Living the Heart's Desire: Art, Video, & Healing for Spiritual Awakening

I mentioned in Part 1 of this series that I found Third Tribe Marketing early on in my search for information, and that was a blessing in many ways. Here I found heart centered, high integrity people who were very successful at making a living from their blogs and websites. So when I saw that many of them were using a WordPress theme called Thesis to create their sites, I looked into it. It sounded good so I bought it. Now let me state first, I believe Thesis is a very good product. I’m a Thesis affiliate. I’m promoting the product. But for me it was not the right fit. This was my first mistake in creating my website.

Let me back up a bit and tell you what I did first that was useful. Before downloading and installing WordPress on my new server (Hostgator, which I highly recommend), I went to Lynda.com, a site I’ve spent a lot of time on in the last couple of years, and I looked for tutorials on WordPress. There were a couple, and they were helpful in getting WordPress installed on my server. They gave me an introduction to how WordPress works and got me started.

I’d like to take a moment to recommend Lynda.com,. It’s a site filled with video tutorials on just about every commercial software that exists. It’s constantly growing and adding more, and I have been a big fan and user of the site for several years. If what your heart desires requires that you learn new software, take a look at this site. I have found it enormously helpful in learning graphic programs and video editing. And the price is quite reasonable. And it’s not limited to graphic software (that’s just my interest), it has just about anything you could want. Check it out. That said, let’s return to WordPress.

After installing WordPress, I bought and installed Thesis. I don’t know if the advertising was unclear or just my interpretation of it incorrect, but I thought Thesis was strictly a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) program that would  allow me to create a custom look for my site without having to know CSS and PHP coding. I found that it is a program that will let you create a very customizable and flexible site, but it is not fully WYSIWYG. You need to be comfortable with doing some coding work to use this theme, at the very least doing some copying and pasting of code in the appropriate places. I, however, have no knowledge of CSS or PHP coding and soon found myself lost. I stuck with it for several weeks, not really knowing what alternative I had, and finally had to say, “I can’t make this work.” Now had I been tuned into the heart a little better, I might have seen the truth sooner and saved myself from at least some of that 2 weeks of frustration and anxiety, but I do have this way of trying to “push the river” and just keep going when I really would be better served by stopping, resting, and seeing what is needed from that place of stillness. I finally did do that and quickly was guided to another theme called the Ultimate Blogging Theme. It’s not perfect (and no theme is), but it is WYSIWYG, no coding required to use it. You can create a custom look with it pretty easily, and like all WordPress themes, you can ad functionality with the multitude of plugins available free at WordPress.org. I’m very happy with it.

I did find the process of working with WordPress a bit frustrating. While the tutorials on Lynda.com gave me an introduction, I had to do a lot of trial and error learning to work with the interface. Over time I got comfortable with it, but wish I had found some of the programs I now know of, that take you step by step through the process of creating your blog. By the time I found them, I had figured most of it out myself, but it was not by the most pleasant of learning processes.

As I look back on my experience, I see I made 2 mistakes that I hope you will be able to avoid. First, I spread myself too thin in terms of what I was focusing my research on. I was trying to learn as much as I could about blogging and social media marketing at the same time as I was at the beginning stages of setting up a WordPress site. Had I put aside some of the material about social media marketing for later exploration, and concentrated solely on searching for materials on how to create a WordPress site, I probably would have found the step by step programs sooner and saved myself the frustration of all the trial and error leaning.

Secondly, if I had stopped myself in the midst of my frustration and anxiety more often, and just sat in stillness more frequently, I would have been able to listen more clearly to the heart and it’s guidance, and not made mistake number one. This is a lesson I seem to need to learn over and over. Maybe you’re like me, too. Maybe that’s part of why I am writing this, to remind you again to stop and listen, allow your heart, Spirit, God, however you think of it, to guide your actions. Let activity arise spontaneously from this place of stillness.

So next time I’ll outline the sources I eventually found that guide you step by step in the creation of a WordPress site.

Oh, and about Thesis, when I finally realized I didn’t have the right skills to use this program well, they graciously gave me my money back. Good people, good company.

I look forward to your thoughts and comments! (if you are reading this on the home page the link to comments is found to the far right of the post title)

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When living the heart’s desire requires you to create a new website and blog, it can be an overwhelming experience. I have had a website since 1996. It was originally created in a long dead program called PageMill. This was before the days off CSS or anything related to how sites work today. All the pages were html and created by a labor intensive method of creating tables into which you put your content and using lots of <br> tags and blank images to get things spaced as you wanted. Perhaps you, too, remember this time on the web (or then again, perhaps you were 10 years old then and are saying, “You did what?”).

Over the years, as an artist creating new work, I continued to add more of the same pages to the site. It had grown to almost 300 pages by 2010. I did update the look of the site in 2000, but was still creating pages the same old way, now using the very first (and also now very outdated) version of Dreamweaver. To say I was behind the times would be an understatement. I’ve been thinking for a number of years that the site needed updating, but the thought of recreating all those pages was overwhelming. My attention had not been on the web in the last few years, so I had no idea there was another way of creating a website. I did notice pages were being created using php, but not being a programmer, I had no idea how that worked.

