Lighten Up

Somewhere I read that these are supposed to be short and pithy. Well, I'm short and pithy, so I feel like my work is already done for me.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the most repeated advice I get from my guidance council is "stop taking yourself so seriously," so I've decided to take them seriously and make it my life's work. This week. I make a lot of these decisions.

I know I've brought this up before, and I'm going to keep doing it. Levity lets in the light.

Once upon a time my brother was about 18 or 19 and really going through it. It was just him and my mom living in the house. He would get all bent out of shape about something and get all up in my mom's face about It like whatever It was was her fault. I was visiting, and she was just exasperated and venting about how she had no idea how to talk to him. Nothing she said would fix anything, and his diatribes were really kind of absurd.

So I said "throw stuff at him."

I was met with a slightly horrified and very baffled stare.

I rolled my eyes. "No! Not like rocks or cutlery or anything. Like socks or kleenex!"

The stare morphed into a doubtful frown.

About 2 days after I had returned home, she called me and said she had done it. He had gotten all bunched up about something and was giving her hell about it. "So I threw a napkin at him." He apparently looked at her funny and cranky and threw it back at her, which then devolved into a mother-son napkin fight in the kitchen, all genuine hostility neutralized. This hucking of lightweight objects became a code for her to tell him to get over himself and lighten up.

I'm not saying that this solved all our family problems from then on out, but it brought peace and light to a moment that would otherwise have weighed down both parties, allowing for a different vantage point. It opened up a possibility.

I don't know why I thought throwing something would be a solution, except that it was absolutely obvious to me that the situation was ridiculous and needed to look at itself in the mirror.

Because it's funny!

You know, ladies and gents, all there is in the entire cosmos is Source. Is Love. We're each unique expressions of this ever-expanding light. That's all we are. And we always will be. We are each perfect and perfectly loved in every moment. So it's okay to laugh when things seem utterly hopeless. To laugh in the face of grief and destruction and fear. These are all just thoughts that we don't have to cling to. They're just bubbles that we can pop with an argyle knee-high flung at just the right angle.

Yes, there is suffering, but that's a choice, too. I know a lot of arguing can be done around that assertion, but suffering only happens when we hang on to the balloon string and get tangled in the power lines.

Let go and let the light in!

A Healing Artist Explains

I chose the title "Healing Artist" for myself primarily because it makes me giggle. Every time.

In my initial defense, I offer that I am an English Lit major, a grammar snob, and something of a punster.

I am the daughter of a Master of Bad Jokes with a flair for poor taste. After I went away to college, homecomings would inevitably involve dinner around the table with all present-and-accounted-for. My Dad would pull out the stops, attempting to wittily gross-out the remainder of the family or incapacitate them through laughter-induced hyperventilation.

I was immune.

My father had unwittingly thrown down the gauntlet. He quickly learned, much to his chagrin, that I could best him in inappropriate commentary so thoroughly he would leave the table in defeat, my mother gripping her sides and whistling like a teakettle, tears running down her cheeks. Linguistically speaking, I'm trouble with a capital Trubb.

See, I find that in a language rich with nonsensical idiom, the literal is often fodder for comedy, (which enervates my recovering scientist husband no end). I mean, if my business is named Namaha Healing Arts (which can be abbreviated Namaha-HA, which also makes me giggle) then it would literally follow that I am a Healing Artist.

Does this make an acupuncturist a pointillist?

But I digress...

Once my new handle had been committed to writing though, once it was all official-looking, I realized that there was something far deeper within the epithet. I giggled again, but noticed that, if I traced this now nervous laughter, that there was something in me that feared the audacity of it. That I would dare to call myself an Artist. Confident, mysterious...dangerous. What was that all about? Why can't I be an artist? Why can't creative expression be part of my sacred service? Something inside still feels like I don't deserve the title. So we delve a little deeper.

The question I have often struggled with as an energy worker - especially with channeled energies like Reiki and Deeksha - is what makes me any different from any healer out there? If all the energies I work with are essentially Divine Intelligence, and I'm simply praying for Spirit to come in and do it's divine thing while step out of the way, then what makes me different from anyone else who does it?

Time and feedback has told me that something does. And I've learned to be okay with that. I was taught from the get-go the basic Law of Attraction, like attracts like, and all of that. You will always get the clients that vibrate to your frequency, for example. I've believed it and acted upon it, seen it in action with my practice and my students, but my human brain keeps coming back to this need to pinpoint just what the thing is that's different. And marketing folk will tell you you'd better figure that out or you're doomed.

We usually think of an artist as someone who paints or sings or dances or produces something created by the imagination, through inspiration of one kind or another. The word inspire literally means to take in spirit. Spirit goes in, art comes out, and imagination is the template for the result. Inasmuch as my job as a healer is simply to hold space for Spirit to come in and do its thing, the space I create is entirely a product of my own craft. The vessel is of my own imagining. I breathe, I imagine, I create. The container is my own Play Dough pottery, my crocheted pot-holder. The work done while I glue macaroni to construction paper is between the divine and the divine recipient (i.e. the client, student, space, etc.). The initials on the bottom of the portrait are never my own.

I believe our work here on the planet, the true call from our center, is to manifest a Divine intent by interacting and experiencing our world. As co-creators with God, we are all Divine Artists, and why should I be afraid to announce it, to claim it as my birthright in service?

That's rhetorical, thank you.

So now I'm wearing "Darcy Molloy, Healing Artist" like a merit badge in order to get used to the feel of it, to get used to saying it. And I'll probably keep giggling, at least for a while. At least until I merge with the truth behind the moniker. There's some exploring to do there, I imagine, but I know that there is some real depth to it as well as levity, and I'm just going to roll it around on the tongue for awhile to see what the palate does with it.

Tee-hee.

I am a Healing Artist.