The Loft Summer Series: A New Moon Vision Night

When: Sunday, July 14th, 5pm-8pm

Where: The Loft, a community workshop and retreat space for women in Rhode Island, Hope Artiste Village

Cost: $40 (optional vision book purchase, $10)

What you'll need: A magazine or two, a vision book if you have one, and wine if you want to sip some while you create! Scissors, glue, and yummy snacks will be provided.

Register

Only 10 5 spots left!

$40 for the night

$50 for the night + a beautiful vision book

When I first began visioning, I loved it. I ate it up. It was like art for the non-artistic person. Beautiful images would come to me out of magazines and I'd cut around their edges and glue them onto boards I'd make every month at the new moon. I'd decide on some type of theme and go search after my images, and eventually I'd have a gorgeous board that would hang over my bed until the next new moon. I loved it.

Until it started to suck. The light-filled apartments and wads of dollar bills and lovebirds sitting on a mountaintop weren't happening. There were no beautiful cityscapes and hand-holding circles of women and brand new cars. When the new job that was within grasp slipped out from my fingers (after being very prominently displayed on my current board), I got angry. I tore the vision boards down and declared myself done with visioning forever.

In my mind, it was bullshit. How can images from magazines glued to a piece of paper make anything happen? What kind of magic is that? I was disillusioned, fast.

After a few months of vision board neglect, I hadn't shared my secret with anyone. Whenever anyone talked about visioning, I'd internally roll my eyes. Okay, yeah, keep putting random stuff in your vision book and make it happen. Takes more than that to make dreams come true.

Until last month, when The Loft hosted its first vision night. Inside, I was really happy that I was there as Hannah's events coordinator -- because that meant I wouldn't have to vision. I mean, I didn't even have a vision book. Not one.

But then Hannah told me which table to sit at. And gave me a blank book. And magazines. And I sat down with a group of women who had invested in this experience of visioning.

And so I visioned. Since there was no pressure, I mindlessly clipped out images that spoke to me and words that sounded nice, with no intentions of actually "visioning." But before long I was chatting and smiling and gluing. And soon enough I had a name for my book: Brilliantly Thirsty Project. When Hannah came around to see what our pages meant to us, I said I didn’t know. “Oh, I don’t know what this even means, the words just kind of came together and the pictures are pretty.” I wanted it to not be my turn anymore, desperately. But Hannah told me, “Um, yes you do.” And I looked at it again with widening eyes. Oh, maybe I do. I am in the middle of a deep journey through my 20s and yes, I am brilliantly thirsty.

In the days following, I kept coming back to the cover of my book. I added some more pretty pictures -- a woman jumping off a cliff, gorgeous stained glass windows, a bright red umbrella. It started to feel good to me. I wanted to look at it. I eventually moved through some prompts and filled a couple more pages with images and words that felt exactly me, part of this brilliantly thirsty project. And just like that, I was back in love with visioning.

Because we don’t vision for the light-filled apartments or the wads of dollar bills or the lovebirds or the brand new cars. We don’t vision to get lucrative new jobs or immediate circles of kindred spirits. We vision for the feeling inside of the dreams. We vision because it feels damn good. We paste gorgeous photos from magazines onto pieces of paper because they’re beautiful and when we look back on them, we have a deep knowledge and remembrance of how good that feels. And when we feel good.....that is when good things come to us.

 If you've been visioning forever or not at all, if you love it dearly or think it's kind of crazy, if you have some kind of love/hate relationship like I did or just don't really get it, visioning with a group of women (as opposed to alone) is powerful. The collective energy transforms the process and suddenly your dreams are being spoken aloud and held -- it's magical, really. Join us Sunday, July 14th at The Loft and see what we're talking about! We will circle together and talk of our dreams, eat some delicious food together,

and sit down and vision.

 Ruth Clark is a sensitive seeker of feeling good, soulfully dwelling in truth and love, inspiring connection and listening deeply. She's creating her gorgeous life in Providence, Rhode Island and is serving as The Loft's events coordinator with love. She is also a blogger, a nanny, a trained doula, and dabbles in a multitude of other life loves.

Read more from Ruth at ruthpclark.com.