“The Treasure Within”

This piece is a prayer. A statement of devotion. A promise to myself, and to the Creator.

It is a promise to devote my life to what I know to be true in the deepest corridors of my being – that there is a profound treasure that lives within all of us.

All evolutionary patterns serve one function – to call forth this treasure from deep within you.

The reenactment of every trauma, every season and circumstance of your life, and every relationship to come and go – everything revolves around helping you bring forth the gift that lives deep inside of you.

This piece is a symbol of this. The golden being with the halo in the center represents the treasure within, while the circle that surrounds him represents the wholeness that it brings.

The squares surrounding the circle symbolize different scenes from the journey of life, encompassing different seasons, circumstances and relationships – all of which revolve around the treasure that rests in the center.

When we come into harmony with the intention to bring forth the gift that lives within the core of our being, we come back into harmony with the rest of existence. We return home. This is how we are healed. This is how we are made whole.

This piece symbolizes a fundamental universal law. It also represents for me personally, a deep commitment and devotion.

“Devotion To The Love of Self”

I often create works of art that serve as energetic medicine, to remedy what I may be going through on an intimate personal level, knowing that that is what will contribute most directly to our collective healing. 

I created this piece as I was processing drastic changes occurring in my personal life, where I found myself in a very deep period of inner turmoil and confusion.

I often turn to my creativity to process and alchemize my shadows. When I paint, it becomes a sacred space for me for connect deeply with myself, to find my center and receive the guidance that I need. So I went to that inner sanctuary of color, light, and form to extract medicine to assist me. This piece is the result.

What was being asked of me, was to strengthen my devotion to loving myself the way that no-one else ever could. To alchemize my weaknesses into strengths, and to look upon the parts of myself that I have attempted to reject through the eyes of unwavering compassion. To see myself more deeply when I have felt invisible in the midst of others. To transmute my loneliness into a deeper relationship with the part of me joined with all things. And to become an angel first unto my self, so that I may embody that for the world around me. 

I created this piece to materialize this intention. 

The arch around the being symbolizes their inherit holiness, with its satined-glass and cathedral-like effect. The sunrise behind them symbolizes the light of perfect love awakening within the individual, and the golden beings on either side represent our support from the worlds beyond. The circle represents wholeness, and the beings holding hands on the bottom represent the world of sacred praise we are in the midst of creating together. It carries the memory of our ancient future. 

Even though my work carries a colorful and playful ambiance to it, for me, it is profoundly shamanic and transformative. It is alchemizing, symbolizing a deep and heart-felt intention to heal, not only myself, but others through the illuminating light of perfect love. It depicts a journey, a story, of the most epic proportion – the revelation of who we truly are.

“The Song of The Soul”

As my style grows and evolves, I notice a mandala-like theme emerging within my work. Actually, the blueprint for this particular piece came to me upon receiving a wave of inspiration as I was looking at Tibetan Buddhist Mandalas. 

To me, this mandala represents the sacred journey of the soul. It represents the journey of incarnation, with its trials and tribulations, with its alchemy and growth. It depicts the support that we are met with both physically and non-physically, as we carry out the assignments that are seeded within us from beyond the veil. This piece also shows the multi-layered realities that we inhabit. 

I don’t know about you all, but my whole life I have always felt like I have had one foot in this world, and one foot in a world beyond.

Several years ago, I sat with a very gifted medium, and one of the things he told me I will never forget: 

‘You are just barely hanging onto this physical world by a shoestring, mate!’ (He was British ha).

This made me laugh in the moment, but man did it hit me after I processed what he said. It definitely explained why I’d had such a hard time operating here (those that know me personally know it hasn’t been an easy ride haha). It also explained an element of my creative streak, and why I am the way I am. A blessing and curse I suppose lol. I am realizing now, that I feel more “here” the more I can bring an essence from these worlds here with me.

I have always intuitively felt like a part of my niche is to be a bridge between this world and the next, and in my own personal path that’s what art has been for me – a bridge into a vibrant light-filled dreamy world that I feel deeply connected with. It sparks a memory. A memory of something that feels like Home. This feeling of familiarity inspires me to keep creating, because I remember more of who I am the more that I create. 

The deeper I go into my work, the more I find an ancient shamanic essence wanting to be brought forth.

“To Honor What is Holy”

Recently the circle has been speaking to me. Often, ideas for paintings come to me in my dreams, and lately I’ve been having dreams and visions of the circle. Carl Jung, in his book “Man and His Symbols”, states that circles are a universal symbol of wholeness, and when they appear in one’s dreams, they often represent a form of psychic wholeness and healing. As I step more into who I am, it makes sense that the circle would be working its medicine on me. 

Recently, I have found inspiration through incorporating circles into my work. With that, I now find myself measuring out symmetry, balance and geometry, rather than free-handing it like I used to. I can feel this process unlocking new dimensions of creative depth, evolving my style into its next phase of expression. And of course, my art can only be a mirror into myself – revealing the nature of my own psychic growth. That is the profundity of creating art – it is always our own self-portrait.

The name of this piece came to me before I even put a brush to the canvas – “To Honor What is Holy.” Initially, I thought about the sacredness of the Earth – lush and bountiful forests, vast oceans brimming with life, and mountain peaks capturing inflections of light at the sun moves across the sky. 

And then I thought about what is holy within each of us – our inner genius, our unique creative spark. And how when you discover that within yourself, and set the intention to use it in service to all of life, you unlock some of deepest codes of this universe. This is when the world of synchronicity opens up, and you discover you live in a realm of magic. 

Now, walking this path doesn’t free you from challenges and initiations along the way. Challenges are inevitable – it’s part of the alchemical process of our growth. God knows I’ve been through my share of trials and tribulations (homelessness, addiction, depression, poverty, heartbreak, etc.) But the key is to never abandon yourself in the face of such adversity. To never lose touch with what inspires you and fills you with life. Through remaining connected to your deepest inspirations, even in the face of adversity, you build resilience and strength. You also build a love that is not limited by the bounds of your conditions and circumstances. 

