Demeter and bees

I finally finished Demeter this week.

I lost my inspiration to work on her about three-fourths of the way through. I have been struck with that a lot lately...lack of inspiration. In fact I have been feeling very disenchanted about everything of late. I have been way too focused on the physical. Sometimes we get too wrapped up in being validated and we translate validation into how much money we are making. Like many artists, it's often feast or famine around here and mostly leaning towards the famine. It is very easy to fall into the "what's the use" thought pattern, and when you do it is very hard to find inspiration.

So that's where I was a little over a week ago. I was walking around in my backyard barefoot playing with my daughter when I stepped on a honeybee. He stung me twice on the right foot and it hurt like all get out. I got most of the stinger out, but I guess missed a small part of it. A couple of days later my foot swelled up. That little bee sting caused me a lot of trouble.

After I realized I still had some stinger left and got it out, it suddenly dawned on me that that little bee might have been sent to wake me up. I was led right to an article on the internet about the magicalness of bees. Rudolf Steiner believed that bees were sent to Earth from Venus. Venus holds the energy of the heart chakra for our solar system. Bees form their honeycomb in the patterns of hexagrams which are connected to the heiros gamos or Star of David; also a symbol for the heart chakra.

Bees are all about love and bliss. They are our example of unity consciousness and what working together for the higher good can do....produce the sweetest of life's nectar. The biggest message that came through to me was that for a bee "THEIR WORK IS THEIR BLISS".  Every time they gather nectar from a flower they are in complete ecstasy.  Wow, that is what I have been missing focusing too much on my validation.  I paint because it is blissful.  I paint because I love to paint and to create.  My focus should never be about if the paintings will sell, but about how much ecstasy I will receive from each brushstroke.

Also as I was reading about bees I came across the fact that Demeter's priestesses were called bees. Wow....very serendipitous! So I finished Demeter and included a little honeybee on her shoulder. She is dreaming of a better world, a more love centered world. She is the consciousness of the Queen Bee and she is asking for some worker bees to help create this world she is dreaming of. But the honeybees are disappearing and the world seems to be losing hope...too many of us are thinking "What's the use..."
It's time to wake up and follow our bliss.

I feel magical again, and the world is reflecting that to me. One of my magical friends Julia Inglis posted a blog about bees the other day and I noticed it last night. I wrote her to share how wonderful I thought it was that we were synchronized. She wrote a lovely blog about the Winter Solstice (she is in Australia) that has a lot to do with what I just shared. I think there is a big message to many of us to just follow our bliss right now.

I am gestating a Persephone right now. She is going to bring me a lot of bliss....