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The Guru goes Arts and Crafts Style to Stay Sane (sort of).



December 20th, 2004

By Christopher Herz
The Health Guru / eCureMe LIFE




November has peeled back its mellow brown coat to reveal the steel of winter. Christmas and the other high holidays are moving towards us, creeping in like a Dickens character that lost their way in a snowstorm.


At the begging of a new year, there is always hope.


As children, the month of December once meant counting down the days until winter vacation began. Christmas presents were really important instead of a chore. There was a joy to life in being a child that stops existing when you find that there is no vacation, only more work.



Arts and Crafts


I was feeling it, so I decided to meditate on it and came up with the following:


When we are kids, our day is pretty much set out like it is when we are adults. Up early, start work and be bright in front of the person in charge, eat at about 12:20 and then continue on the day watching the clock, wishing we could leave. It is at about 4:20 that will still get a little antsy.


However, those days were also broken up with recess and activities that kept the mind working in a manner that wasn’t repetitious or altering in anyway.


Arts and Crafts. Making pictures out of dried macaroni. Boats out of ivory Soap. Turkey’s out of outlines of your hand. Now, we just tube it: video, Web, phone, whatever else you need to stimulate. But where is the creative process? What happened to play time? Too often as adults, we think that going out to play means dropping big bucks and buying exactly what the lifestyle commercial say.


It usually ends up with drunken blabbering about love and closeness, followed by passing out and blackouts.


The Guru offers up alternatives of boring old dinner and a movie evening outs. If you’re dating this season, try these out to mix it up:


If you have a Kinko’s or a Copy place in your area, you should head down there and find out that you’re really still a little kid. There is free glue, white out, pens, paper, and the scrapings of what people leave over or don’t use. Trust me, making something out of stuff you find laying around a copy place is a blast. Make sure you go with someone, or else you’ll just be the crazy person digging through the trash at the copy place.


Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Copies are cheap, and you’ll have made something artistic by the time the evening is over. Go hang it out on the streets and continue through the day.


Cloud gazing. Sounds strange I know, but I know, but take a few minutes to look up at the sky above you and figure out what you are seeing. Allowing your mind to be creative is an exercise that is not a luxury, but a need. If you are too analytical, you’ll go straight up Robot styles, and your Guru doesn’t want you turning into any type of slave.


Sandcastles. To tell you the truth, there is nothing better than building a sandcastle. Constructing a city that can hold whatever your imagination wishes it to do can give you both pleasure and therapy. Putting your emotions into an artistic outlet will give you a high beyond any drug without any side effects other than making you healthier.


Paint a picture with someone. Go to an old Good Will or Salvation Army and buy the cheapest, ugliest picture you can find. Next, buy some paint and brushes and paint over it. Create something new. Add the colors you believe to be beautiful and, by indulging in artistic fantasy, it will spill over to the real world.


People watching. Sit yourself down anywhere with someone and just start making up conversations people are having. Jump into their heads. Steer their lives for a little while. What are you doing? You’re forgetting about yourself and your problems for a bit by focusing on something else that means nothing to you. It is an inactive meditation, and one that your Guru is looking to perfect. Active meditation.


When’s the last time you were at the library? Free fantasy for days there people. The best part about it is that you are surrounded by people who are looking for the same refuge you are. Now, if you are a bit more social and less nerdly, then head out to one of the huge bookstores who let you sit down and read. It’s a great place to let your mind travel. It is very important to give your mind a vacation or a recess, because in the adult world, there is often little time or at least little perceived time to do so.


There is no recess so you must be the teacher for your mind. You’re own master.


If you would like to show us your art projects that you made, send them into eCureMe. We’ll photograph the best ones and put it up on the site.


Don’t know what makes you happy? Try walking into a toy store and remember what you liked to play with as a child. Why? What about it made you feel that way? You need to try to create that feeling again. Looking for it in clothes or other people will eventually fail because there is no recapturing something from the past - there is only the creation of the new.


Small art projects are a step on the road to enlightenment.

Peace.

H.G.




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