Tag: struggle with belief

Metaphysics, Science, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Synchronicity

Chrys Buckley

astronomySynchronicity takes up a big section of Week Three: Recovering a Sense of Power (you can read about the rest of the chapter here). Enough that I thought it deserved its own post.

I can see why Julia Cameron put it in this chapter on Power, along with Anger and Shame and Growth. Synchronicity is the power of manifestation, of making things happen, of initiative and setting things in motion.

It’s also an aspect of this book that I struggle with. It goes back to my basic struggle with belief. With one side of me being the most hyper-rational skeptic and the other side believing (or at least wanting to) in magic and miracles.

There’s a task in one of the later chapters to record yourself (she was probably thinking tape recorders at the time) reading one of the essays in the book, and I chose this one because I struggle with it so much. (Next time, I’m picking a shorter section to record!)

Synchronicity, and My History Playing With It

When I was doing AW when I was younger, I believed in this synchronicity stuff more, and generally believed in things that could be believed in more. I was maybe a little skeptical but eager to try it out. And the results were…mixed at best.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Synchronicity” →

Metaphysics

The Artist’s Way Reflections – Preview Digression on Spirituality

Chrys Buckley

Orkila winter 2This post is off-schedule, a day before launching the first post focusing on a chapter of The Artist’s Way. It wasn’t planned, but I went on such a digression about the Introduction part of AW that I decided to pull it out and make it its own post so it wouldn’t distract from the post about the week.

So, some thoughts on the introduction, and reflection on spirituality in my life:

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – Preview Digression on Spirituality” →

Metaphysics

Playing with a Thoth Deck

Chrys Buckley

thothA week or so ago, I was on the phone with my friend Scott, talking about life updates–my big life updates, his last year of internal medicine residency, how covid is in our regions, his recent engagement and plans to have a wedding at an EDM festival next summer if such gatherings can happen then, he and his fiance watching Breaking Bad (him for the first time), my plans to start recapping Better Call Saul for this site–and somewhere in there, he mentioned that he’d recently gotten into tarot.

Ooooh, I thought. I love tarot, and I love talking tarot with people, and it’s always a jolt when someone in the science or medical world is also into tarot, because I don’t think there are many of us. I got a similar jolt when a classmate posted that they were doing an astrology workshop for an enrichment week activity, and some of the ensuing comments, and not just mine, were about tarot.

It’s a weird tension for me to contain inside myself, the hardcore science and rational side and the metaphysical side. That’s a topic I could write a lot about but for the sake of not going off on too many tangents, I’m going to shelve that idea for another day. Suffice to say, it’s a tension that’s at the core of who I am and I’m a little obsessed with science, with wanting to protect people from bad science or pseudoscience scams, and also with tarot and other such mystical systems, and maybe most of all with the concept of belief itself. But let’s set all that aside for now.

With all that aside, whenever someone first mentions tarot to me, the first thing I want to talk about is decks. There are so, so, so many. Different artwork, different books of interpretations, different aesthetics to both.

Continue reading “Playing with a Thoth Deck” →

Metaphysics, Music, Writing

The Artist’s Way Reflections – My Origin Story

Chrys Buckley

AW1This past March, I picked up The Artist’s Way again after many years away from this famous creativity book. It’s been an interesting ride since then–expansive, challenging, difficult, combative at times (I definitely don’t resonate with everything in there), illuminating. So, it’s one of the things I wanted to post about when jumping back into blogging and thinking a lot about creativity.

I went back to The Artist’s Way, or AW as it’s known in my journals and to-do lists and calendars, after some tough decisions that set off a real transition time for me that I reeeeeally want to write about but can’t right now. It had been awhile since I’d cracked the book, and it makes sense to talk about my origin story with this book.

Continue reading “The Artist’s Way Reflections – My Origin Story” →