Spirit of Touch Drawing is alive and well in Rochester, NY!!!~
hello jewell, hello responders to jewell! my name is claudia cashman; i have just joined the community within the past few days; i attended The Gathering three years ago, at the Circle of Teran, in Ashland, Oregon. i had found deborah's Soul Cards three years before THAT and had been doing Touch Drawing by myself for those three years....then the inspiration to attend a Gathering arrived in my heart and off i went. what an incredible, life-changing experience. it continues to be a source of great spiritual uplifting, growth and joy in my life. i am just now preparing to facilitate a class for the first time. i belong to the Unitarian Universalist Church and there are many people I have told about TD over the past year of my membership and they are chomping at the bit to give it a try. the class will only run for six weeks, once a week, beginning in early october. to say i am excited is a vast understatement. i think the reason i have held off the idea of facilitating for this many years (not that it's any kind of "issue"...it just IS...)is because i wanted to be certain that i could hold the space as reverently as deborah does; that i could be the best possible facilitator that it's possible for me to be!
this summer i attended a TD workshop at lilydale, in Cassadaga new york...the spiritualist community? i've been going there for years, just strolling around, attending message services, reading in the library, and this is the first time i took a workshop. i was disappointed. the facilitators' heart was certainly in the right place, but her presentation was oddly void of spirit; and at the end, she decided we should do, more or less, a "show and tell" session: we sat in a circle and each shared one of hte five drawings we had done and others were allowed to interpret FOR US.....unfortunately what arose were comments such as "oh, i see a HORSE! i see a BALLOON!!!" i just didn't feel that it was .....hmmmm, what word to use?....."appropriate"? "spiritually helpful"? it just didn't work for me.
i had a fascinating chat about it with the friend i went with on our drive home. she said , quite vehemently, "it wasn't just about YOU you know....didn't you notice that the people who commented sometimes received something important from what they saw????"
i don't doubt the validity of that statement, i jsut didn't think it applied to what we were doiong. i much prefer the act of bearing witness to a partners' work: just look, listen to what the drawer has to say about his/her experience and reaction to what they created.....just witness, not interpret or put another interpretation onto it.
to each his/her own though, right?
at any rate, touch drawing is very much an opening up of my deepest spiritual channels. as an artist, i have always felt like all my "channels" are open, 24/7.......in another context someone might say i have ADD, lol, but ........always open to messages from the universe.....they are plentiful and if you tune up your intuition, you will find them......that's what i always tell people.....
(NOTE: a radio story i wrote called "unexpected beauty" can be hard as a podcast on the www.lifenow.org website......that is the radio program we produce at the Unitarian church: a weekly story about, basically, living the best life you can NOW.....i had this idea to just string together several of my "experiences" of receiving messages from the Universe...it worked quite well as a story. the website is pretty accessible....just look for the list of shows that have aired and click on "unexpected beauty" , with claudia quinn cashman ....that's me! if you're interested, that is....)
i had a very literally MOVING experience at the gathering in oregon: deborah's friend brian brought his crystals to one days' session and he set up an amazing crystal grid in the room, inviting anyone who wanted to try it to lay down inside it and see what happened for them. up until i took him up on his offer, i had been feeling frustrated as my drawings all came out looking like static on a tv screen; after the crystal grid experience, i was more convinced than EVER that spiritual energy can bemoved around....in my case, my drawings became much more ...interesting? after i moved some of my "spiritual energy files" to different levels!
okay, i will stop now....i could go on and on, but i won't........thank you for bringing this topic up; i am sure i'll have even more to say as i get into the role of facilitator in october! thanks for sharing, thanks for listening.
~claudia~
this summer i attended a TD workshop at lilydale, in Cassadaga new york...the spiritualist community? i've been going there for years, just strolling around, attending message services, reading in the library, and this is the first time i took a workshop. i was disappointed. the facilitators' heart was certainly in the right place, but her presentation was oddly void of spirit; and at the end, she decided we should do, more or less, a "show and tell" session: we sat in a circle and each shared one of hte five drawings we had done and others were allowed to interpret FOR US.....unfortunately what arose were comments such as "oh, i see a HORSE! i see a BALLOON!!!" i just didn't feel that it was .....hmmmm, what word to use?....."appropriate"? "spiritually helpful"? it just didn't work for me.
i had a fascinating chat about it with the friend i went with on our drive home. she said , quite vehemently, "it wasn't just about YOU you know....didn't you notice that the people who commented sometimes received something important from what they saw????"
i don't doubt the validity of that statement, i jsut didn't think it applied to what we were doiong. i much prefer the act of bearing witness to a partners' work: just look, listen to what the drawer has to say about his/her experience and reaction to what they created.....just witness, not interpret or put another interpretation onto it.
to each his/her own though, right?
at any rate, touch drawing is very much an opening up of my deepest spiritual channels. as an artist, i have always felt like all my "channels" are open, 24/7.......in another context someone might say i have ADD, lol, but ........always open to messages from the universe.....they are plentiful and if you tune up your intuition, you will find them......that's what i always tell people.....
(NOTE: a radio story i wrote called "unexpected beauty" can be hard as a podcast on the www.lifenow.org website......that is the radio program we produce at the Unitarian church: a weekly story about, basically, living the best life you can NOW.....i had this idea to just string together several of my "experiences" of receiving messages from the Universe...it worked quite well as a story. the website is pretty accessible....just look for the list of shows that have aired and click on "unexpected beauty" , with claudia quinn cashman ....that's me! if you're interested, that is....)
i had a very literally MOVING experience at the gathering in oregon: deborah's friend brian brought his crystals to one days' session and he set up an amazing crystal grid in the room, inviting anyone who wanted to try it to lay down inside it and see what happened for them. up until i took him up on his offer, i had been feeling frustrated as my drawings all came out looking like static on a tv screen; after the crystal grid experience, i was more convinced than EVER that spiritual energy can bemoved around....in my case, my drawings became much more ...interesting? after i moved some of my "spiritual energy files" to different levels!
okay, i will stop now....i could go on and on, but i won't........thank you for bringing this topic up; i am sure i'll have even more to say as i get into the role of facilitator in october! thanks for sharing, thanks for listening.
~claudia~
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