I confessed to a friend last week: “I have all this education and experience as an attorney—prestigious education and experience—to do that work at a high, strategic level—and painting is my magic.”

The power and beauty that comes through my soul yantra paintings astounds me. The profound resonance people experience, to tears, in receiving (or simply seeing) them, staggering.

And yet, painting is the one thing I’ve never really let myself do. (Can you relate?)

When I shared this over coffee Friday with another friend-colleague (we need better words for these relationships), she looked utterly surprised.

I explained: I’d always brushed it aside as being impractical (read: not making any money, or at least not the money required to support my life). Because I’d been told it was impractical, and it wouldn’t make me any money, and I believed it.

Hell, even Elizabeth Gilbert advises not to ask (demand, expect) your creativity, your magic—the magic—to make money. To feed it, not ask it to feed you (rather than intrinsically in the doing). I’ve always resented and resisted that, but only recently, I now realize, have I outright rejected it as patently untrue.

And so I told this friend-colleague, as our conversation meandered and wove its way into talking about the one thing she will not let herself do. I mean really turn toward and embrace wholeheartedly, as a vocation as well as an avocation. The thing her heart bursts full with and through and she has decided won’t make any money (for starters).

How many messages do we have about what will and won’t make us money? Who made this up? Why are we still listening?

 

Why are we not listening to the pulsing longing of our own soul?

I listened to my colleague-friend across the table, and I heard all the same dichotomies (overt and subtle) that I’d created for myself. I felt her pain. And I saw how she glossed it over with unspoken judgement (it wasn’t that great or important as pain goes) and admonishments to be grateful (that she has the professional training, reputation and opportunities she’s had and well, not everyone does.)

I spoke that to her aloud, from my own experience:

This pain is not trivial pain. It is soul-level pain, and it is real.

And we like to pretend it is trivial—or silly even. We may have some shame or embarrassment at feeling it at all; we have so much else. So, we tell ourselves it’s necessary (for practicalities sake) and OK (not real or deep—perhaps even that of a complainer), and we urge ourselves to be grateful for this other “practical” professional path we’ve walked.

Here’s a confession of raw honesty: I could not be grateful.

I got to a point where, if I were completely honest with myself, I could no longer be grateful for being an attorney. I could not simply turn toward gratitude as a balm for the aching longing within me.

I am immersed in a spiritual path of gratitude. I have had many opportunities and advantages others have not. This was no small thing to not attempt to be grateful. To be honest rather than aspirational. To know the difference between a sincere practice of gratitude and its use as avoidance and platitude.

To tell the truth.

Practicing law is not my magic; its is not my soul’s longing; it is a (perceived) survival mechanism. No amount of intentional gratitude was going to heal the denial of my soul’s longing to express its magic—and the fissure I’d created in insisting it could not support me in exchange.

And my magic—the magic—is creating magic: clients, commissions, connections.

Your one thing, that thing you will not allow yourself to be or to do, that is the thing to follow.

 

That is the through route, the space of flow and flourishing. It holds the magic.

 

And it tends to be the one place we won’t go.

If it calls, it would be my honor to work with you in a sacred practice of discernment, clarity and integration of your magic (and release of  its full expression and embrace).

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