Category Archives: Creativity

creative freedom is love

One True Thing

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You’ll either find this to be the toughest or the easiest thing in the world to do.

If things get brilliantly bizarre – which they totally might so, I beg of you, please don’t rule that crazy goodness out – you’ll find it to be both at the same time.

There’s a lot of noise right now about resolutions and this new year being the most “fucktabulous” or whatever the latest punchy catch word is but experience has proven that until the year actually ends itself, there’s no sure way to tell what in the confetti is about to drop.

A proper year takes its grand old time undressing and I don’t know about you but I can’t wait that long to see if when I turn around my life in retrospect had been fuckalicious. I mean, who could possibly predict how many other fucksational ways we’ll have come up with to use curse words on kitschy cocktail napkins by then ( . . . wait for it . . . ).

But there is something that could rock your world right this minute even if the rest of the year falls to hell in a fiery hand basket. Continue reading →

{Podcast} 3 Ways to Bring On the Hardcore Love We Need Right Now

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Some of what I talk about in this final podcast episode for the year was hard to say. Hard to admit and yet at the same time, hard to hold in.

People don’t talk about some of this stuff and I think that’s a mistake. We need to be real in order to be love. And heaven knows we need the love to shine bigger and brighter than ever these days.

My humble intention with this episode was to remind us all of three empowering things:

#1 Our authentic connection to the love within is the single most important gift we have. I offer a specific way for us to get back to that love space right now. And sustain it.

#2 We all lose our way. (I did.) We can always, always, always come back. (I’m here.)

#3 It’s time to majorly detox from the negative energy that does not serve our highest selves. I share in blissful, bloody detail exactly how I’m going to be doing this over the next two weeks. :)

Ready, babes? Cool, here we go. Listen in and let me know what you think:

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How the Artist Saves the World

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It’s before dawn on an inky black morning in late November. A sudden slap of thunder collapses over me, slamming the hairs on my neck straight up.

And I know in this fear-strangled moment. The Apocalypse is upon us.

In hindsight, I’m sorry I didn’t alert you guys but to be fair we’ve not yet exchanged phone numbers (it’s not you, it’s me) and I have a dysfunctional relationship with Facebook right now.

But we all damn near perished at approximately 05:14:00 Eastern Standard Time last Tuesday. And at some point on Wednesday. And a couple of times over the weekend (the weekend details are still sketchy; I may have passed out more than once).

We’re still here, though, thank the sexy buddhas, and do you know why?

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How to Write Like Sex and Dance on a Pinhead

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You think you know a person, right. And then she pulls some random shit like this on you.

What is happening right now. You’d like to know. I bet.

You think you know yourself.

You think you know all there is to know inside what you already know and then you got comfortable there.

I’d like to disrupt you for a second, babe, if that’s cool. Because while you are warm and snuggled there in the chaise lounge corner of your punchy Ikea Nockeby sectional, your mind is getting dull and your face is pulling sunken and your beautiful, beautiful wild spirit is growing stupid-restless.

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It’s Already Happening

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You think you’re waiting.

But it’s already happening.

All in your favor.

All of it. All of the energy that never lets up, every prick of the slicing rain and scorch of the driving winds.

The accidents. The encounters. The signs.

Everything that’s happening is unfolding inside a perfect pattern of deliberate chaos.

Even as you hang your steely head upon its crooked neck.

Continue reading →

Meditation: The Biggest Lie of All

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meditation 44

photo by Allison Marie for glorybegin.com

If we really care about each other, and I know we deeply, deeply do, this needs to be said.

As much as we may groove with an enchanting romantic spell now and again, the ones that conceal our view of the absolute truth must in good faith be broken.

So as unromantic as that sounds . . . let’s just get about it, shall we?

Okay, here goes:

If you (or your friend / lover / yoga instructor with the sexy solar plexus chakra) think meditation is in any way supposed to be easily peaceful, that you will somehow be miraculously absorbed by an orgasmic explosion of light or mysteriously levitated above your living room ottoman. you have been fed a grave and serious amount of bullshit, my gorgeous love.

Quite possibly on multiple occasions.

Also quite possibly, incense or magic carpets or chickens or late night credit card payments or yoke-less eggs were involved.

Continue reading →

Why Artists & Seekers (& Meditators & Monsters) Need Frustration

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Maybe you haven’t noticed it (so I’m being punk a little bit – you’ve totally noticed it) but in spirituality speak there’s a good lot of the word ‘peace’ getting tossed around.

