THE JOURNEY
Sometimes when I sit meditating and, by my inner silence know later that I've gotten the trick of it, words come from the Universe, sentences spoken from the true heart of existence, and they change my life. One such gift was "The journey itself is the goal". I laughed and laughed, to be shown such a simple truth, that all the agonizing and goal-orienting, all the seeking, seeking for that elusive Answer, that Truth, that unattainable Perfection, is a crazy, blind, divine suffering that can be dropped by a simple shift of attitude. I began to enjoy my journey AND achieve my goals from then on. Ten years later those words were to appear before me again, this time painted on a small sign in a lovely garden in an ashram in India. The author's name was Osho. But I have skipped ahead in time. A few months before I left my secure research job, my home, my family and friends to go to India and strike out alone into the unknown, I sat in my lounge room playing music, dancing and painting. I wanted to leave my beloved/behated science career and be a successful artist and writer, to express the other half of my being. But I am a very sensitive "inner" person, and the thought of self-employment, business, fighting in the cut-and-thrust arena of clients, legislation, licenses.... dealing with People At Large...

Oh, no! How could I possibly go "out there" and still survive as Me? I began to paint a spiral, which has long been to me a symbol of the Inner Journey of personal development and evolution, periodically coming around to the same situations in life but being closer to the true center of myself each time, closer to the essence of my power and my being, to wisdom and understanding. Eventually when the work was finished and I stood back to look, the spiral flipped and spun me out from the center to infinity. The Outer Journey. And in that moment I grasped the full experience of the unity of the Inner and Outer journeys. They are one. Thus my fear of going "out" into the world of people and business was unfounded; that Outer Journey was no different from the inward path, with all its challenges, joys, learnings and inevitable progress towards the eternal Self and ultimately to the Light of God. The spiral painting became my icon, the homepage of my website, the cover of my portfolio and the real message on my business cards. It has become a gift to other people too, and thus I have felt my own path to be enriched many-fold. Sometimes when I lie in bed sunk in feelings of inadequacy and smallness, unable to face the world, I journey into that spiral painting on my wall and remember the power of who I am.

HILLS AND PLAINS
Being a passenger in a little car whizzing over the Hay Plains at high speed hour after hour has a certain mesmerizing quality to it. In heat mirages the road seems to disappear into a flooded canyon between overhanging precipices; the land is so flat, dry and uniform that everything seems to be motionless except the faint rocking of the car; tumbleweeds collect on bumper bars until all the vehicles look like haystacks and have to stop repeatedly to clean up; and crows nesting on their precarious, twiggy perches appear to be the only things awake in the landscape. I have traveled this route many times in the peak of summer's glorious heat, loving the space, the light, the speed and the joyful freedom of long-distance road travel in my beloved Australia. On one such journey in an especially smooth little car, I painted this picture of the Plains. I developed a flowing synchrony with the bumps, learning to quickly lift the brush away from the paper at the start of the bump and resume painting when the disturbance was over. The remarkable thing was that whenever I was caught unawares and the brush hit the paper unexpectedly, the resulting stroke added perfectly to the painting! I was immensely pleased with the whole experience, and finished the painting rushing over the plains in the light before night fell among the hills at the foot of the Great Divide. After the stillness and constancy of the plains, the rolling hill country gives a sense of perpetual movement, almost like being in a boat on a surging ocean, and painting must wait until later. The continual centrifugal tugs, up, down, left, right, dance with the ever-fluctuating qualities of light as you go up to ridgetops in the bright sun, down into the shade of tree-lined valleys, and plunge between raw earth walls of the road cuttings, as the fences, cows, farms, trees and rivers roll by. Through it all the line of white dashes and the grey road seem to be the only constant things, and yet even they may change suddenly, when the road goes pink for a few kilometers or the line doubles in the blink of an eye. Who could ever be bored in such immensity and ever-changing beauty?

PUNE REALIZATION
I was in a workshop called "Opening To Self-Love". It was not about narcissism or hedonism, or some sappy affirmation that touched the surface for a few magic days and was gone upon return to "reality". It was about accepting, forgiving and being kind to yourself, to seeing how your lack of trust, your pain, your isolation, were all real and need no longer limit you, that what you feel and what you experience in any moment are all valid, all OK, all part of your journey to enlightenment... So why was it that in the corner, sad and alone, sat one young man who was stunningly handsome, rich and healthy and had everything he wanted? His parents loved him in all the ways any child could dream of, he had never known a moment of illness, pain, sorrow, grief, loss, disappointment, anger, hunger, want or despair in his life. Yet he was unhappy. Something was missing, but he did not know what it was. He discovered, by allowing this sadness to be there and to take him where it would, that what had been missing from his life was perspective. Having never known any negative feeling or condition, he was unable to perceive or appreciate how positive his life was. He had never known joy because he had never known sorrow. Now, knowing sorrow, he was filled with joy. He had found completion within himself

This realization had come to him through the process in the workshop of allowing and accepting the flow of the universe to unfold from within instead of controlling events on the outside, of being in the moment and watching what is happening here and now. This can be applied to working, to personal interactions, to creating, playing and even to being happy or sad. I had always had a problem with over-controlling my painting, and getting stuck on outcomes until I was unable to even begin. I was not finding the joy and freedom that I knew awaited me somewhere in my art, just as the young man had not been finding it in his life. I decided to try with painting what I had observed in the workshop. It was on the way to the art studio for the first time that I came across that little plaque in the garden saying "The journey itself is the goal". As with life so with painting. With no goal in mind except to allow the here and now of my inner self to unfold, I began playing with paint, blowing air through drinking straws, tipping my easel.... liberation and breakthrough! Now, even when I have a particular outcome in mind for a painting, I do not get stuck, because what is inside feels free to come out and there is no anxiety, only joy in the process of creating. So this painting is a dedication to all those mysteries of life that unfold, uncontrolled, allowing us to grow in freedom and joy.

The format of the book:
- 15cm x 21cm (6" x 8") = A5
- 50 pages (30 text, 20 full colour illustrations)

Ordering:
AUD$25.00 + Shipping extra

Email: orders@diannetrussell.com

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