In my opinion, that is what it means to honor what is holy – to remain true to the deepest parts of yourself, in spite of whatever it is that you may be going through. To be your own best friend, your own guide, through all the up’s and down’s. To walk in faith, knowing that all of life is supporting you in blossoming into the person that you were always destined to be. 

When we honor what is holy within us, we can’t help but honor what is holy in all that surrounds us.

“The Point of Connection”

For those of you familiar with sacred geometry, you will recognize the Vesica Piscis as the theme of this piece. 

For those not so familiar with sacred geometry, the Vesica Piscis is an ancient symbol depicted as two overlapping circles, representing the union of polarities and the creative force that is catalyzed between them. It has often been used to represent the union of god and goddess, of earth and heaven, and the merging of humanity with Divinity. It is the root element in the Kabbalah’s Flower of Life, and it also symbolizes the birth of Creation. It is used cross-culturally in many ancient traditions, including Christianity, Greek, Judaism, Egyptian, Norse/Celtic, etc. 

This symbol has been a major theme for me this past year, showing up repeatedly in my dreams and visions. There have been instances where I have found myself suddenly waking up in the middle of the night, startled to find the Vesica illumined in my mind’s eye. 

When I receive such symbols bubbling up from the depths of my psyche, I translate them into art, as it helps me to process and synthesize what is showing up.

For me personally, I feel like this symbol has been initiating me into a new paradigm of understanding myself in relation to others.

For my entire life, I have been an extremely solitary person (especially growing up as an only child in a relatively nomadic family). So rather than having a wide circle of connections, I have always had a very small group of friends, and my inner spiritual life has been my primary source of self-nourishment.

Recently, I find myself learning lesson upon lesson of the importance of  branching out to form authentic and meaningful relationships with others. I am finding masks and layers of self-protection that I didn’t even realize were there, now coming down, so that there is an opening for deeper vulnerability, connection, and creative possibility. And of course, this has been terrifying on one level, and totally liberating on another. 

As a microcosm of the macrocosm, I will say that it feels like a collective evolutionary wave is sweeping through our world to remove the blocks and dependencies that have kept us from what is real, what is true. And what is real, is what we share. Everything else will wither and fade, because it was never meant to last. But what we share deep down, our point of connection within our heart of hearts – that is what is real. 

So for me, this symbol has been initiating me into a new phase of growth, of moving beyond my cocoon of self-protection to embrace deeper points of connection. Collectively, I believe we are all going through this in our own unique ways. 

Right now, in our world so much is falling, fading and dying so that new life may be brought forth. And each and every single one of us is a bringer of this new life, learning how to see ourselves and others with a fresh pair of eyes. 

May we see the world anew, as together we breach deeper points of connection.

“Memories of a Song Long-Forgotten”

Everything we see, we color with something of our own essence. Thus, every perspective is unique, like a snowflake. Our greatest contribution is to share our unique way of seeing the world, so that it may take life beyond ourselves, and live through the hearts and minds of others. All of the great artists and revolutionaries that walked this earth – this is the code they lived by. 

Just as the sun extends itself for the sake of giving life, so too is our nature to extend our essence for the sake of enlivening creation. 

When we express from the rawness of our oceanic depths, there can be no comparison. How could you ever compare something that was designed to be unique? There is only the child-like joy that comes through expressing one’s inner life. Living close to our creative pulse is how we align with the intelligent design of nature, for when we are in touch with our own inner nature, we are in touch with heart of nature herself. 

A unique aspect of how I see the world, has to do with inner sight, or inner seeing. Some people might call this “clairvoyance”. It’s been a major part of my everyday experience – perceiving the subtle and energetic aspects of reality. On a physical level, I see solid objects – people, plants, things, etc. But then it is as if another layer of vision is superimposed upon my physical sight, where I see swirling colors and beautifully elaborate patterns of energy that emanate from physical things. So, I “see” multiple levels of reality simultaneously – from the physical to the energetic. And this isn’t anything “special” – I personally know many people that use inner sight, yet everyone’s experience of it is completely unique. 

My whole life, I have been fascinated by these “visions”, and have yearned to express this rich and intriguing aspect of my inner life. My paintings are a way for me to share this. My style takes on a primitive and child-like quality, as an expression of innocence, of seeing through the eyes of the heart. In my visions, the colors are wildly alive and vivid, more vivid than what I see with my physical eyes. It is as if the colors are bursting with light. So, the vitality of color in my work helps to depict the beaming colors in these visions. And the visions are very musical – always flowing and dancing – thus my work has a certain flowing quality to it. 

There’s an intuitive aspect to these visions as well – because the swirling colors and patterns contain information. They are part of a deeper language. It has been (and still is) a process for me to understand and interpret the energetic language of this inner sight. I’ve used these visions in service to offering readings to people, and to my surprise – there’s often a high degree of relevance to the patterns that swirl and spin in my mind’s eye. 

It is all so fascinating – creativity, inspiration, intuition. Not only do we we inhabit a miracle, but we ARE living miracles. We are blessed to the degree that we bless others with the gift of our unique indwelling essence. 

I am the gardener of my psyche.

I make it a practice, to allow myself to be still, where I spend long periods of time in nature.

I often find myself sitting on the bluffs by the ocean, allowing the sun and wind to hold me in a warm cocoon of cool sweeping movements. The pulse of the breeze brings the smell of fresh ocean air, and the living fragrance of nearby flowers and plants. The fullness of my breath becomes the intersect between my inner worlds and the life around me. The infinitude of the ocean allows my mind a certain freedom, where my imagination explores its edge. 

There are worlds always moving within me. 

I find it very important to be as close to these worlds as possible. In these inner realms, I hear messages bubble from the depths of my subconscious, accompanied by elaborate visions of colorful blossoming patterns flowing into melodic passages and tones. The patterns swirling within my psyche arrange themselves into potential paintings, music, and written word. 

