way of revealing things that we haven't planned and that's what happened this time.

I have written before about doing computer paintings and in particular self-portraits. I began doing them when I read about them from Natalie, at Blaugustine, who uses many such tools, to express herself. For me, I have considered my self-portraits to be like the sand painting Navajo or Tibetans do. They are not like fine art but rather a way to help me see things that I am missing.

To do this one, I didn't use a mirror but began by looking through my stock of photographs for one that spoke to how I felt right now. I have a stockpile of moody and what some might call unattractive webcam photographs. (I have written before about how a computer painting progresses and that can be found in Labels under painting.)

When I had finished the digital portrait, doing a lot of it by feel with no real plan for what would be the end result, I studied it for a bit. This is a woman who doesn't appear to see where she is going or even what is around her. The expression on her face is not depressed but a little cynical, disillusioned possibly. Is disillusionment what is blocking new dreams? A lack of trusting? Could she see beyond the swirls if she tried? She's not trying. I called it 'sorting out the dreams' and maybe she is beginning where she must.

I plan to do a few more of these self-portraits this winter and am thinking that as my mood changes, as things become clearer to me, perhaps the dream will emerge from the mist. I must be honest about what comes out-- succeed or not. I also don't plan to give myself a time limit on any of it. There will be no telling myself it should be this or that. Dreams have to be true. I very much believe there will be new ones. There always are.

January 10th is a full moon. A particularly auspicious time for charging the air for dreams of great power. Awhile back, I had written about an exercise where, during such a full moon, you take a piece of plain white paper and put it where the full moon can shine upon it. You are charging that paper with energy.

Then when the new moon comes, which will be January 26th (also the time of a solar eclipse which some say will make it astrologically very potent), you write your dreams and what you want to create in your life on that paper. I have done that before but to be honest not with much success. I think it's going to work better this time (but then I always think that)!