~  The Way of the Heart ~

"Love from the Earth" © 2002 ~ photo by Carol E Fairbanks

"My heart is afraid it will have to suffer", the boy told the alchemist one night as they looked up at the moonless sky. "Tell your heart that fear of suffering is worse than the suffering itself. And that no heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dreams."

                                                              ~ Paul Coehlo,  The Alchemist

"Dancing a New Perspective" © 1997 ~ oil on paper by Carol E Fairbanks

It was the autumn season of letting go, and I had just left my teaching job of almost thirty years.  Feeling as bare as the fall trees stripped of their foliage, I struggled to find a new direction for my life.  At a Touch Drawing ® class taught by a local teacher, I found that even doing that open ended art technique was requiring from me a great effort.  The wonderful thing about Touch Drawing ® is that you can warm up to the process by going inward, getting quiet and then doing a series of quick drawings.  In drawing with your fingertips on one side of the paper,  images are formed from impressions in oil paint onto the other side.  That centering process encourages the inner critic within to quiet down.  As I began to relax into this creative activity, my mind slowly let go of its fearful thoughts, and my focus became the tactile sensation of my fingertips moving across the paper. After completing a number of drawings, I decided my next one would be totally abstract.  Releasing any need to create an image that made "sense", I "danced" out my next touch drawing onto the paper.  When I felt finished, I slowly pulled the paper from my painting board and turned it over.  What I had intended to be an abstract image turned out to be a dancing woman.  The most amazing thing to me was that the last thing I felt like doing was "dancing for joy", as my image was clearly doing!  Another member of the group, during our sharing period, noticed that, in the upper right hand corner of my drawing, there was another woman, who was turning in the opposite direction. The main figure in the foreground was looking back at the past, (represented on the left in a mandala), while the dancing woman in the background was looking toward the future. ( on the right in a mandala)  In contemplating this Touch Drawing ® image, I realized that my inner guidance was asking me to take my eyes off the pain of my past and focus instead on creating that new promising future.

"Beckoning Journey" © 2002 ~ crayon by Carol E Fairbanks

So my new path...the way of my heart... was beckoning me through my art images, as well as through the signs of nature.  During the next five years of challenge and healing, I continued to search in Ohio for the "way of my heart" through teaching yoga and transpersonal art classes. Finally, after making a serious commitment to taking greater risks in my heart journey, I moved to Colorado in 2002.  There, without all the familiar things distracting me from my intuitive guidance, both Mother Earth and my creative guides began to "speak" loud and clear to me.  On the trails that I hiked in Colorado, I found many "heart rocks" that "spoke" to me of being loved and supported by the Universe.  The crayon journals I kept that year in Colorado continued to inspire me past my fears of limitation and scarcity.  The "wise owl" part of me was challenging...maybe even daring me... to get on a new destined path of mine. I had gone to great expense to move to Colorado, and the thought of moving further on, even with a sunny promise in the future, really scared me.

"Inner Guidance" © 2002 ~ crayon by Carol E Fairbanks

So I hiked and drew and meditated with the challenge of possibly moving yet another time.  In spending most of my life chasing after answers from so called "experts" outside of myself, I decided to use my Colorado experience for guidance with authenticity.  In my drawing of "Inner Guidance", I noted the appearance of an evergreen tree. That was the first of many images that I received in my art that seemed to be symbolic of the northwest area of our country. If you want to experience lots of  trees, Oregon is definitely your place!   It was a long process that took place in a very short amount of time.  The images, promptings of nature and serendipity happenings all worked together to have me on my way to Oregon within a year.

"Flow of Chi" © 2003 ~ crayon by Carol E Fairbanks

Both in traveling to Oregon and after I got there, I kept thinking I had made a "horrible" mistake in leaving my beautiful home in Colorado. When I arrived with my daughter, Annie, and two very worn out kitties, after traveling 24 hours straight in my little red car, I discovered I had agreed to live in a very run down place that was attached to a moldy barn.  If I were following this "journey of the heart" that I had been  guided to, why then was I winding up here?  In addition to my questionable living space, the program training with the Waldorf School, that I had been accepted into, turned out to be an experience that did not fit for me.  I had been away from teaching children for too long, and teaching adults was nearer to my heart at this time.

I got busy fixing up my sorely neglected living space, that I affectionately called "the hovel" and after a while it didn't seem too bad.  I could watch the activity of water birds on the Coast Fork of the Willamette River from my side window.  Hummingbirds swarmed the flowering bushes outside in the yard, driving my kitties crazy with wanting to get at them.  And during the next nine months of living in "the hovel",  I gestated alone, while staying in the flow of my heart journey... patiently waiting and watching for the next path to take.

"Oregonizing My Life"  © 2003 ~ ink drawing by Carol E Fairbanks