Anatomy of a vision board

(fall 2018/early 2019?)

The Anatomy of a Vision Board

I created this sometime not long after I moved back to Savannah from New York into my first little apartment I ever had to myself. 

But I have to go back a little further to begin…

On February 14th the previous year in Brooklyn, still pining over at least one unavailable man at the time, and deeply engaged in healing work around codependency issues that I had become aware of as a result of my previous relationship.. I sat down to a beautiful Valentine’s day dinner in Bedstuy with a couple of my closest girlfriends. 

As the dinner ended, I began to consider a few ways of how I could acquire a seasonal Reese’s heart (or three) that always show up in stores around the holiday. My sweet tooth has somewhat lost intensity over time but that had always been a favorite, whether it was the Reese’s eggs at easter or trees at Christmas, or of course, the hearts in February. As I calculated the mental distance to the closest CVS, wondering if they’d be on sale yet, the server returned to our table with full size Reese’s hearts candies for us, to my most immediate possible gratification. This was far from the first time that the universe had moved quickly to address my desires, but this particular moment was very impactful at pointing me towards the healing work I still needed to do in confronting my limiting beliefs around what I felt I was allowed “to have” and how I imagined I was “supposed” to go about getting it.

Why could I draw into my life my perfect 1972 pickup truck of my dreams, my perfect french bulldog daughter, and my perfectly timed Reese’s delivery, but somehow was not able to be in the type of partnership I wanted, the career fulfillment I wanted and so on? So I had to consider, if my “manifestation” abilities weren’t broken, maybe they were just blocked!

As I continued on my healing path, I kept continuing to unravel the limiting beliefs I had from my culture and family of origin around money and the ways you have to earn money. I had to believe there was another way to thrive besides the bootstraps mentality that glorified self-sacrifice and hustle at the expense of health and happiness. I wanted to have it all, and like trying to solve a puzzle, I sifted through my life and my unrequited desires like a detective looking everywhere for clues and answers. This seeking really felt like a life or death search, because I knew I could not commit the soul suicide that I would have had to endure to simply fall in line with the existing conditions, and the existing conditions were often driving me to the edge of suicidality in quite the real sense also.

There’s a lot of disillusionment in the expansion of awareness. We will often come to a crossroads where we have to recognize in ourselves what isn’t working in our lives and how we are contributing to those dynamics, or we may choose to dig ourselves further into a sense of victimization or denial. Denial is a temporary solution in our avoidance of pain, but unsustainably pits us against ever being able to feel and experience the full truth of our lives. It also drains our energy extensively in the efforts taken to protect that denial state, rather than being able to move fluidly with the truth of who we are, and the truth of “what is”.

so…How was I blocking myself from having what I want? and what else is involved in blocking me or others from having what they want? 

Which brings me back to my mood board…

When I moved back to Savannah, from NYC, I was still pretty bought into the idea of manifesting. I thought if I just put enough energy into imagining and fantasizing about what I wanted that I would ultimately be able to attract it. Now I relate much more to owning our power of choice and creating our lives through our choices. Because I could fantasize all I wanted, but I had to actually do the healing work required to distinguish the truth of my desires from my fleeting urges to soothe my wounded ego…as well as learning to recognize the underlying reasons for meeting resistance and being able to discern whether it was a sign to shift the path, or to develop stamina and persevere. I tried to work on some of my blocks that were affecting how I saw my own worth and the ways I undermined the value of my skillsets which brought me deep into inner child work and trauma healing of that nature, because the only reason I was able to accept the low wages and income I was receiving was that I was living in denial of the weight of my own life. I felt insecure about my right to exist, burdened and encumbered in my lack of confidence to provide what I needed to sustain my life, so I had tried to minimize my needs as a pattern. This attempt to minimize my needs was a pretty superficial and unsustainable cover story to the deeper truth that I actually really enjoy spending money on both myself and others, and that I enjoy having nice things and quality experiences. So one part of myself felt that it was in my best interest to minimize or discard my needs in order to survive and have a sense of belonging…while another part of me felt I deserved to live a life full of earthly delights with few responsibilities to attend to aside from sex, art and maintaining my physical body and home and being honest and attuned in my relationships. My vision board certainly expresses this more archetypal empress energy in both its visual nature and the writing on the back…

I wrote:

