Emerge is last week’s theme for my 52 Cards Project. I travelled to Asheville, North Carolina to meet up with my friend Diane for a three-day art retreat with Alena Hennessey. As a way in to the art one day, Alena guided us through a guided visualization through the seven chakras.

We began with the root chakra, where she asked us to “see” a particular image or color, and then in our minds’ eyes we made our way up the 7 chakras to the last one, the crown chakra. At that point, I saw myself emerging from under water, into the air.

“For anyone trying to discern what to do w/ their life,” says Amy Krause Rosenthal as quoted by Austin Kleon, “PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT YOU PAY ATTENTION TO. that’s pretty much all the info u need.”

Like Kleon, I take those words to the heart of my practice. Pay attention.

So that image stuck with me and when I got home I looked up the meaning of the chakras. (Other than understanding them as seven energy centers of the body, I really know very little about chakras.)

I learned that the 7th crown chakra connects us to our spiritual self, others, and the universe. It’s also about life purpose.

Something is very much emerging in me these days and I feel like it is this very connection—to self, others and the universe—that feels like oxygen.

I am paying attention.