4 feet by 4 feet, Acrylic on Canvas (Not Available)
This piece took me a little over a year to complete, and I ended up trading this piece in exchange for a journey to the jungle of Colombia – a journey which was pivotal for me in crossing personal thresholds into the next cycle of my growth.
When I started this piece over a year ago, I was very much feeling the discomfort of being called into a new level of maturation, but then I would look around at my life, and would be filled with uncertainty as to how to actually go about making the necessary changes that God (Spirit) was calling me to make.
The gravity of old habits, patterns, and ways of being was causing a major point of tension in my life, because they were so out of sync with the forward movement of my Inner Self. And this caused a very high degree of psychological confusion and suffering, and physical pain even, because there was such a rupture between my soul and the embodied expression with how I was living my life.
And this was deeply confusing for me, because usually I feel very in harmony with regards to living in alignment with how my soul is calling me to express myself. Over the past decade, I haven’t had much of an issue with acting upon my intuition and taking pretty significant leaps of faith, but for whatever reason this time around, I found myself caught between being overly attached to comfort, and crippling self-doubt, questioning everything that I was doing with my life.
While I was going through this deep inner questioning, my soul was calling me forward, and the fracture in my being was getting more and more substantial.
But for some reason, I just couldn’t let myself move forward.
And as much as I don’t like to admit it, I know that a big part of it was my attachment to comfort. For the past 10 years or so, I lived with a very high level of instability – living in and out of my car, moving from place to place, living on farms and homesteads by the grace and generosity of others, very inconsistent income, and living very minimally to sustain my highly unorthodox lifestyle.
And so now, upon moving to New Mexico, it’s been the most stable season of my entire adult life. It’s the longest I’ve lived anywhere since I was a teenager, and not to mention the most consistent income I’ve ever made working as an intuitive reader. And I found myself just clinging to this stability and comfort, because it’s something that I went SO long without.
But then I was presented with a whole new problem – the annihilating suffocation of comfort and stability.
Like an overbearing mother, who refuses to let her child grow up out of her fear of abandonment.
A whole new dragon that I had to learn how to slay. One I wasn’t expecting lol.
When things are too stable, they stagnate. They die, actually.
Chaos is necessary for growth.
But, perpetual chaos inhibits growth as well.
So we must learn to achieve a perfect balance between stability and chaos for maximum growth and maturation.
And I found that through this process, I had to learn to access something within myself, where I had to resurrect the power of my own will, my own strength, my own personal and individuated self to propel the direction of my life.
To claim what I want in my life, and the person I want to be. To actually own it.
To actually give myself permission to have my own needs and desires, and to realize that it’s okay to have those met. Full permission to actually be a f*cking human being.
And for me, this is the integration of my shadow.
Because I denied those parts of myself for SO long, that when I FINALLY achieved a certain sense of stability in my life, I had no idea what to do with myself, or how to propel myself forward.
For most of my life, I was so conditioned to put everyone else’s needs before my own, that I felt completely lost as to what my own desires were, and what my own sense of self looked like. And being cut-off from this part of myself, I was missing a huge element of my being that is necessary to guide me through into the next cycle of my journey.
So I had to go into the underworld – into depression, into rage, into deep loneliness, and ultimately into my shadow, to claim the pieces of myself that were trapped and hidden in the murky waters of my own unconscious and repressed self.
And that’s why I was hesitating to move forward in my life – because I needed to go through a process of claiming certain shadow aspects of myself that I had denied for so long.
Because if we are just focused on “the light” and “serving others” without some kind of connection and anchor to our own personal will and individuated self (in other words, without an integrated shadow), we will self-destruct, just as I was doing.
And so now, I have come to understand the value in facing and accepting all aspects of the self – the light and the dark, knowing that it is all part of God.
And as I bring the facets of my shadow (my own desires, personal will, anger, and strength) to the altar of God, then I sanctify those long rejected aspects of myself, and I allow myself be more fully and completely guided by Love, rather than being unconsciously ruled by the parts of myself that were rejected and denied.
And I am still very much in a deep process with all of this. Still growing and learning to accept all parts of myself, day by day.
Learning to embody this integrated self is one of my biggest soul educations right now.
And so creating this piece “Transfiguration” was very cathartic and healing, because it represents this journey of alchemy and change, which I was going through as I was painting it.
And my journey to Colombia this past Spring (with plant medicine) was a HUGE catalyst in helping me to face and accept all the various shades of my being. So, it’s very synchronous that this piece was traded to very dear friends in exchange for them sponsoring my journey to South America, especially given that my intention for this piece was to depict this process of alchemy and transfiguration.
There is a White Eagle in the center of this piece, which represents sanctified personal will and strength, when claimed and given to God.
In the petals of the mandala, there is the process of a person transforming into the White Eagle:
1.) Yellow Petal – Growing awareness of one’s self, and the multiple layers of who they are.
2.) Pink Petal – Growing connection with one’s Higher Self, and developing spiritual sight and vision.
3.) Yellow Petal – Learning to balance opposites – the spiritual and material, the soul and the body, the light and the darkness, the masculine and feminine. Embodiment of one’s Higher Self.
4.) Purple Petal – The full transfiguration into the White Eagle. The new and resurrected self. The archetypal phoenix rising from the ashes, with sanctified strength and will. The integration of the shadow, and bringing all parts of oneself back to God.
The Mandala is a geometric map of consciousness, which is why it has been depicted for thousands of years cross-culturally in various artistic and spiritual contexts.
And in this piece, the White Eagle rests at the center, representing the True Self, which sits at the center of our consciousness, and at the center of our entire structure of being.
Our True Self is the center point of our lives, and our outer life orbits around it, bringing us closer and closer to our center, that we may come to embody the expression of our True Self, and who God has destined us to be.