Let everything happen to you

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”

Rainer Maria Rilke

What came when I let go... Flower hands

And so I am reminded, again and again, to let go of outcome.

Tonight, I picked up my brushes to paint my hands. I had spent the day imagining this work I wanted to create. I had honed the vision over several hours of work, errands and school runs. I had plotted the colours; planned the method; pictured the end result in detail. Was it any wonder then that what I had imagined did not come. Why was it a surprise that in this creating of perfection in my mind, something would be lost in the making? Because I forget; we all forget. I think I know better; think it will be different this time. It was not. It never is… and this is what I am learning. That this pattern of perfection is an illusion that I have to let go of time and time again in order to release; let go; create freely from the starting point of an empty mind.

And so I go on… delving deeper, moving away from the desire to create something “pretty” and moving towards a truer something… a creation that reflects my inner world; my battles and my victories; my challenges and joys; my darkness and my light.

And so I go on…
And I will remind myself again (and again)…

“Let everything happen to you
Beauty and terror
Just keep going
No feeling is final”

4 thoughts on “Let everything happen to you

  1. So true Sally… it’s all there in the letting go. It took so long to get to this place and let go of what I had learned. Now that we realise that trying to re-create something is not the way forward, we are able to change shift our way of creating to something from the heart, not the mind and that is really exciting. x

  2. Wonderful post Julia! This is what I have been learning too. In fact trying to re-create the image I’d seen in my head is a recipe for frustration instead of enjoying the process.

Leave a Reply to David Barker Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>