I’m on my second journey through The Artist’s Way. I went through the book and program several years ago, and am at a point in my life where I feel it’s once again important to tap into the creative energy of the universe. With all that has happened in my life over the past couple of years, returning to “source” seems to be more than a desire, it’s an imperative, a soul-deep need.
It is “Week Four”. As I was reading through the text yesterday, I came across the following:
“… we learn what we want and ultimately become willing to make the changes needed to get it. But not without a tantrum. And now without a kriya, a Sanskrit word meaning a spiritual emergency or surrender. (I always think of kriyas as spiritual seizures. Perhaps they should be spelled crias because they are cries of the soul as it is wrung through changes.)
“We all know what a kriya looks like: it is the bad case of flu right after you’ve broken up with your lover. It’s the rotten head cold and bronchial cough that announces you’ve abused your health to meet an unreachable work deadline.”
Yeah, and it’s a crutch slipping on a marble hospital floor, landing you back in the wheel chair, after a week of abusing a bad leg traveling back and forth to the hospital to care for your dad….
As repeat visitors will know, for some time now I’ve been working through the rationale behind my health situation, and trying to plug it in to the progress being made in the creation of my new reality, the achievement of my dreams. It’s often seemed that just as I’m really starting to gain momentum, something like that will happen.
I look over the past events in light of the kriya, however, and things start to make a little sense. I got distracted, started pushing beyond the limits of what I’d achieved too quickly. I forgot about baby steps and, knowing I was abusing the leg, I started to let fear build. With fear comes negative imagery, and true to form, in a “spiritual siezure” of explosive manifestation, my visualizations became real.
Bang.
We know that emotion is an energizer. It fuels manifestation, both positive and negative. When we’re going through an emotional situation, it’s much easier for us to lose focus, let our concentration drift, and allow those fear-driven negative images in.
Likewise when we’re focused on something like a deadline, it becomes all-encompassing. It occupies our mind night and day and, similar to the situation that is emotionally draining, the intellectual drain can also let those negative images sneak into the picture. We don’t always even realize they’re there, though phrases like “I’m working myself to death”, and “this job is killing me” most certainly have been fluttering about the periphery. The intense mental energy put in to the task, because you’re not paying close enough attention to it, gets filtered into those sideline worries and the next thing you know you’re coughing up green stuff.
I become more and more aware, the more I learn about creative reality and the law of attraction, that the Universe expects us to be in control of our thoughts. We have been creating the life around us our entire lives without even knowing it. Now that we realize this, we can control those thoughts and encourage our world forward in a positive direction … the direction of our dreams.
When the kriyas occur, those spiritual seizures that derail us and toss us onto our butts, we can (after screaming and crying for a minute or two) examine the incidents in the light of why they happen … and what we can do to avoid similar situations in the future.
It’s tough sometimes to accept the fact that I’m in control of my destiny — even the yucky stuff. But on the whole, knowing that control is available, is empowering.
However: The first thought that came to me as I was reading through this section? A cria is a baby llama.
Since then, I’ve been trying to find a connection. Baby llamas can certainly be fresh little bundles of explosive energy, but that’s about the only association I could come up with. If you can think of another reason that a cria and a kriya might be related, please feel free to jot your thoughts in the Replies section of this page!
Visit Northeast Llama Rescue and Barnyard Sanctuary to learn more about crias and their parents, their cousins the Alpacas, and all the other animals who have found safety through this marvelous organization!
