So This is How Happiness Works

"...in my experience, happiness comes from practicing a view of life. It comes from working with my own mind and heart. It comes from feeling more at home in my own skin. Happiness is directly connected with how worthy I feel I am--how connected I feel to something greater than myself."  Sheila Peltz Weinberg

Before I went to bed last night, I saw a way to rearrange my studio, yet again, to make my paints easier to get to. For days I've been painting backgrounds for cards I'm making, and the colors are gorgeous. Now I'm going all grandiose seeing the same type of painting on a larger canvas. I can hardly sit still at my desk as I think about moving everything around once I get up. I love the way I'm working. I'm trusting the method to work more than I trust myself to make it work. When I'm painting, I'm not thinking about whether it is working or not. I'm painting as if I can loosen my skin, loosen what I've been taught, loosen my steely ties to what I don't know. For the past few days I've been painting in a way that brings me great calmness.

Thinking about it this way, I realize I write in the same manner. I continue to write this blog even though it doesn't always come flowingly smooth the way I'd like, because I am happier when I do it. In writing prayers, in this prologue, in this figuring out what I think about something, in this case why I'm happy now, I feel I'm sitting next to myself, a self who couldn't plot this out in a conscious way. I'm writing in a way and about things that bring me great happiness and the thoughts are evolving as I go, not blocked out ahead of time. When I write a prayer, I'm working with my heart and then my mind.

When I write in this way, and when I paint in this way, I feel integrated within myself. Running within me is theme music I can hear but not yet hum.

Baruch ata adonai...Just now, I feel as though I'm carried in the palm of your hand. Thank you. Amen