Learning the peace, teaching the peace, practicing the peace, seeking the peace, sharing the peace, welcoming the p—- okay, right, you got me.

And I’m the first one to champion the peace, for sure. You know this about me. It’s my thing and it’s important. Heaven knows we do need the peace.

But peace is only half the story – the half we tend to idolize, glamorize. As gorgeous as peace may be, it’s foolish (and boring and unrealistic and deceiving) to talk about it as though peace stands alone as some sort of trophy / goal / badge in a spiritual practice.

It doesn’t.

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{Podcast} The Single Most Killer Creative Skill I Mastered by Blogging

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I recorded this podcast with the deepest reverence for all of us who dare to engage fully with our creativity in this life. Hands down, there is nothing else like it.

I believe our creativity, our art, is the truest expression of our soul’s desire to offer love and light to the world. That who we are at our most raw and true comes out in our art and that kind of brave honesty is the greatest spiritual gift we have to give (and receive) during our time here on this planet.

As it happens, Glory Begin is one year old today. This warms my heart. If you have been here for the full journey or part of it, I am beyond grateful to have your energy and light in this space. Your light is my light is our light.

Of all the things I have learned along this creative journey (and, sweet mother lover, there have been a LOT of lessons) , there is one thing that has surfaced for me over this past year that stands out as unequivocally most important.

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How to Conquer Your Greatest Fear

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(Hey there, gorgeous, Listen, before this gets any more compromising, I should probably warn you: This post is a bit longer than permissible by socially acceptable blogging standards. We all know the ‘proper’ length of a blog post has already been decided for us and nailed to the cross of 1000 words max, so have decreed the blogging gods. But here’s what: I’m not interested in appeasing them today. Not today. Today I need this – this whole ravenous thing – and I need every sexy, lengthy, stubborn inch of it. If you come with all the way, I will love you forever in a place warm and intimate and eternal. It will be glorious. So. You wanna?)

The writer in me wanted to scratch apart what I’m about to share and then patch it back together; make it – you know – “better.”

Maybe twist it inward then unravel it again; thread a few more thoughts through it and slide a few others out.

But then I realized that this thing wasn’t really mine to begin with so who was I to monkey around with it?

Below is a post that fell out of me onto social media in one of those “Ah Ha!” moments where the clouds ceremoniously part and the dazzling light warmly aligns your vision and you finally see Everything clearly and exactly as it always was, but with the clouds and the fog and everything before, well, you were just kind of screwed.

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{Podcast} How to Forgive Yourself

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me tribe

Allison Marie for Glory Begin

People often ask me why I study and practice the metaphysical teachings of A Course In Miracles and the answer is quite undramatically, unimpressively, unassumingly simple: It works.

By that I mean: it gets me to the peace.

I truly believe that this is the single most important measure of a working spiritual practice. Is it getting you to a place of deep internal peace. Everyone’s path and practice will be rich and different and special, but as long as it gets one to the peace, all is solid with the Universe.

But if your spiritual path doesn’t lead you to peace? It’s not working.

Continue reading →

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2 Rockstar Ways to Have It All

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We want to have it all. But how will we know when we’ve got it?

How will we know when it’s all enough?

Yikes, that’s a biggie. Okay, let’s slow down, let’s break it down a minute.

In this our (maddeningly) overstuffed, (ruthlessly) overstocked, (sickeningly) overjammed lives, shooting for having ‘enough’ sounds pretty lame.

Right, I mean we want to go after the Big Dreams and burst forth with Infinite Abundance!

Why just aim for enough when you could have more? When you could have even more upon that, when you could have it all – when you could have everything?

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{Video} How to Find Your Calling (& Super Big Joy)

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Hey, there, hey love, excuse me – hi friend – quick question for you: what are you supposed to be doing with your life? I mean, I’m just curious: what’s your thing, what’s your gig? What’s your calling?

I guess what I’m asking you is: what are you here to . . . you know . . . DO?

Kind of a tricky one, right. Little bit. For you, for me, for all of us.

But over the course of my deeply spirit-steeped life, I discovered 2 tiny words that have come in massively handy when it comes to keeping me centered, guided and joyful on my path. So incredibly useful are these words, in fact, that I have been using them daily to manifest my personal calling and stay intimately tight with what it is that Spirit is asking me to do.

What are these two transformational words?

