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Can we change the world? Or is it our perspective that needs changing? I created this presentation to try to clarify for myself how my external world and internal world are elegantly fused and insanely intertwined. How change in ‘my’ world affects change in the ‘outside’ world…
As we change our mind, practice a higher vibration, fall in love with our intimate beautiful selves, I believe that the world will reflect our attitude right back to us. All things change when we do.
I’ve used images and words to help shift conscious awareness from local to universal and back again. Let me know what you think.
I’ve also included the meditation to be read at Slide 9 ( yep – old school- but what do you call it if not a ‘slide’?!) click the link at the very end for the meditation.
Please click the link below to watch my Change the World presentation:
This was our discussion last night at class – a slide show on changing the world.
Whew…three weeks since our last Monday night class. Snow days, Chicago film screenings, lots of happenings!
Great to be together in the same space again  : )
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Tags: awareness, being, change the world, change your mind, consciousness, janet balboa, maharishi effect, meditation, self love, self world
Categories creativity, sacred ground, self discovery, self knowledge
When Life happens – and a nod to Pope Joan.
The worst sin is ingratitude, which is a forgetting of the greatness, beauty, truth and goodness of the Source that is constantly creating us – in other terms, a forsaking of Being, and the Good.
My favorite Leloup quote today, from The Gospel of Mary Magdalene.
Today I had my day all planned out, my hours spoken for, so I sat down to my desk to focus on the geometries of the Josephine knot. Which I still haven’t grasped. I found a vesica, but that is a story for another day.
I was deeply in my head, probably frowning with confusion,  when all this carefully arranged bliss was loudly interrupted by Rosie, next door’s 11 week old beagle, escaping her yard,  Ellen and I chasing around like crazy people trying to corner her. Eventually, Rosie was found, the escape route blocked up, and I returned to the drawing table, my perspective blown wide open.
And this leads me to the legend of Pope Joan.  And really, just how often do things lead you there? Well, once upon a time (during the early Middle Ages to be precise), it is told that a woman, disguised as a man, rose through the church hierarchy and was eventually elected Pope. Life went along smoothly, more or less, until during one particularly solemn processional,  all hell broke loose as the Pope went into labor and produced a child on the spot. Whoops.
Forget wasting time arguing whether it’s true or just another urban legend. That’s not the point. It’s never the point.
For me, today, Joan happily reminded me that even with the best laid plans, the most carefully arranged rituals, Life still happens, unplanned, unannounced, unexpected and often showing up at the most inconvenient time.
When the Divine came crashing into my carefully constructed schedule,  disguised as an exuberant beagle wanting to play, I had the opportunity to allow everything-as-it-was to become Life-Happening-In-This-Moment. My attention, my intention, my blood, my body, unified in a way my habitual/’usual’ self has never been fully conscious of before; opening me to an idea of another way of being fully present. It’s like a huge breath of fresh air expanded into my complacent habits, my structured ideas of how things ‘should’ be and reminded me again, that I am alive.
So now when I am here typing, I am also being aware of being alive. Of being animated by a Mystery I will never understand, flowing through me with an agenda that I can only guess at, holding me closely in gratitude and delight.
The take away for me?
Life is not meant to be ‘convenient’, bent and warped to suit us and our crazy made-up lives.
Life is meant to be lived, to be wondered at, to be expressed through us. To be experienced consciously, as a tremendous gift. Life holds us tightly so that we may live wide open, allowing it to flow through us unrestricted, out into the world.
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Tags: art, celtic knotwork, gratitude, mary magdalene, mystery, pope joan, Tree of Life, vesica, wonder, work in progress
Categories Art work, celtic knotwork, creativity, mary magdalene, mystery, sacred geometry, sacred ground
Research for Mary Magdalene
This August, I have read through piles of books, weird and not so weird, factual and conjectural, both fantastically and poorly researched.  Here’s my research for this picture so far:
Jean-Yves Leloup’s Gospell of Mary Magdalene. (I was so wrong when I felt I hadn’t encountered Mary Magdalene before. She is all over my bookshelves already). I love Leloup. The French have a very different attitude and conception of The Magdalene than we do (here in the American Midwest) and it is refreshing and lovely to hear his passion for this woman shine through his writing.
I had also forgot I read The Woman with the Alabaster Jar by Margaret Starbird at the same time I read Leloup. A great read, but she can be incredibly lax about footnotes and references.
Starbird’s Magdalene’s Lost Legacy and The Goddess in the Gospels. This gets deep into the gematria supposedly occurring in the greek bible. If you are willing to play along, this is a fascinating read. By playing along, I mean being able to be open minded when beliefs and opinions are challenged. I found it fascinating.
I learned Sacred Geometry from Lars Howlet and Richard Feather Anderson this summer at Veriditas. I added Sacred Geometry by Miranda Lundy. This is a really simple introduction that gets you up and drawing in seconds. Get a good compass! Robert Ferre’s Classical Labyrinths explains more of the feminine in sacred geometry as it applies to labyrinths.
Lauren Artress Walking a Sacred Path. I read this in ’96 gave that copy to my dad this summer, and received the fancy updated version from Lauren herself this summer. Lauren is a Episcopalian Priest, psychotherapist, and writer, and founder of Veriditas. If you need to start from a religious standpoint, this is an ideal place to begin your adventure.
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Tags: jean yves leloup, labyrinths, lars howlet, lauren artress, margaret starbird, mary magdalene, pencil sketch, research, richard feather anderson, robert ferre, sacred geometry, work in progress
Categories Art work, creativity, powerful women, sacred ground, work in progress
Some days it just good to know that you’re alive. That you have a pulse and that you’re breathing. That’s all we really have anyway.
Our connection to Life- through our breath- is the most sacred, the most Holy spot on earth. Our breath is in fact, the center of our personal little universe. It’s what holds us together and what binds us as one with all of life.
We are the Lords and Ladies of the great eternal dance around and about the Mystery that contains and sustains and delights in each and every one of us. We Belong. Delightful!
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Tags: belonging, Celtic art, chief seattle, dance of life, green man, life, mermaid art
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Janet Balboa (#janetbalboa) is an artist, writer and teacher living in the Chicago suburbs. Read more
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Congratulations Zoë and Ian!!!!
Here are some of the new additions to this Sundays Farmers Market at The Dole, this sunday, 18th, 10-2!
The Far.ers Market Sunday!
Come meet me at The Dole!
#29 Gilded Lilies finished-
4th Friday at The Dole tonight!!! Great Art, artists, fans, community, wine, etc etc. $10 entry/ fun night OUT!!!