I remember a time when I felt so good for no reason at all and I so want that feeling to come back. For many months at the Reiki Circle in Culver, I voiced this to the group, “I felt so connected to my Source Energy but I lost it and I want to get it back.”

Thinking about what connected me, I remember purely appreciating what I have. Really appreciating the home I live in and the man who loves me and the life I have lived, no matter what happened. I attempt to appreciate those things again but I’m not reaching the good feelings. Mostly because it’s not pure appreciation that I feel. It’s just saying the words without feeling. I want to feel my appreciation for ME and all I have become. I want to feel pure appreciation for what I have and what I look at everyday. I want to feel true appreciation for those I come in contact with and those who have fallen away. I want to stand in this place right now and feel such acceptance for me, just as I am.

That’s what pure appreciation is. Feeling such comfort from allowing things to be as they are and accepting them fully. Not asking them to change. But to look at them and know as they are is just right. I wish I could be funny in explaining this. I would love to interject humor in these deep thoughts. Now that would be something to appreciate. Allowing the humor to come out from such introspective thoughts and words. I will paint now.

I paint and the nervousness lifts up. I feel the discontent rise up inside my body and I allow it to flow through my brush and onto my page. Every stroke, every touch of paint to paper, more nervousness sweeps onto my surface. It releases its hold on me, it removes more of the unwanted. It clears me up and cleans me out of beliefs that have been there since before I could remember. Words cannot even be put to these feelings but I know that they are leaving my body so they no longer have a hold over me. And that, my friends, is the remarkable power of painting. So replenshing, so releasing, so pure appreciation for the process of creation.

Decades of nervousness will not go away in one painting. Decades of discontentment will not go away in days or even months. Deeply embedded beliefs will take time to release. And really, all we have is time. Time to devote to a practice that, with each stroke, removes more of the unwanted. Each word adjusts more of our energy to our inner being. Each minute devoted to connecting to our Inner Wisdom brings the chance of a life of true appreciation—for life and for change. That’s what life is about anyway—appreciation for the changes and the power of transformation, one gentle stroke at a time.