Meditation and colored pencils

So most of my friends meditate using tarot cards, runes, candles, water, music or other similar tools.  Not me.

Thank you Mr. Roger Burrows for your book "Images:  The Ultimate Color Experience" (isbn 978-156-138-1098). Images is a book of repeating geometric designs. Simple lines and shapes that allow you to color and change and mold the images to what you want them to look like.  Making each one completely and totally yours.

And thank you Berol Prismacolor for your gazillion and twelve different shades of colored pencils.My favorite colors include "Ultramarine," "Mahogany Red," "Peacock Blue," Metalic anything, and "Imperial Violet." Not hugely creative, I'll give you but good solid colors.  Blend able colors that shade and move.

And now I will stop being a sell out and explain

My meditation comes in the simple act of coloring.  Shading, blending the colors in these geometrical patterns.  I loose myself in hearing the pen scratch across the paper.  The soft scuff when I'm lightly shading or the hard rub of deep dark colors.  Each one developing under my fingers and pencil to show the world exactly how I am feeling at that moment.  The one of circles and triangles that was done in shades of reds, oranges and yellows.  Or the squares and ovals done in blues, purples and greens.

I can tell when my mind is chaotic and I can't focus. The colors don't compliment and I can't find the pattern in the images.  Or I focus on a small detail and loose the rest of the picture.  But amazingly enough.  This doesn't discourage me or make me stop.  Instead I move to the next page, take a deep breath and pick a new color.  I stop the thoughts, and refocus.  I lose myself in the colors.

At this point meditation for me has stopped being about getting advice from the Gods or looking to my future. It's not about figuring out the meaning of today or what I should be figuring out for tomorrow.  It's about finding the now.  Salvaging the mistakes, and making them into something beautiful.  Slowing the chaotic riotous thoughts that spiral through my head. It's about seeing what's infront of me over and over again, and finding something different every time because I am different every time.

I've torn each page out when I finish.  They're lining one wall in my room. This mass of colors and patterns teaming with thoughts and actions.  Reminders of my day to day life.  Not to mention, what I think of as, beautiful art.  Color and harmony, shape and shades a visual description of my journey. A way of looking at where I have been and where I am going all in seeing where I am right now.

I also suggest coloring books and crayons for this.  I have a preference for  the princess coloring books, but that's because I love the long sweeping lines of their dresses and making the colors blend and shade until the character seem to want to step from the page... But that could just be me.

Happy meditating!