Sound and color have little to no distinction in my inner realms. When I paint, it feels as if I am composing music. When I compose music, it feels as if I am painting. And when I write, especially if it is poetic, it simultaneously feels both musical and colorful. It is all one and the same.

As I witness these beautiful patterns flowering within me, watching them organically take shape, I recognize that I am receiving, synthesizing, and translating light. I am receiving light, as a raw living informational substance, and then I am crystalizing it into form. Just like a plant – receiving light from the sun, and through photosynthesis, it creates new leaves and flowers – beautiful, and often colorful, geometric expressions. 

I am no different. I am translating light into form, just as the plant kingdom. My creative process is my version of photosynthesis. 

My creativity is directly connected my unique niche with the greater sphere of life. Just as the role of a plant is to convert light into another form to be utilized by the life surrounding it, my role is the same. 

In uncovering our niche, we strike the source of our deepest joy. We rediscover our place within the tapestry of existence. In this, we join with creation in a balanced exchange of giving and receiving, from a place of naturalness and authenticity. We relate to life from that place of true reality within ourselves. 

In uncovering our niche, we must find balance between celebrating our distinct essence, and honoring what is shared. But before we can honor what is shared, we must first embrace what makes us different, because it is only through our differences where we discover where our unique parts interlock within the whole. This is where we fulfill our niche. And it is only through fulfilling our niche, where we truly understand our connection to the rest of life. 

Just as each flower translates light into a completely unique color, fragrance, and shape, so too are we each meant to translate light in our own unique way. It is through uncovering this unique expression, where we come to know who we actually are. We can’t know ourselves without knowing our function, and we can’t know our function without knowing ourselves. 

We must learn what it means to embrace ourselves, fully. 

When we deny ourselves, wait for someone else’s approval in order to be ourselves, or when we diminish ourselves through comparing ourselves to others, we do the world a disservice. True service and selflessness come through embracing one’s unique essence fearlessly and courageously. 

In my own journey, what this has meant for me, is that I must prioritize my unique creative genius above everything else. My creativity is the vehicle of expression for my core essence, thus it is the most integral aspect in fulfilling my function.  

I come to know myself, through that which I create. 

So I prioritize time to sensitize myself to my inner worlds. I find myself watching and waiting with curiosity, as I move through a process that is beyond my rational understanding. 

It often feels like I am pregnant, like there is an entire universe that is about to rise up from within me. At the same time, it can feel like this random anebulous soup, where I can feel something formulating, but it is still sort of senseless and vague. But it is never dry in this space, for I sense an incredible richness to what stirs within me. 

It is precious, to bear witness to this process, almost like if you could watch an embryo forming within a womb, starting from something totally unrecognizable morphing into something human. It is a miracle. I am watching the miracle of nature unfold within me, as I learn to get out of the way of nature’s intelligent design. 

And that is exactly what I am doing, allowing something of nature to grow from within me. 

I am the gardener of my psyche.

I plant seeds and tend to the garden. I prepare the environment, and then I must get out of the way, so that nature may grow of its own volition. 

I sensitize myself to the biosphere of my inner landscape, noticing the subtleties in ambiance, and the movements of cycles giving way to the inflections of seasons. There is a deep listening occurring. I take note of the subtle changes in mood, feeling, inner vision, and I wait and watch carefully to see what starts to sprout. The creative process is very sacred, very live-giving, especially when done with sensitivity and care. Just as a garden, my psyche is the intersect between my sense of self and the wilderness of nature.

We must remember, that we don’t create who we are. God, nature, designs us. Our job is to allow ourselves to grow into what we naturally are. This means trusting the intelligence of nature within us. And this often means simply just being still for a while, creating space within ourselves so that nature has room to work its magic. 

Every day, I find myself deepening in the realization that I am simply an apprentice to that which desires to reveal itself through me. I must learn to obey its call, yield to its will, and how to hold space so that it may grow in accord to its own rhythm. It is that pure, blossoming revelation of nature, of Divine Will, that I must learn to nurture and support. This is my teacher. It teaches me how to truly live. It is my central sun, through which everything must orbit. 

If I choose to disregard this central sun, the source of my creative light, then my world is thrown into disharmony, and I try to live by something that bears no real life. In this, I deny my function, and I live as something that I am not. 

I must approach myself, and the seed of nature within me, with great humility and love. 

I know all too well what it is like to ignore that central sun, and to allow some hollow idea to take precedence over my own inner light.

I’ve spent a lot of my life zipping around from one thing to another, trying to prove something of myself to the world – trying to prove my value, my worth. In my constant striving, I depleted myself, and no matter how hard I tried, I found myself in a constant state of angst. My main subconscious intention was to gain the approval of others, so I was always seeking external validation. I was lost in a world of mental static, mulling over menial circumstances and shallow relationships, trying to establish a false form of value and security. Constantly worried, constricted breath, and a cloud distorting my mind – I tried my best. Eventually after failing enough times and exhausting myself, I gave up. 

And this giving up looked like the ultimate failure to an old version of myself, but in reality, it was not so much a failure, but a success on behalf of life, to get me out of my own way. 

It’s funny, the ways in which life creates tension, so that it may find resolve. Those moments where we feel we have failed, where we feel we have let ourselves down, are actually those points where life has its greatest victories in us, where we finally allow an opening for something real to rise up from within us, just as a rose breaking through the concrete in a place where nature was once deemed forgotten. 

Emotional Awareness: The Gateway to Self-Knowledge

Here I am, once again in this cabin. 1am. Surrounded by towering Redwoods in the misty stillness of a budding Spring night. As I reflect on the presence of the moment, I feel deep gratitude to be alone. To be with just myself. To have deep conversations with myself, to sensitize myself to my inner workings, and to allow my deeper feelings to arise.