Listen in and let’s get about uncovering your beautiful calling and your deepest joy:

There is no better time than right now to begin to get in touch with your true calling. If this message resonated for you I promise you there is a divine reason for it.

Nothing comes into your life by accident, beloved. We are all messengers and angels for one another; we are here to walk each other home.

Whatever your calling is, whatever reveals itself to you as your purpose, you can be certain that it will be about love, it will be about light and it will be about service.

As always, I welcome your comments – and you :) – with open arms and an open heart.

If you know someone who could benefit from this message I invite you to share this post with them. There are so many beautiful souls out there who could use a gentle reminder that they are so loved and that their gifts, talents and presence matter to us all.

Sending you peace and joy, dear ones. Always, always.

Allison Marie Xx

P.S. Did you enjoy this? Sign up at the top of the page there to receive my freshest content by email. Never junk, only groovy love stuff. Promise. :)

The Art of Mindfulness: How to Slow a Rainstorm

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How to slow a rainstorm:

watch.

Watch the way the water falls.

Watch the way the raindrops catch on leaves,

and cling,

then slide

away.

Continue reading →

Crowding Out the Crowd: What If It’s All Been Done Before?

30 Replies

As creatives, we dread the ominous feeling that whatever it is we want to do has already been done.

And – horror of horrors – that it’s all been done and done better than we could ever do it.

So let’s get right down to it, then, guys. Let’s play this harrowing mind game all the way to its bitter end, shall we?

Here’s the truth:

If you are reading it, it’s been done.

If you can see it, hear it, taste it or touch it, it means someone brought it forward into existence already and it can now be experienced, held, by others.

Continue reading →

Naked On The Table: The Agony and The Ecstasy of Writing

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It happens. And it can cripple you either way.

When you find yourself in that rare and paralyzing and exquisite place where it’s scary to write and it’s scary to not write – maybe think about this.

We sit around and we mull over and we wallow in the waiting . . . to see if our creation will ever finally look us dead in the eye. To see if we’ll be okay, if we’ll ever become ready, if we’ll ever find the strength, the reasons, the angle, the answers, the perfect what-have-you.

To write.
To publish.
To show.
To invite.
To expose ourselves.
To lay naked on the table and not budge.

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Empty Threads: Self-Doubt and Arrogance in Art

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I’m writing but only in the sense that words are standing next to one another in a line across the screen.

They mock me with their blankness. I knock them over backwards.

I construct another little wall of letter-soldier-figures, punching them into place and they march, left to right, single file as I’ve instructed.

But they won’t speak on my command; empty words have nothing to say.

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Killing the Silence(s)

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Silence.

Is deafening.

Is golden.

Is revenge.

Is . . . ?

Not the solid wall we often imagine it to be. The one we fear brushing up against.

It’s not the sort of stoic, finite, dead space of a concrete block we try so deftly to avoid slamming into.

Silence, instead, is a living thing.

Continue reading →

Hardest in Love: When It’s Hot, When It’s Fierce

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“So you ask for a hotter fire, a fiercer confrontation. Even though this is often painful rather than pleasurable, it’s all right, for you are reaching toward that freedom which lies beyond pleasure and pain. When you want to burn away the grip of your ego on your awareness you’ll endure whatever is needed to clean up your life.” – Ram Dass

A spiritual journey gets hardcore when your commitment to it rises above all else. As you come to realize that everything is a spiritual experience – every encounter, every relationship, every problem, every joy – you are inevitably confronted with the heavy stuff, the seedy stuff you need to fundamentally change about the way you view the world and your role in it.

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I Hate To Tell You This

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I’m leaving.

We lost.

It’s over.

You’re fired.

He’s gone.

In a split instant – in the slender space between just a couple of words – our lives change.

Some changes mount gradually, nearly imperceptibly, over time while others punch through like a slug to the gut.

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The Answers We Seek: Leading the Essential Change of Art (Beginner’s Luck Series)

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Click to hear me read this post:

Sometimes I wonder if ‪creating ‎art is more about asking questions than telling stories.

Can I look at this another way?

How does this change when you . . . ?

Do you see what I see?

What if we . . . ?

In a way, it takes some guts to ask questions, right. To raise a hand, to investigate, to interrupt the regularly scheduled program. So few people do anymore. Everyone seems to have “the” answer nailed down, figured out.

Googled.

But what about the questions that can’t be researched, they have to be experienced? What about our incredible capacity to invent, create, bend, innovate? Make stuff up?

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