Community of creative mystics

Disappointment does't seem an appropriate topic for this time of year, but I can't help how I feel. Disappointed.

Disappointed in that my prayer was answered almost immediately, but became twisted and confusing, then changing all together.

Disappointed in almost settling. Settling for doing less than who I am.

My very wise and wonderful shamanic counselor said to take the threads of all of the disappointment in my life and find what's common. That's where the lessons rests. Most, he says, don't live in those places. Those of us who do periodically are not easily understood.

He heard the yearning in my voice. The desperation for understanding ... human understanding. "If you can't find the type of community you need, create it," he counseled.

I seem caught between spirituality and creativity and have supportive friends in both places. Some, like me, that travel between the two. Apparently I crave more than those connections. I crave a community of creative visionaries and mystics as my shaman described it. He said to initiate one ... online. I had almost forgotten that when I created a Salon for the Soul website (apart from this blog) four years ago, that was the intention. It has been here as well, but I crave more of a conversation and some two-way nurture. I guess I am searching for other creative mystics. I know you're out there and here as well. I'd like some engagement.

In my disappointment with organized religion, my counselor explained that religion needs to be corralled through process and procedure for those with less vision, but a persistence and discipline to follow those channels. Sometimes rewarded with direct experience.

I don't understand a faith that is anything less than direct experience, but then again, perhaps, it's being more faithful without.

My experience emanates form the heart and body and can not be intellectualized. It can often be articulated, better captured in art, but intellectualizing is diminishing. I'm weary of feeling diminished.

This time, I'm not settling. I'm asking for another answer to that prayer for companionship. One that better matches my needs. I don't want the regular blue door, I want the purple door with the golden trim. Who's in?

• What are the lessons from my life's disappointments?
• Do I have the community I need?
• If not, where is it and how do I get there?
• What's my direct experience of the Divine?
• When and how have I shared that?


So, I have these really BIG questions
with which I struggle. They're more
than I can handle alone. They are meant
to be shared. But with whom?


Hearts that will understand and accept.
Hearts open to jumping off the edge.
Hearts that know the darkness as well as the light.
Hearts that know the creative drive.
Hearts ready to explode like mine
with similar questions:

– How do you know when the answer to prayer is really the answer?

– Who else sees, hears and feels a love so boundless that it opens another dimension unlike anything in the normal human experience that's difficult to articulate because it offers a momentary glimpse of all that is?

– When you know that exists, how do you return to life, yourself, family and friends and find meaning in the old way when, sometimes, you'd rather discard it?

– How do you balance the new insight with the old life?

– I'm working so hard to function as a whole person, drawing all the parts of me together, yet it's so against the grain, how do I succeed, especially at making my gifts and ministry provide what I need to live on in the secular world?

 – How can I BE in this world and not be WHAT I do?