I love studying myself. I love observing the relationship between my thoughts and feelings. I love getting flashes of insight, and finding creative ways to birth them in the outer world. I learn of myself through what I create. I learn of God through what I create. In fact, the most I have ever learned of the Divine – is through the process of giving life to that which lives within me.

Lately I have been coming into this deepening insight into the nature of knowledge. When I was younger, I used to think that I had to study a lot to “know” things, and that my “knowing” was dependent on my ability to remember things in books or from teachers. This perspective has been rapidly shifting lately. I suppose this has been a byproduct of a deepening into my own sense of knowing. I can feel something bubbling up from the deep watery recesses of my unconscious to meet the light of my conscious mind. This new insight is the side effect of some sort of merging within myself.

I have been realizing that my feelings and emotions are gateways into deeper avenues of knowledge. Every emotion is like a code, and each emotion contains an entire universe of information. In one instant, I can feel an emotional wave sweep through my being, resounding within every cell of my body. In one moment, I can feel every cell respond to the emotion, through either a contraction or an expansion. And within half a second, my entire body can be filled with knowledge on any given subject. And the knowledge is always important, meaningful and relevant. And it is always right to the point. I am realizing that real knowledge comes through a feeling sense. Not from an intellectual head space, like so many of us have been taught.

As we open ourselves to our emotions, we open ourselves up to deep knowledge. To Self knowledge.

It is the ancient knowledge found within the great mystery of nature, revealing itself through us.

As I type this, a memory from my childhood is coming to me. This memory actually comes to me quite often, but it is coming in now, so I trust that there’s something deeper here for me to look at.

In school, I always had trouble “learning.” I always felt like I was a little slower than the children around me, as I noticed in my classes I always needed extra help. I was usually one of the last students for concepts to “click.” Also, I remember always feeling like my work in school was mediocre compared to the other students, and I had a hard time understanding how my classmates caught on to things so fast. I remember always having a sense of just “skating by” in my classes. Since I was generally a really well behaved kid, the teachers usually found a way to pass me, despite my often horrid grades.

When I was 12 years old, I remember one day at school standing in line, waiting to enter the cafeteria for lunch, thinking about how much trouble I had retaining information in class, and how exhausting it felt trying to learn in school. I began to wonder if I had some sort of learning disability. I was even considering the thought that my brain wasn’t fully developed. I found myself feeling frustrated. I felt like something was wrong with me.

As I began having these thoughts, a voice came into my head, a voice distinct from my own cycling thoughts. This voice said:

“There is a reason why you are the way you are. You have strength in a different type of knowledge. Your strength is not information of the mind, but rather a knowledge of the heart. You are the way you are for a very specific reason. There is much to discover as you grow.”

I didn’t know what on earth this meant, but it brought me ease in the moment. I remember the feeling of relief as this voice washed over me that day outside the middle school cafeteria.

I reflect on this now, being where I am in my life, doing what I am doing, and having this insight bubble up. This insight that I am learning to embody. I never cease to be amazed at the miracle of this whole process, and precision of how my past, present, and future all intersect. Where these points of meaning connect within time, something timeless reveals itself. I swear, I feel like this world is some fragile makeshift hut that is apt to get blown down by slightest breeze… and once the walls come down, we will be bathed by the light of the glorious blaze of the burning sun.

And in some moments it all feels so planned. It is barely even a secret anymore…

The Secrets of Death and Rebirth

One of the most fundamental cycles that we see repeating itself throughout nature, is the cycle of life, death, and rebirth. Everything in our physical existence goes through this process in its own way. Galaxies, forests, mountains, birds, people, buildings (elemental, plant, animal, and human) – everything in physicality is joined together through this common process. 

When there is a cycle that is so deeply fundamental to the way this realm operates, we can guarantee there’s something significant encoded within it. We can look at this physical existence as a language, and this language is in constant communication with us. When there is a common motif that is repeating itself throughout everything in existence, there is something very important being communicated. In studying the language of nature, we must notice the repeating patterns, for this language is a gateway into higher knowledge. These patterns repeat for a reason.

In my own personal journey, I came to understand the cycle of life, death, and rebirth through the symbolic language of Christianity (Catholicism, to be specific). As I grew up Catholic, there was one symbol in particular that was deeply ingrained within my young mind: the symbol of Christ being crucified on the cross.

As a young child, I remember this symbol being very grotesque and brutal. It sort of haunted me, you could say. The graphic nature of this symbol clashed with the innocence of my childhood: Christ wearing a crown of thorns, blood dripping down his body, giant stakes impaling his hands and feet, puncture wounds in his rib cage, his mouth gaping open as he took his last breaths of air, and his eyes rolled back in his head, his face contorted in pain. The image serves as a psychic trauma for one who is not yet initiated into its deeper meaning.

This symbol confused me growing up. I remember going to mass with my parents on Sundays, and the priest would be talking about all of these beautiful things – serving humanity, compassion, the forgiveness of sins, etc, and he would brilliantly interpret scripture. But as the priest spoke and prayed, behind him hung a massive depiction of a man being brutally tortured and killed. So, in my child perspective, the priest was seemingly saying one thing, and then this image was seemingly saying the exact opposite. I was being sent mixed messages. 

I remember thinking to myself, in my own six-year-old sort of way:

“Are we psychotic? What if a group of extraterrestrials came down and watched us having mass? They would think we were either cannibals or savages. They would think we were engaged in human sacrifice. They would probably think that we were violent, and terribly confused.” 

I remember asking my mother about the meaning of this symbol, and she said:

“Christ took on the sins of the world, and died so that they may be forgiven.”

I had absolutely no idea what this meant. I remember trying to solve this statement like a riddle: 

“Do I not have to worry about my sins anymore, because Jesus already died for them? But then why do I still need to worry about going to hell? Or did everybody just go to hell before he died on the cross? And once he died people could be forgiven and go to heaven? What does this statement mean exactly? And how do I relate to it?”

