My writing and artwork are inspired by a life-long practice of lucid dream work and journaling, asking for guidance and writing down the answers. Often what comes through is a metaphor, story or an image from nature. Sometimes they are a complete surprise. It is a refreshing and disarming practice, one on which I have come to depend as a staple in my daily creative practice. I use a process of reduction and subtraction, simplifying until I find in them the kernel of universal truth. I call them my 'Messages'. This daily creative practice helps me to quiet inner and outer chatter and remind myself that there is a quiet eternal place behind this chaotic and distracting world, which we can can always access.
Downriver
Your energy is like a river in the spring. Ice and branches from winter build up to create a dam. Pressure needs to build up behind the dam before it will break free. In life, when things are not moving, your instinct is to try to make things happen faster. But sometimes pushing is not the answer. Sometimes waiting is a necessary process of building energy.
During this time of waiting, your only task is to clear the way down river. Do what you need in your life to simplify and put things in order. Take this time to do all of the mundane things that make a life run smoothly.
Let the pressure build up behind your dam. When it all breaks free, your river will roar through in a torrent of strong and clean energy, with all the velocity needed to clean out old debris.
Remember that as with all things in nature, Spirit has its cycles and its wisdom. Use this time to take care of all of the things in your life that need to be put in order. In this way you will open the way downriver, clearing the way for what is next.
Your Job
The world is one of contradictions and dilemmas if you see it only with your eyes. The world will not make sense if you try to pin it down with your small mortal vision. You will never make sense of it all. Only by using the kaleidoscope eye, the inner eye, will you really see.
Vision is not about sight; it is not about what is in front of you. Vision is about what you create in the eyes and vision of Spirit. It is what is meant for you to do. Do not close your eyes to your vision out of fear of it being too much for you. Change your perspective and walk around your vision to see it better instead. Do not be stalled by how large or how intimidating your vision is.
Your vision is why you are here. It is your job. Let your job come to you and show itself to you. Walk around it and see it for what it is. Climb it, conquer it, be it. Do not run from it out of fear.
Be Unfinished
Earth is a forming ground. Life on Earth is about continual growth and decay, not about reaching a final stage and saying, “There, that is finished”. There will never be a day that you are alive on Earth that your work here is done. You will always be unfinished, even from this lifetime to the next.
In your lack of fruition lies your ever-present perfection. There is nothing more that you can do to come closer to completion, not if your life spanned centuries.
Let go of being finished. Instead, sink into your daily presence and do your best work.
Come to know yourself as perfectly unfinished in the service of Spirit.
Costumes
Sometimes you put other people in costumes. Maybe these costumes belonged to someone you knew or loved in your past, or to a fantasy figure you have conjured up. Once you dress a new person in an old costume, you expect that eventually they will fill that role; maybe even with a little direction from you. But it isn’t their costume. It is not their part. It is not long before they will start to act out of character, forget their lines, or trip up on-stage.
If you find yourself resentful or disappointed with a person, notice the costume in which you have dressed them. Who exactly are they failing at being?
Then let them out of your costume. See them as the new person they are. If you find yourself disappointed, let go of your expectations and instead be intrigued by their unfamiliar ways. Let who they are be a surprise, not a frustration.
Every person on this earth has their own beautiful costume- most have several – but they don’t belong in yours. Cherish and remember the costumes, real or imagined, of the people that you have loved. But let these old costumes stay in your wardrobe where they belong. Let those who are in your life now wear their own costume, from the fabric of their own making.
Crutches
If you hand a person a pair of crutches enough times, they will come to believe that they need them.
Recognize when you are helping others, not for their sake, but in order to make yourself feel stronger by claiming their own healership.
See that by claiming the healing of another, you are asking them to sacrifice themselves in order to support you. You are making them into a crutch for you, to shore up your own sense of goodness.
Be generous with your light, and make your presence one in which others can heal. Just know that you do not own that light, and you can never claim the healing of those in your presence.
The Deeper Ocean
As you swim out of the murky shallows of the distractions of this world, into the deeper ocean of Spirit and soul, you will see clearly what your soul needs, and it will become your conscious desire. This desire is neither nostalgic for the past nor hopeful for the future – it is in alignment with your higher purpose in this moment.
In this ocean you will see through this mortal, flawed and intoxicating world, into what is beneath and beyond and infinite. It is when these two worlds come closer, overlap, and merge, that all becomes clear.
You are being offered in this moment exactly what you need to fulfill your purpose. Swim into your deeper ocean, open your eyes, and you will see it.
Demons are Faithful
You cannot claim other people’s demons as your own, even for the most altruistic of reasons. You can never save others from their own struggle.
Demons always run back to their creator.
Only their creator holds the key to their existence, as well as their extinction.
Do You Really Want to Know?
Sometimes, when you are given difficulties that you feel you don’t deserve, you ask the question, “Why is this happening to me?” but you are not really expecting an answer: you are really just complaining.
If you truly want to change, the next time some difficulty comes up, try asking the very same question; “Why is this happening to me?” But this time, expect an answer. If you ask this question not in complaint, but with curiosity, you will get your answer, and your life will change. It is that simple.
Changing your life for the better isn’t about asking a different question, it is about being humble enough to accept the answer. The universe is trying to tell you something. You just have to stop complaining long enough to hear what it is.
A Dog With a Bone
When you find yourself resisting the things that you are scared of, don’t run from them out of fear.
Instead, go after your fear, like a dog with a bone. Dive into your discomfort and see what is there. Ferret it out. Don’t stop until it is completely uncovered.
Only after you have unearthed your truth will you realize that you have been so intent in your purpose, you did not have room for fear.
Nothing Happens to You
You are connected and part of everything else. There are no divisions in life. Things can happen around you, in you, and with you, but never ‘to you’ or ‘against you’.
This means that there is no such thing as a life that is too short, or tragic, or lucky, or unlucky, or difficult. All of these terms are based on the belief that things happen ‘to you’, and that you are the central factor in your life. But you are not. You are but a spark in the infinite blaze of creation. Choosing to hold yourself apart from the infinite by saying that your life is yours alone cuts you off from this great source of power.
Life is not a thing that happens to you.
You are a thing that happens to life.