“I feel so held and supported as I trust the universe completely, as I step forward continuously along my soul’s path. I am creating a life of sustainability and having everything I need. I have begun fresh from the past choices I’ve made with new more supportive choices for my goals in the here & now. I am called to step further into my light as an artist and a leader and an intellectual provocateur. I am here to bring to light the radical need for unconditional love. That is the guiding light of my soul’s purpose. I share this message through the languages of art and movement. We are driving to freedom, we are free. I am financially free. I claim my value and worth as someone who deserves to exist sustainably on this earth. I take time to read, studying and writing and challenging myself to think bigger and broader and deeper. I find myself delighting in a soul and body enriching partnership. I continue to plunge to the depths and fly to the heights of emotions without resistance, learning more all the time. I love. I grow. I cherish. I am valued mind, body and soul, every cell in my body and fiber of my being is cherished, is loved, is accepted. The actions of my life, the circumstances of my life have brought me here to this magnificent place. The reverberations of my love and generosity of spirit and creativity exceed my lifetime. My gifts grant me the financial freedom to use my energy to my highest purpose. I am sustained, uplifted, supported in all that I do. My art is valued because it helps people get a little more free. My work deals with the expansion of minds, the expansion of the heart, the expansion of our visual landscapes. My partner understands and is supportive of my need to express myself. We are powerful containers for each other’s desires. Our sex is inspired, transcendent and deeply loving. There is no inch or centimeter of our bodies that we do not cherish, lick and nourish through touch and affection. Our skin melts together at times from the fluid harmony of our bodies. but we have distinct lives, full of our own interest, friends and experiences, even as much as we share ourselves with each other. I love being in my studio, I am surrounded by artwork, books, records and magazines that inspire me. It feels amazing to make such a good living with my artwork that I always feel held and supported. It is a living dream but very grounded in my body and my deep connections to loved ones and collective community. I do not lose touch with the world even though I carved out my own little slice of heaven, I share this heaven broadly. I carry no guilt for receiving what I want. I receive what I want joyfully and effortlessly.”

Contrary to the popular themes around “manifesting”, our experiences of our lives are not a one person job caused by our sheer mental willpower, we are ALL collectively co-creating our experiences on this plane of existence. So while our own mindset certainly affects our lives and perceptions, we cannot divorce ourselves fully from a world that is full of its own desires and perceptions. We don’t live in a vacuum separate of systemic racism, ableism, trans and homophobia and misogyny (and so on)… It is gaslighting to tell someone that something they are experiencing is all mental or that we simply attract the circumstances that “match” us, when there have been centuries of mass manipulation of perception, value, and so on, along the basis of racialized capitalism.

As Nkem Ndefo of Lumos Transforms, relates it to this need to holistically approach the full “ecology” of our lives. It is not truthful or helpful to look at our individual lives in denial of the ecology of our life, as they are inseparably joined in our experiences. Whether the health of our surrounding environments and socio-political ecosystems were most profoundly felt as an extension of our family of origin and the culture of our household and direct community at a more personal level, or the collective belief systems and culture and global community at large, we are all part of a living, breathing, ecosystem which we create together and are also created by… As I began working into my own psychological barriers to receiving what would fulfill me, I saw more and more of my needs being met and more and more opportunities to exercise and express my gifts. Our desires evolve with our connection to the universe, and the universe evolves in connection to our desires. The more clear we can be about our desires, the more responsive and connected our choices can be to riding that wave of fulfillment into shore as it breaks. This clarity also allows us to gather energy collectively in addressing systemic oppression in a way that we can more sustainably create and support emergent paradigms of existence because we will have taken the time to investigate the ways we contribute and are affected by these systems of control and limitation, and truly begin to make the choices that allow us to live in a new way. If exploring the ecosystem of your life and desires sounds thrilling to you, please consider joining me for the workshop “I Can Have What I Want”, where we’ll be diving deep into this work, starts this Sunday (July 11th) at 6pm via zoom. https://www.paradisevitalitystudio.com/shop/p/os6q36wnaccjrhklwvgeisrorptmsp

IMPORTANT: mood boards are great for capturing an energy or feeling as a creative exercise, but it’s very important to not get too attached to the IMAGE of what you want or the package or delivery system for how you think you should get it. For example, I had a dude in my bed looking straight up like this picture in this board, he was absolutely not what I wanted in a holistic sense of a man however, and I could not settle for the breadcrumbs of someone fitting just an image... a while later, I began dating someone who was much more sexually and otherwise fulfilling with his own very moodboard worthy dick lol. the same goes for any goal we might have or any vision we might see for ourselves, the goal and vision we have for ourselves have to be able to continuously evolve with us (see this blog post about goals: https://www.paradisevitalitystudio.com/blog/to-float-with-the-tide-or-swim-for-the-goal ), so there should again, just be less attachment in general to specific outcomes that check certain boxes on paper, as long as we can hold and honor the essence of our desires, we can allow them to shapeshift to reflect and serve our highest purpose and the universe may then deliver our desires in packages far beyond our wildest dreams and imagination.