I have found spirit and clarity in awareness, consciousness expansion and in nurturing a true, loving relationship that I only wish more people would allow themselves to be familiar with. These things, and a sense of family, have become the most important things in my life. I am eternally grateful for having them, but it’s a hungry, beautiful beast that can no longer sustain itself without the nourishment that can only come from adapting to a new sense of responsibility, a responsibility to more than just myself. It’s been a stressful process! But, it’s the good kind of stress, eustress, and I couldn’t welcome the challenge more openly. So, whereas my enthusiasm for creating the visuals for others’ ideas may be waning, it’s not at all because I’ve lost confidence in what I do. It’s because I’ve come to gain profound insight, confidence and faith in my own visions and in where I should be directing the flow of my creative energy that I’ve set myself on this trajectory.

I was created in the image of The Creator, as was spoke to me directly in a timeless space of acquiring experiential knowledge, so whenever I’m not being truly creative myself, I’m suffering from an identity crisis. I know that now and I’ve committed myself to exhibit more purely sourced artwork. And, with that, I can assure you statements from even farther out there are on the way.

Done in haste, as most of my exhibited material unfortunately has been lately, I named it Paint It Black… just because as I scrambled from one place to the next carrying my art materials with me over the past few weeks, the Rolling Stones song of the same name came on two separate radio stations in two different cities. That, and when I asked the dearest three-year-old to my heart if he’d help me paint the yet-untitled octopus, he surprised me by saying, “Paint it black!” Still, we didn’t. I went with vibrant orange and yellows instead, but applying the antiquing solution dulled the vibrance right out of it and I was at a loss on how to get it to stand out against the brighter colored sea shell.

Ah-ha!

“Paint it black!”

But, the conversation doesn’t end there. At least not when you have your own online journal where you can complete a point.

This world hurts in more ways than just the physical, we’ve just lost our connection to that which can’t be weighed, counted or measured by conventional science. The web of life is unimaginably vast and the plants are a major, major part of it. Without them we would not be here. The reverse is not true. Through ayahuasca I have learned that plants, all plants, do feel… and they have much to say about how we conduct ourselves in the world we share. I could go on and on about this, but I’m married to no gospel and have no idea what I’ll say tomorrow as I walk this path of continued revelation of inner gnosis. I find my stances are ever-changing as decades of preconceived notions are shattered. However, I have no interest in building up my ego with the things I do to better myself and, in fact, make a point of deconstructing it. I only wish more people would challenge themselves to do the same.

I am open to discussion and new perspectives, but I will say, admittedly with conviction…

Plants feel.

“I think ayahuasca can show us how beautiful we are inside and what kinds of possibilities we have for love and actions of kindness. One of the great assets of ayahuasca is that it’s a plant. And what better way to root ourselves back into the web of nature and a compassion for this web of life than through the plants themselves? The plants are talking to us. We need to listen.” -Alex Grey

I brought a shoe box of weight from my past and threw it on the coals as the fire waned. As the flames rose around it, it was nice to see the others step forward to gather around the warmth it could provide them.

There is always a reward in letting go.

I won’t be so bold to speculate what it was one way or the next, but I will say I agree with vendetta007mike, a commenter on YouTube, who said, “It’s not a Russian missile that is failed, but the heads of those who claimed that.”