Obsession: Inspiration or Sabateur

It's a slow morning here in SLO country.  On the way to walk Missy ... on the way to clean the car ... on the way to organize my photos ... I stopped to read Rob Brezsny's Free Will Astrology ... and fell into a thought.

Here's what Rob says this morning:

What is your most hateable and loveable obsession, Sagitarius?  The compulsion that sometimes sabotages you and sometimes inspires you?  The longing that can either fool you or make you smarter?  Whatever it is, I suspect it's beginning a transformation.   Is there anything you can do to ensure that the changes it undergoes will lead you away from the hateable consequences and closer to the loveable stuff?  I think there's a lot you can do.  For starters:  Do a ritual -- yes an actual ceremony -- in which you affirm your intention that your obsession will forever after serve your highest good and brightest integrity.

This set me to thinking ... what obsession? What both inspires and sabotages me?  I can think of several in each category but one that does both? ... that's tricky.

So on the beach walk ... which was glorious ... it came to me in a surprising flash ... IDEAS!  At first I thought, "that's crazy!" but then realized the truth of the insight.  I love ideas ... mine, yours, anyone's ... I love the purity of potential that comes in every tiny lightbulb package.  I love the mystery of untangling the threads and weaving them into a new pattern.  Ideas definitely inspire me ... but they also sabotage me ... luring me into dead ends, pulling me away from ideas I've already committed to, dangling new possibilities in front of me like bright, shiny toys.

There is a particularly seductive pull of new ideas ... they are always perfect, always fresh and perky, always young.  During the first blush of their very untested innocence, there is a mental high of power and success.  Failure is not an option because reality has not dusted over the shine.  And that's how the door to sabotage opens.  Committing to taking an idea into the world means facing reality, seeing the wrinkles and blemishes up close, learning how to deal with the imperfections, how to polish the idea so that it still shines but with a deeper luster.  

It's during this post-fantasy period when the work is getting hard, that ideas take up their sabotage act.  A new one sashays through the door and purrs, "Look at me.  I'm bright, shiny and perfect. Come play with me."  I have a pattern of following that siren call.

So, if that's the obsession, what's the ritual?  

I have a vase made of glow-in-the-dark glass ... it's really incredible and glows almost all night long.  So I've written out the last three ideas that have come my way on index cards and I'm going to put them into that vase and let that light charge them with the intention of "serving my highest good and brightest integrity."  When I am ready to commit to a new idea, I can pull out those cards and see which one carries the brightest "charge."  And, while I'm working on implementing an idea, if another siren song starts playing, I can write it down on a card and put it into the idea vase until I'm ready to make a commitment to a new project.

So that's the word from the central coast on this Saturday morning.

About this image:  Strawberry Wizard


I think I've been eating too many strawberries!