Something just didn’t make sense. There was a lot of confusion, abstraction, and a tremendous lack of clarity around the meaning of this highly revered symbol. There had to be some sense to this gruesome image that was so prominent in my childhood. It wasn’t until I got much older, into my mid 20s, until the deeper archetypal richness of this symbol became revealed to me. 

We can only understand symbols and concepts through the level of our own consciousness. As humanity is evolving, we have more understanding of the human psyche than we ever have before, we’re understanding our emotions in completely new ways, and we’re gathering a deeper understanding of trauma, how it works, and how it is healed. 

We can take these new understandings and apply them to this sacred symbol. Some people may argue that this symbol bears no relevance to us anymore, but I believe that this couldn’t be further from the truth. It’s meaning just needs to be clarified. I would say that this symbol holds more relevance for us than it ever has before, especially if we are bold enough to move beyond an outdated view of it (rooted in the projections from a less evolved phase in our evolution) and we allow ourselves to see it for what it truly represents. As we allow this symbol to be revived within us, the whole paradigm built upon our relationship with the archetype of Christ begins to take new shape. With this revival, we move into a new paradigm of what Christ represents, and we evolve our relationship with It. In this, we deepen our relationship to our own innermost expression.

The symbol of Christ on the cross is the visual declaration of the deepest function that pain serves in this physical realm. 

When we can understand the inner mysteries of this symbol, then we have a much broader understanding of how this universe is orchestrated, and why everything in our lives is arranged in the way that it is. This symbol provides some of the deepest insight into how this physical universe is set up, how it is coded. 

Let’s start with language. Let’s start with the phrase that riddled me as a child:

“Christ took on the sins of the world, and died so that they may be forgiven.”

Let’s start with the word “sin”. The original Hebrew word for “sin” generally meant “to fall short” or “to miss the mark.” So, spiritually speaking, a “sin” is nothing more than a misunderstanding, a misperception, an illusion. If we look at the illusions of this realm, all of the things that distort our perception of reality – our fears, our emotional wounds, and our traumas – they can all essentially be stripped down to one fundamental belief: the belief in death. 

Think about your fears. When you trace every single fear that you have down to its core, you will see that they are all fundamentally rooted in the fear of death. So, when Christ took on the “sins of the world”, Christ took on the one fundamental illusion from which all other illusions stem: the belief in death. The deeper purpose of Christ’s crucifixion, was so that he could directly confront death, in order to prove its unreality. So, it was through Christ’s resurrection on the third day, where he was actually able to reveal his deepest teaching to humanity: 

Death is not real. 

This is a very deep teaching, and there has been a lot of confusion surrounding how this teaching directly applies to our everyday experience. This teaching has been distorted several times over. It has been completely obscured, and virtually lost due to humanity’s unreadiness to grasp the deeper wisdom of this symbol. Now, humanity is at a place in its evolution where it is ripe to integrate this symbol’s authentic meaning. 

The story of Christ provides an equation, a formula, for human liberation. If we are not understanding how this teaching applies to us in a direct and obvious way, then we are missing some very vital information about how to approach our relationship with life, and how this whole physical realm is operating. So let’s explore this. 

One of the protocols for “Earth school”, is to take on certain wounds and inner challenges upon coming into a body. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your childhood was, or how ascended you believe your consciousness to be, if you are in a body, then there are internal challenges that you are working with to help propel your evolution forward. These wounds and challenges are nothing to be shameful of. They are ultimately creative, and they inspire you towards your highest expression. They have a higher function, just like everything else in existence.

What our wounds actually are, is they are the unique and individualized expressions of the belief in death. 

In learning how to relate to our wounds in the most loving and constructive way, we are able to confront the belief in death within ourselves. In this, we become as Christ. So, you can look at your suffering, your darkness, as the “womb of Christ.” 

In addressing our pain, this does not mean that we retraumatize ourselves. It means that we create an atmosphere of safety within ourselves so that we can confront our wounds in the most loving and healthy way. 

So, what this looks like, is when we find ourselves in pain, then we learn how to be with ourselves as our own best friend in the midst of our darkest hours. 

We each have an inner angel, an inner expression of Christ. The qualities of Christ become integrated within our character as we develop our relationship with ourselves. As a natural byproduct of relating to ourselves as Christ, we bring our highest qualities forth into every other relationship. And it is the aspects of ourselves that are suffering the most that call this inner angel forth from within us, out of necessity for healing. Our deepest pain summons this inner angel to display the grandeur of its wings, it calls our inner Christ forth into resurrection. It is in this space of confronting our wounds, where we develop our highest qualities: courage, honor, compassion, strength, wisdom, and true understanding. It is only here, where our love becomes truly unconditional. We embody Christ upon facing the illusion of death within ourselves.

So when you are in pain, you must ask yourself:

“How loving can I possibly be with myself in this moment? What is it that I need to tell myself? What is it that I need to give myself? What are my real needs, and how do I meet them in the healthiest way possible?” 

When you can be with yourself in this way, holding yourself in the highest form of reverence for everything that you are going through, while fully allowing yourself to feel everything that the experience has to offer, then the mirage of death will begin to disappear. You will find yourself crossing the threshold into greater life. 

It is ironic, because these portals into greater life are coded into us (disguised as our wounds and fears), and most of humanity goes in the complete opposite direction. Most of humanity runs away, avoids, distracts, lashes out, attacks, defends, and denies. Many of us do everything that we can to run away from the very thing that will grant us the greatest freedom.

And this is why the world is the way it is.

Most of us are so terrified of facing death within ourselves, that we inflict it on the world around us, in a desperate attempt to distance ourselves from our deepest fear. And so it is in learning how to properly address our wounds, where we confront death within ourselves. This is how we come to reverse the thinking of the world. 

Spirituality is ultimately about learning how to entrain to the mind of God – learning how to perceive through the eyes of the Creator. This being the case, if God knows no death, and if God dwells in eternity, then how do we suppose God perceives the cycle of life, death, and rebirth? 

