Coyote energy has been circling me for a few weeks now. He is appearing in stories, articles, podcasts, and even in the flesh.
For me, when anything is brought to my attention multiple times, I have to go investigate, especially if it is an animal. One way that I investigate is through doodling. So I began to doodle a coyote to see what might appear.
In the middle of my doodling, I got up to do something and, in those few moments, my partner spilled my glass of water on top of my doodle! At first I was irked, and then I just laughed because I knew it was a message from the coyote…
Coyotes have pretty extensive symbolic meanings, one of which is the Trickster. He loves to interrupt the routine and disrupt order. Coyote can be a bit chaotic. Partly for the fun of it, but also because the routines and order need to be shaken up.
When it comes to living a creative life, there can be a lot of focus put on the disciplines and habits one needs to form. And for a good reason. Creating whenever the whim strikes us might mean we don’t create much at all and regret it.
However, the opposite is true as well. We can get so into our routines and be so disciplined that we suck the inspiration right out of what we are doing. And the well runs dry. And we hit a wall or block. We lose our motivation.
This is usually when Coyote crosses our path. He throws us some chaos. Most of the time we freak out about it and see it as a tremendous inconvenience. And sometimes it truly is not fun chaos.
But I wonder what would happen if we think that maybe the chaos is for a reason. I wonder what would happen if we take a moment to question our routines and disciplines to see what still serves us and what no longer does.
I wonder what happens when we welcome the chaos as a teacher and a friend of our creativity.
All I know for sure is that I definitely like the doodle better now that it has water spilled on it and it gives me some new ideas to play with….
[Painting image courtesy: Karen Light]
