Mid-phase of creating a new collar on my favourite sweatercoat: checking for overall effect and feel...
Dearest Art. Friends,
This is a post around mastery of craft: mastering our handiwork, by breaking through all the neuroses and negative conditioning that come up when we try to learn new things:
I made a new collar for my favourite winter coat, which I created from scratch last year
I'm using sewing as a metaphor here: all creative activity can be used as interchangeable metaphor or simile for all other creative activity; gardening, cooking, making music etc etc can be used in place of painting, sculpting, sewing, yoga.... AND this alchemical metaphor has such power, because it also speaks to our Divine Co-Creative Purpose in Natural Law, and in attunement with the Cosmos, i.e. all spontaneous creative activity can be used to heal, align with God, transform chaos into Right Harmony, and so on.
This was my first coat made out of old woolly jumpers/ sweaters...
So even my wrestling with a woolly coat like this, can inform me about the Will of the Universe, about Universal Law, and about my Right Place In Relation To All Things. In my experience, in fact, the most difficult challenges creatively can be the greatest spiritual-transformation tools.
First, the old collar had to be cut out; this was the second collar I'd put on - I have a lot to master around collars!
The simplest and most mundane of tasks, can be the most profoundly rich for us - this is the Alchemy Of Domesticity, the Infinite Power of The Now and The Everymoment: we have access to unlimited energy-vitality-inspiration, if we choose to focus on it within us and around us.
These are the jumpers/ sweaters I chose to work with.
Our collective conditioning has mostly removed any sacred essence of connection from our everyday: we are surrounded by ugly and disfunctional things; we wear clothes that cut off our vital force, our breath and our groundness on the sacred earth; we drink contaminated waters thick with chemicals and are pulled into bizarre rituals on a daily basis that absolutely deplete us of any vital connection with Source.
Cutting the jumpers up, so I could use the arms for the collar.
And yet, the magical Universe continues to function perfectly sacredly, in the Everymoment, within and around us!!
The arms of a particularly beautiful cashmir sweater from the magical 50c stall in Telese market!
So it's really just a matter of whether or not we can overcome our conditioning and all the negative mantras in our mind rebutting Truth, and get on a healthier path of Right-Aligned Discipline, which will keep us in Flow.
Sewing the red-orange sleeves together, to make a second layer on the new collar.
We get distracted too, by contemporary 'spiritual' teaching, which is mostly spiritual materialism, and cannot by its nature help pull us into embodied wisdom. Embodied wisdom comes through Right Thinking aligned with Right Action, and mostly we've not been trained or educated, nor had time to practise Right Action!! Mostly, we've been taught to defer our actions to others, to automation, to norms and inferior 'laws' and 'legalities', and we're so defensive of such distored behaviours, that we literally cannot remove ourselves from them even if our life depends upon it.
The arms getting sewn along the edges to shape it nicely to spontaneously, somehow, get morphed into a collar...
My own journey aligning with All Things has involved a great deal of fiddling, of tugging at the Universe and trying to force it to comply - a bit like the system and the agenda do with us on a daily basis. It took several decades of working with my hands everyday, of keeping everything intuitive and in the moment, of not forcing, not rushing, slowing down more and more and more and more and more.... until e v e n t u a l l y I found myself working at a Natural Pace.
Sewing by hand the edges of the yellow part - all quite messy and I wasn't sure if it was going to line up at all...
Doing everything at a Natural Pace is such a key aspect of Sovereignty, of Real Art. and of Wholistic Health. If we're not slowed down sufficiently, something will be inherently out of kilter between our heart-mind-emotions-spirit-cosmos. WE ALL are in psychotic denial of this!! We are all convinced that it is 'necessary' on some level, for us to strive, be in pain, tense up, cower in fear, rush, pull, push, etc. And we simply cannot know God In Our Self, unless we are operating on a Natural level - unless we are moving at the Rhythm of the Universe and the Seasons, unless we are acting within that Natural framework, and thus acting Correctly in the bigger, holistic scheme of things.
Our tiny tweaking actions of taking care of ourself and our home, our garden and our community, our domestic alchemy and our unique artisan creative expression, our voice coming from rooted aliveness in our core, our prayer in each moment reaching out in Gift and in Gratitude simultaneously...
First attempt at pinning the whole form of the new collar in place: feeling how it sits on my neck.
Time poverty is one of the most insidious aspects of our enslavement into scarcity and suffering. It is so obvious, once we see it, but until we do, we can be convinced that everything should be done quickly, efficiently, by a machine, or by delegated-out-tasks. Then what are our hands doing? What do idle hands, eyes and bodies, spirits and creative power do?!?!
Sewing the new collar - the yellow part, into place at the waist of the coat.
Well, in this day, they consume. They get lazy and stupid, they lose mastery and gain weight of emptiness, which the systems tells us can only be 'satiated' by buying things, or being 'entertained': we become passive and useless, full to the brim of overstimulation and empty nutrients, confused beyond belief by lies and invertion of Truth, because we've lost any sense of Feeling and Knowing.
Close-up of the first-phase collar: it needed some closures, to keep me cosy from strong winds in winter, so I ruminated a bit on how I could make them.
And yet, again - still - the Universe continues to function magically and mystically, cosmic-ly and beauty-full-y. There is nothing 'wrong': there is simply our infinite opportunity to make life infinitely more Free, Right, Sovereign, Healthy, Whole, Happy and Alive.
Forming the collar shape in situ...
And yet, again - still - we have infinite opportunity to co-create.
The long, slow work of sewing around the edge of the collar, in a way that sits Right on the garment.
Sewing is such a beautifully perfect metaphor for our path in life: stitches and manipulations of fabric into form that works for our body - pleasing flow and construction, functional in terms of warmth and movement. The long, laborious hand-work of bringing pieces together with right tension for durability over our time using the finished garment.
And the challenge of doing this without a plan - and letting the Universe work with us! Allowing mastery to take shape, stitch my stitch, moment by moment, through our profound presence and focus.
Our conditioning and education certainly does not promote us towards mastery. Those that pull the strings of mainsteam most certainly know the benefit of the collective being harnessed into submission and passivity: of our being so busy, full and confused, distracted, that we cannot even recognise our own body as sacred vessel, our time as sacred, our hand-work as infinite potential, our slowness and healing...
But sitting down with a project, co-creating and fearlessly ploughing ahead with our hands learning to move expertly - this reminds us.
Once the new collar was in place, I looked at what closures might work, and settled with these giant poppers/ snaps and a nice big flat green button on the front.
The placing of the poppers and buttons was quite organic!
The power of myriad tiny actions, determination and drive, keeping me focussed long enough to complete a project.
Gigantic poppers!
It's not perfect, nor even as beautiful as I want it to be, this time. I have a way to go before I am Master Of Collars! But I definitely learned a lot - my hands certainly move more confidently, and I certainly feel more sure and am enjoying more and more, what I am doing.
My final (rather terrible) photo. illustrating the closed coat, in the low lighting of night in the Arthouse... This sums up a little how I feel about the coat, and about my mastery: it is a work in progres - it functions very well, but I would like it to be much more beautiful, flattering and harmonious. My mastery moves forward, through my perseverence - and each project, imperfect as it is, is more Art.-full.