All God sees, is life moving into greater life. It’s our human dilemma, where we think we actually lose something upon moving into greater life. This is ultimately what pain is trying to help us come to terms with. 

The deepest function that pain serves, is to liberate you from the greatest fear that you have ever known. 

Earlier I had stated that the story of Christ maps out a formula for liberation. Upon using the word “liberation”, I want to be as clear and direct as possible in how I am using this word.

When speaking of “liberation”, I am using it in reference to the cycle of death and rebirth – the “karmic wheel” that mystics have referred to for thousands of years. In order to free oneself from this cycle, one must learn how to change their relationship with death. This whole realm is built upon the intention that soul will eventually come to meet this achievement. Once we come into an unconditionally loving and empowered relationship with death, then death has nothing more to teach us. 

This pattern can be clearly witnessed in trauma and reenactment. A trauma repeats itself through reenactment until one can learn how to change their relationship with the trauma. Once one has come into an empowered relationship with regards to the trauma, then the trauma has nothing more to teach them. The cycle of trauma, and the cycle of death and rebirth, operate in the exact same way. This is because they are one and the same, and they operate under the exact same algorithm. 

Like I mentioned earlier, it is important to notice the patterns that we see repeating themselves throughout this physical universe. They are codes. They are formulas. It is language. And in understanding what this language means, then we know how to orient our relationship to life in a way that allows us true liberation. 

I would like to acknowledge the source of where this information is coming from. Much of the information that I receive and present comes to me via dreamtime. For years, I have had ongoing communication with the angelic realm through my dreams, where angels (or guides) often relay information to me about myself, about other people, and about the nature of spiritual development. 

There was one dream that I had in particular, where this angel appeared to me with a book in his hands. The angel had these glowing crystalline blue eyes that I will never forget. The clarity in his gaze served as a window into the world of beauty from which he came. The book he was holding was rather large, and looked very old, emanating a depth of holiness that touched an ancient knowing within me. As the angel opened this book, there was a primordial language artfully written across the pages. It looked like it could have been Sanskrit, or something. Next to the text, there were beautiful images of these beings that were illuminated. They looked like masters of some kind. As this angel showed me this book, he emphasized the images of these “masters”, and he said:

“Those that are bound to death, cannot enter the kingdom of Heaven.”

And then he repeated the statement.

The beautiful and penetrating eyes of the angel, the illuminated images of these “masters”, and the phrase which the angel repeated – the whole experience of this dream has been gestating within me, awaiting its proper expression, so that it may somehow cross the bridge into my outer reality. It has been waiting to be be extended, for the message in this dream was not meant to stop at the confines of my personal inner experience. It was a message for humanity.

The confusion of my childhood relationship with Christianity, the journey of trying to find God in the depth of my darkness, and the esoteric dimensions of my dream life – they all converge and resolve in this one statement:

The deepest function that pain serves, is to liberate us from the illusion of death.

Pain is a liberating force, when seen in its highest expression. When we develop a relationship with pain where we clearly see its higher purpose, then we can actively relate to it in the most creative and unconditionally loving way. It is the relationship we cultivate with pain, that ultimately determines our level of mastery in this realm. Most importantly, it is our relationship with pain that determines the depth and quality of our love. 

When we confront our pain in a loving way, we come to face the illusion of death. When we face the illusion of death within ourselves, then we no longer try to distance ourselves from it by projecting it outward. In this, we relinquish the subconscious desire to enact death upon the world around us, and we put an end to the cycle of trauma. Undergoing this process allows us to be an effective vehicle for the Divine to reveal itself in the physical world, for we are the instruments through which God is made manifest in this universe. 

As human beings, it our highest function, to reveal the beauty and love of God through the uniqueness of our expression. It is in this function, where all of humanity is forever joined, and where every being is celebrated and honored for the uniqueness that they are.

It is through facing death, where we prove its unreality. 

It is through facing death, where we cross the threshold into greater life.

And it is through this process, where we reveal ourselves as the radiant light of Christ.

The Truth About Forgiveness (The 3 Phases of Personal Transformation)

Forgiveness has been a very important concept within spirituality and religion for thousands of years. It has been heralded as a liberating force, for as one learns to forgive, one is freed from the bondage of their past, and they move more graciously into the embodiment of their soul. 

This being the case, we engage in many ritualistic things surrounding forgiveness – we participate in forgiveness ceremonies, cut cords, repeat forgiveness mantras and prayers, so on and so forth. As we do all these things around forgiveness, often the very things that we are trying to forgive continue to resurface in our lives. As this happens, we will commonly respond to them in the same reactionary way as we did before, thus we perpetuate the cycles that bind us to the traumas of our past. Many people do their best to apply the principle of forgiveness, in order to free themselves from this cycle, but collectively, there has been a lack of clarity as to how to effectively “forgive”.

Collectively, our consciousness has not been in tune enough with its own inner workings to grasp the deeper meaning of forgiveness. We have also not been at the proper level of maturity, because in reality, it takes a tremendous amount of personal responsibility to sincerely apply the principle of forgiveness.

As we develop spiritually, it’s imperative that we learn what forgiveness actually is on a deeper level. Forgiveness is the principle that guides the process of transformation that the soul undergoes through its human experience. This being said, as we understand what forgiveness is, and how to apply it in a direct way, we more effectively allow the blossoming of our soul to occur. We work more in harmony with higher spiritual processes that guide the course of our evolution. 

So, I’m going to be outlining this process of personal transformation and how it applies to integrating forgiveness on a deeper level. There are three main phases to this process of growth. You can think of this as almost like a “map” of soul development. 

For me personally, I stumbled upon these insights through a wound I that I had with regards to the masculine archetype. I was once asked to do a public talk on Father’s Day, and so I started to prepare for this talk through meditating on the archetype of “the father”. As I would meditate on this archetype, holding it in my inner vision, I began noticing these little obstructions popping up in my mind’s eye. It was similar to as if you were looking at a big beautiful painting, and then all of the sudden you notice this tiny crack in the corner of it. Before you know it, your entire awareness gets collapsed into this little crack, this little blemish. Then that tiny crack becomes the only thing that you can see. 

