New York City in November. Cold. Gray. No hope of spring for one damn long time. Just about as far from a tropical dream that you can get. Jasmine stared out the window of the diner at the parade of bundled pedestrians in their breakneck speed to nowhere. She paid the check and shouldering into her bright blue coat headed back to her day job at Merrill Lynch. Once a professional dancer Jasmine had burnt out on the profession-or rather her body had from the pounding the profession takes. But it had also stopped filling the need she had to fill herself with expression, light and color. She had left that world and unsure of what was next, limped into this new gray existence.
Life ground on. She couldn't hear what her marching orders were for this particular time in her life. Deeply spiritual, Jasmine prayed for guidance.
One Monday as she suited up for work she found her attention grabbed by a story on the radio. A woman had joined the merchant marines and traveled all over the world. She spoke about what a great experience it had been--she was now so well schooled in motors that, if she chose to, she could go to a tropical island and build herself a generator and be totally self-sufficient. "All of a sudden something clicked inside me and I remembered a deep and old desire of mine to live on a tropical island and learn how to sail. It took me by storm. I had completely forgotten this dream. I had shelved it years ago saying that I would do it when I was through with my dancing career" Jasmine smiled. "I realized now was the time for it!"
"Now came the practical stuff" Jasmine laughed "how would I make a living on a tropical island?" Now that Jasmine had acknowledged her dream…all manner of other dreams and desires came rushing to the surface. That day at Merrill Lynch she was quieter than usual as her brain churned with activity.
"By three o'clock that afternoon it came to me. Sitting in that cold, gray office in cold, gray New York I decided I would make hand-painted silk sarongs. Out there? Certainly. Impossible? I felt a force behind my desire that told me I had what it took to overcome any obstacle and to stick with it until my efforts bore fruit" .The next day she called in sick and bought her first bolt of silk and a rainbow selection of silk paints.
But there was one drawback. Jasmine couldn't paint. Or at least, she thought she couldn't. Many years ago her sister had given her a silk scarf she had hand-painted. The rich colors and caressing texture captivated Jasmine and she felt a deep impulse to paint on silk herself. But she didn't. "I made excuses to myself about being too busy to follow-up on the impulse but in truth, I wasn't acting on it due to a huge block. When I was in third grade I had an art teacher who controlled what I could and couldn't paint. Obeying her every whim, seeking her love and approval and never getting it, I gave up. Convinced that I had no drawing ability, I could barely doodle."
Jasmine dug deep into her spiritual beliefs. "I knew exactly what I had to do it. In fact it was something that I had been telling myself for years that I needed to do-but now I was actually being driven to do it. I would be able to move through my block if I practiced loving myself unconditionally. There would be no such thing as 'not good enough'. From the get-go, everything that I would paint would be good, whether I could see it or not. I would have one rule and one rule only - I would not judge what I painted - not at all."
Jasmine focused on the love of the act of painting-painting for process, not product.
In between painting sessions her fear and judgment would try, and sometimes be successful at, surfacing. But she persevered knowing that she was architecting her transformation. "Each time I set out to paint I would pray and each time the fear was transmuted into beautiful silk canvases of colorful universes that came out of nowhere." She began to incorporate her practice of Reiki, a hands on healing technique for channeling Spirit's unconditional love into the painting, passing on the blessing of her breakthrough.
Her vision was bringing together previously unconnected facets of her life; her love of fabrics and many years of sewing, her love of tropical islands with sarongs being their indigenous clothing, her love of simultaneously beautiful, sensuous, practical and comfortable clothing. The Dreaming Goddess was born.
Three years later, Jasmine runs her hand-painted silk sarong and resort wear company out of her home in Big Pine Key, Florida 30 miles north of legendary hot spot Key West. Come and visit. The warm waters of the tropics nurture all kinds of colorful life, and Jasmine is never going back to gray again.
http://www.thedreaminggoddess.com
Kim Northrop
2538 Wood St
Sarasota, Florida 34237
info@kimnorthrop.com
www.kimnorthrop.com
© Kim Northrop, 2005
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