If you read my post “Finally, It’s All About Love” you know that after much “I don’t have time” protesting, I joined Facebook this year. What an eye opener! Suddenly I was introduced to the world of social media marketing, and then the true overwhelm began. I knew the next step was to create a blog, so I started looking for information. Somehow, by some luck or divine guidance (depending on your view of life) I found WordPress and it seemed to be the way to go. That was the easy part. From there I fell into the world of “way too much information” and “how do I sort through all this” and  the overwhelm set in.

The trend in blogging has been to give away free content, build your list, and eventually market to them once you have their trust and confidence. Sounds like a great way to market, one really in tune with my heart. As you may recall from “Finally, It’s All About Love” I stumbled on Third Tribe Marketing early in my search and that was indeed the way people were doing things. It’s a great way to market. But there is one problem it creates for someone like myself, new to all this. There is an EMORMOUS amount of free information out there. How does one sort through it all and find what you need? How do you even know what you need?

If you are like me (and hopefully, you won’t be after reading this series) you download it all, listen to many webinars and mp3 recording, and make lots of mistakes. My first mistake was in not focusing solely on the creation of the website first. Now if I had been listening to the heart more closely, I probably wouldn’t have been so overwhelmed, and been guided to take things one at a time, but being the mind centered problem solver I am, I tried to figure it out all at once.

I was listening to, and reading about, marketing more than website creation and when I started to create the site, I found myself lost and, you guessed it, overwhelmed. In later parts of this series, I’ll introduce you to some step by step website creation packages that I eventually found. Had I found them first, things would have gone smoother, but I seem to be a master at the trial and error method of learning. And if you are familiar with this method, you know it should be called the “trial and fail, and fail, and fail, and, yes! it finally works” method.

See you next post when I show you what I could have done to avoid all the mistakes.

I look forward to your thoughts and comments!

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I’ve been creating digital art since 1996. I started a website then and the business, New World Creations. I have to say it’s been more of an expensive hobby than a business, this creating of art, but it’s been a major focus of my life for the last 14 years. Then this past year I was introduced to Reconnective Healing and eventually became a practitioner.

It’s 2010 and the way to market on the Internet is all about social networking. A website is no longer enough. After months of saying I didn’t have time for Facebook, I joined. Then I created a page about my art, specifically about my mandalas because that seems to be all I create these days. I fell deeply into the “black hole” of Facebook, building my fan base and networking with other artists.

Then I took the training to become a Reconnective Healing practitioner, and created a Facebook page about that. Now I know social networking is more than Facebook, and I know I need to blog, but about what? I’m an artist, right? I can put up art, but do I really have anything to say about it? What’s the point of the blog?

So Mercury is retrograde and I start exploring what is next in my life. I’m listening to online interviews with social marketing experts, exploring the topic on Facebook and I stumble across something called Third Tribe Marketing. I join. The first interview I listen to gets me thinking, what is my life really about? What is the thing that I have to offer, that this humanness is burning to offer? And I look back over 50 some years and see it’s all about Love. Not love with a lower case “l” but Love, and Truth.

When I worked as a music teacher and vocal coach (my life before digital art and the Internet) all I wanted for my students was for them to know they were loved, just as they were, with all their flaws. When someone stands up in front of a voice teacher for the first time to sing, all their insecurity is showing. Everything they fear is bad or wrong with them is right there, threatening to show itself to any one with eyes to see it. And all I wanted for them was to know that this “not good enough” was a lie. I could see the truth. I knew they were loveable, and all I wanted was for them to know it, too. Did some of them ever discover that? I don’t know. I hope so.

Then I got very sick and couldn’t work. In searching for wellness I also found myself exploring spirituality. I read and read. I eventually became involved with a group on the fringes of the New Age movement, dedicated to the ascension of the planet, convinced we were literally moving into a new dimension. That’s a story probably best left untold, but I’m sure some of you can relate to it.

Digital art came into my life next, and at first it was all filled with bursts of light and New Age imagery, Goddesses, and Angels, and Visionary Landscapes. Then mandalas called me into service. This art had always used me to create it. I was never its source, just the tool to bring it into form. And now mandalas had called me. And I called out to the Universe, “I love the way you use me to create this art; I want my whole life to be this way, to be used as an instrument.”

Soon after that I got the “call” to move across the country to Ashland, OR from NH. I didn’t know why I was to move there, but it seemed to be a community with a lot of interest in both art and spirituality, and I was certainly ready for something new in my life, so I move 3500 miles to a place I’d never even visited. And there I discovered an experience I didn’t even know was possible, a relationship with a spiritual teacher.

In my New Age world teachers were all channeled entities. I didn’t even know the concept of a spiritual teacher, someone in whose eyes you would find yourself. But I fell in love with one, and found I was what I had truly always known I was, that I was Love.

In service to her foundation I learned video editing and in doing that, found a new mode of expression for my artwork. I discovered my life was being used. I was an instrument used by the Universe. I was Love itself, using itself through my art and my life, just being Love. Then I discovered Reconnective Healing and was once again “called,” finding a new way to be used.

So now I have a life and a business that includes art, video, Reconnective Healing, and ultimately spiritual awakening, supporting the awakening of all being to the truth of who they are.

So what will this blog be about? We’ll have to wait and see. I’m sure it will use me to create itself just as everything else in my life has. But finally…it’s all about Love.

I look forward to your thoughts and comments!

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