This is what was happening to me. I decided to sit with this little “blemish” in my mind’s eye, to see what was there. And as I sat with it, I noticed some pain, some sorrow, and the very first thing that began to surface were these feelings regarding my relationship with my father. I just want to say that my father is a beautiful man, an incredibly saintly figure. I owe him my life, my everything. He is my father. The feelings of emotional pain that arose within our relationship had nothing really to do with “him” as a person, but more so the paradigm that we operated within.

In the world that my father grew up in, your sense of worth and value as a “man” was predominantly based off of your ability to provide for your family. My father took this idea of what a “good man” was, and he gave it his everything. He would work 50, 60, 70 hours a week. He worked his ass off to provide. But in spite of his incredibly pure and heartfelt intentions, I could not help but notice this incredible gap, this distance, between us. As a child, and as an adolescent, I could not help but notice this intense yearning that I had for a deeper emotional bond and connection with him. 

This eventually led me to think about the relationship between the masculine and the feminine. This brought me to reflect upon my past relationships with women. I noticed that just about every single woman that I had ever been with, has been working through some form physical or emotional trauma with regards to their relationship with the masculine archetype. 

This led me to feel more deeply into the collective, and I began recalling the plethora of sexual abuse and derogatory behavior that men have enacted towards woman for thousands of years. I also began reflecting on our political system, composed mostly of men, who send younger men off to war to be killed, when these older men should be their mentors and their guides. The distance, the emotional neglect, and the lack of trust is huge between older and younger men within our culture. 

This made me realize that if we are to truly honor and love “the father” in a genuine way, then there is a very deep process of forgiveness that most of us are needing to go through. There is a wound here for almost all of us, in some form or fashion. 

It is imperative that we not turn away from our pain, but rather go into the wound and shed light on what is there. For instance, if someone is needing to heal through a very deep childhood trauma, and they are disassociating from it and solely focusing on positive thoughts, then they will not completely free themselves from the cycle of reenactment. It may serve as one phase of growth for them, but eventually they are going to need to gather the strength and the courage to go back into that wound in order to reclaim the sense of self that they felt that they had lost. 

We can understand the wound as a gateway to our highest expression, once we are willing to shed light upon it. In this, the wound comes sacred, because within it there is a code, a formula, a process, for transformation. This process of transformation is intrinsically connected to integrating the principle of forgiveness. Like I mentioned, there are three distinct phases to this process. 

As most of you know the soul comes here with a certain set of gifts and talents that it’s meant to share with the world. It also takes on a certain set of inner challenges, struggles, or “wounds” that it must work through over the course of its life here. And so the process of transformation is governed by the relationship of these two polarizing aspects within the individual (one’s gifts and one’s wounds). Over the course of one’s development, these two polarizing forces slowly get brought closer together, and eventually they become integrated into one cohesive expression. The things that you have struggled with more than anything eventually become integrated into the expression of your greatest gifts. Your inner wounds play an integral role in the revealing of your innermost genius. In other words, your weaknesses eventually become your strengths. 

There are three distinct phases to this process. Each phase is dictated by how one relates to their inner struggles. 

Phase 1: 

Disassociation – You feel powerless to your inner struggles.

In Phase 1, you feel completely powerless to your inner struggles. You feel helpless to confronting them in a healthy and constructive way. In your feelings of helplessness, you end up participating in dissociative behaviors, as an unconscious attempt to separate yourself from your inner struggles as much as you possibly can. You end up creating distractions, addictions, projections onto other people, and you end up blaming the external world for how you feel. So basically, there is a negation of personal responsibility. 

This negation of responsibility is not out of malice intention. It is simply arising out of your feelings of inadequacy in relation to addressing your wounds in a healthy way. In other words, you simply feel powerless, and you must learn to work through your feelings of powerlessness in order to free yourself from the unhealthy dynamics that you have created. 

It is important to realize that there is nothing wrong with this phase, it is just the first phase of maturity in this process. Nobody stays in this phase forever. Life eventually initiates you out of it (whether it be this lifetime, or one hereafter). 

The role that your inner challenges take on in Phase 1, is like that of an inner monster that sort of taunts you from the inside out. 

Eventually, life will push this you into a situation where you realize that your dissociative tendencies will not work for you in the long run. So, you will have an internal awakening, and this internal awakening leads you to Phase 2. 

Phase 2: 

Apprenticeship – Your inner struggles become a source of self-knowledge.

In Phase 2, you become an apprentice to your inner struggles. So there is a shift in relationship that occurs in how you relate to your wounds. Rather than it being this monster that tortures you from the inside out, it becomes a teacher, a guru, a guide. You learn from your wounds, you study them, you open up communication with them and they become a source of self-knowledge 

Phase 2 generally comes about when you go through a crisis period in you life. A “crisis” is like life’s way of trying to get you to address your own needs in a deeper way. It is life’s way of getting you to take care of yourself on a very raw and genuine level, in a way that you probably never did before. So Phase 2, is essentially the phase when you become initiated on to your healing path. After spending a certain amount of time developing in your healing path, you progress to Phase 3. 

Phase 3:

Integration – Your inner struggles become integrated as a part of your gifts to the world. 

In Phase 3, there is another shift and how you relate to your inner struggles. Rather than being this guide, or this Guru, that sits sort of removed from yourself, they get brought completely into you. They become fully accepted and embraced as a valuable an integral aspect of your experience. They begin to become utilized as a source of self empowerment, as a vehicle for the expression of your gifts, and a means of service unto others. 

We will go through each three of these phases multiple times over the course of our development, with regards to many different themes that we are exploring within ourselves. We have to remember our healing doesn’t occur in a straight linear way. It occurs within cycles within cycles, kind of like a Fibonacci spiral. 

You may be asking yourself the question, what does this have to do with forgiveness? 

This is the process through which we integrate forgiveness on an emotional and experiential level. 

When we are talking about genuine forgiveness, we are not actually talking about forgiving anything outside of ourselves. If we’re ever talking about forgiveness with regards to something or someone outside of ourselves, then that is a very shallow and superficial idea of forgiveness. 

What forgiveness actually is, is learning how to relate to our painful experiences, and our inner challenges, in a constructive, self-empowering, and self-loving way. It is about coming into a right relationship with our “painful experiences”, and being able to relate to them from a place of unconditional love. It is about your relationship with yourself and your experiences, and it ultimately has very little to do with your relationship with anything outside of you. 

Let’s say that someone has wronged me, and so there’s a wound that is active in me, and I am trying to forgive this person. I will not be able to actually forgive them if the wound is still alive in me, no matter how hard I try. So I have to relate to that wound, to that painful experience, in a new way. I must relate to it in a more constructive and self empowering way. And once I integrate that new perspective in how I relate to my experience, then that negative charge between me and that person is gone. I don’t even have to try to forgive that person, because I’m already moving on with my life. 

In understanding the true nature of forgiveness, we realize that our relationship with the external world is nothing more than a reflection of how we relate to ourselves. Everything we feel in relation to something outside of ourselves points to some aspect of how we relate to ourselves. With this, we deepen our understanding of the relationship between the internal and external realities. We must first address the internal in order to meet its reflection outside of us.  

In my own personal experience, as I expressed earlier, a huge forgiveness lesson for me has had to do with my relationship with the masculine archetype. 

One of my biggest struggles growing up, was understanding my heightened sensitivity as a male. As a little boy, I was not into competition, I was not into sports, I was not into a lot of the things that most little boys were into. I came across as sort of weak and effeminate to the people around me. My parents could see this, and I could tell that this really concerned them. Even though I could feel their concern on a subtle level, it didn’t really affect me until I hit puberty. The gender roles become very defined at this stage in life. I found myself at a terribly awkward predicament at this juncture, because I wasn’t fitting clearly into either gender category. I had a lot of difficulty relating to fellow males my own age at the time. 

At that pivotal period of development, young males try to initiate themselves into their masculinity. They are a little bit more aggressive, a little bit more competitive, a little bit more rebellious, and through their display of “masculine” behavior, they develop hierarchies amongst themselves. There is an unspoken language that is being expressed amongst young males at this time. 

I had no idea how to relate to any of this on any level. It was just like a completely foreign world to me. I began to feel very alienated from my own gender. Not only did I feel alienated from them, but I was viewed as the weakling, or the runt. I was kind of like at the bottom of the totem pole in the eyes of most males – the pansy, you could say. I was the soft one. I found myself in a lot of circumstances where I felt incredibly disrespected and dishonored. It was very uncomfortable. 

I also had a very awkward relationship with the feminine. When I was about 15 or 16, I started to date. I was terribly insecure with myself regarding my masculinity because I was not mirroring the typical models of maleness or manhood around me at all. In fact, I was the exact opposite. This insecurity made my relationship with the feminine very awkward and uncomfortable. 

This led me to see myself as being completely defective as a male. And it went deeper then that, to where I felt defective on a core identity level. So, there was this belief that was operating in me – that I was deeply flawed at the fundamental core of my being. There was something terribly wrong with me, and that God had made some atrocious mistake upon my creation. This is a belief that I’ve really had to work through, and I struggled with it for a very long time. 

As I approach my late twenties, and I step more courageously into my career, I am realizing that a lot of the qualities that I once saw as weaknesses are now serving as my greatest strengths. My softness, my sensitivity, my empathy, my receptivity – all of these things are a tremendous asset to who I am as an artist, a healer, and as a messenger. 

10 years ago if I would have been addressing this aspect of myself, it probably would have been 1 o’clock in the morning in my parents house, in a bathroom, with a bottle of vodka and one hand and a box of sleeping pills in the other, trying to get as far away from myself as possible, because I didn’t know how to accept who I was. 

And now, 10 years later, I am addressing the exact same aspect of myself writing in this moment to you, about the process of transformation, the true meaning of forgiveness, and about our relationship with God. I relate to my inner struggles in completely different way than I did in my past. This is how I know I’ve transformed. So you can see, I’ve had to move through these three phases with regards to this particular theme. 

My process of forgiveness has not been about forgiving my family perceiving me a certain way, or for forgiving the world around me for seeing me in any particular way. It wasn’t about any of this, on a deeper level. 

I had to forgive myself. 

I had to forgive myself for buying into the illusions of a world that was not at the level of awareness to see me for who I actually was. 

I had to forgive myself for buying into the illusions of a world that mistook strength for weakness, and weakness for strength. 

Forgiveness has nothing to do with forgiving anything outside of ourselves. And if we are ever trying to do this, we must remember that this is a very shallow, surface-level attempt at forgiveness. 

When we can take any experience that comes up in our life and see it as a way to empower ourselves, and to connect with ourselves in a deeper way, then that is how we learn to actually integrate forgiveness. 

Of course if you explain all of this to somebody that has just been through a traumatic event, they are not going to understand this in the state that they are in. That’s why there are three steps of integrating forgiveness on an emotional and experiential level. It is not enough to understand forgiveness conceptually, because it needs to be integrated emotionally. This part usually takes some time. 

True forgiveness is a process of integrating the perspective that everything in our life is here to serve us and empower us on the deepest level. It is ultimately about freeing ourselves from the illusions of the world, through learning to perceive our darkest experiences through the context of a higher perspective. 

Forgiveness is the liberating principle that guides us through the alchemical process of personal transformation. It is ultimately about coming into right relationship with one’s self, so that one can cultivate a right relationship with life. 

In this, we learn to use every experience and relationship as a means to empower ourselves from within. 

The deepest function of everything that exists in physicality, is to liberate the Spirit within it.