8- Poetic Justice

8- Poetic Justice

Writing has always been a creative outlet for me.  I love the way words can be shaped into short poignant arrows that get straight to the point while carrying an emotional impact.  This naturally attracted me to poetry and song lyrics. Having grown up in a musical family with relatives of some note in the industry, learning to play the guitar and write songs was as natural to me as gardening is to a farm family. Poems and lyrics seemingly flowed through me as if I was merely an extension of the pen in my hand.  Of course, I only wrote when I was moved to do so and this tended to be during times of inner reflection or personal distress.  Writing was a comfort as much as a joy.  Only in retrospect did I come to understand it as a powerful portal for tapping into the higher/expanded awareness that I am!

In my mid-thirties the profound metaphysical experience I wrote about in the story Creative Intervention introduced me to the nature of creative energy itself as a portal for illumination and healing.   Because of this experience I came to understand my previous writings in a new light.  Sprinkled like fairy dust across my life, the transformational energy of the things I had written years before in the form of blank verse, had soothed and comforted me through broken hearts, dashed hopes and shattered dreams.  Inspired words had led me away from devastation and awakened me to insight and revelation.  I can’t emphasize how bewildering it was to look at a finished writing and wonder where the words had come from.  For years these poems simply appeared on pages as if I was taking dictation.  Retrospectively I realized this was no small thing and I began to intentionally use creative energy to understand the deeper meanings of life.  

Eventually I directed all of my creative pursuits to spiritual awakening and personal understanding.  Those around me, seeing my artwork,  always urged me to take it into the world, make a career of art and promote myself.  For a long time I was conflicted about this.  I knew I was an artist because I simply couldn’t avoid the impulses to hone my skills and create.  But I had no real desire to make a career in the arts.  The larger complexities of who we are and what we are doing here never leave me.  I am quite amazed that this doesn’t gnaw at the very fabric of most individuals, but acutely aware that it doesn’t.  How seemingly gifted and bright individuals can get so involved in a world that they don’t even know the origins of beyond myth and story truly amazes me.  Science has a ridiculous protocol that focuses on solving the riddles from within the riddles themselves, and religion is so blinded by it’s agenda based origins that it can’t even see the deities it worships are as conflicted as the worshipers themselves.  What came through my conscious engagement with creative energy were validations and illuminations that moved me closer and closer to the answers I personally sought. Interestingly they also flowed with wisdom to ensure I didn’t put my findings on others.  The poem, Out Of The Woods is a good example of that.

OUT OF THE WOODS
We are not
wandering together
lost in a dark, dense wood.

We are,
each of us,
the dark, dense wood
in which we are lost.

The sooner we stop listening to
those calling from the edge
of their perceived freedom,
the sooner we will discover
our own.

It is an inner path....solitary
but with common perspectives
that fool many into believing
it is a shared journey.

Unfortunately, knowing this doesn't mean
I am out of the woods yet....
but remembering it keeps me from
calling to you from the edges.

I share this little piece to emphasize two things I have come to realize.  First, using symbolism to illustrate my perspective, I hold that there is only one self awakening from a dream or notion of separation, but there are as many journeys as there are individual points of view. In other words, all of the individuals in my human experience, including myself, are in reality, fragments of the one self we all share, each holding different perspectives.  We are not suppose to all think alike because we each bring a different perspective.  Sharing and embracing the differences in our perspectives facilitate an opportunity to heal the one self of all it’s misperceptions.  But this is the really cool part, and the second thing I want to emphasize, when I awaken my personal misperceptions through compassionate non-judgement, I awaken from the dream of separation altogether, regardless if anyone else does or not!  Because the dream of separation doesn’t really exist!  I have come to realize that my enlightenment is not contingent upon anyone else awakening.  This is why, as the poem says, there is no benefit in calling to others from the edge of my awakening.  It is of no benefit to me in spending my time focused on the dreamers or the dream!  If I were writing this book, creating inspirational artwork, or teaching classes believing that you needed me to awaken you, I’d be spinning my wheels.  Anything I do inside the dream of separation because I believe it is my calling to heal the dreamers, is the dreams trick to keep me spinning in the belief of separation.  If instead I write and teach as part of my own awakening process, my focus is on awakening, period.  When I awake, the dream disappears and separation no longer exists. 

I do not creatively express myself for recognition or following.  This is why a career in the arts never called to me.  I create because creative energy is a powerful tool for aligning the physical and non-physical aspects of my being for the purpose of personal growth and enlightenment.  I follow the inspiration to write and teach about my experience because writing and teaching are portals for my own awakening.  As I share my inward journey I am as curious to know about yours.  But not to compare and argue which is right or wrong!  Rather to revel in the midst of a fellow traveler healing yet another aspect of the one self we each represent.  In this we get to enjoy the dream together as we joyfully shake ourselves awake from it.  

I have found that aiming my creative energy toward the deeper questions of life and my personal conundrums always leads to resolution. This is the type of creative community I’d love to see emerge, instead of one focused on awards, recognition or getting lost in the distraction of making ‘stuff’.  But that will only emerge the more we tire of the dreams we spin and long for deeper understanding.  I played in those arenas of awards and recognition enough to experience this crossroads and it ushered in a huge turning point in my life.

As an artist encouraged to participate in the art world, I saw how it functioned.  How it keeps the dreamer focused on the dream.  Recognition, awards, accolades and accomplishments are powerful voices calling out to a limited self-perception.  This is true of all systems in the dream world, not just the art world.  At one point there were two voices in me vying for attention.  One wanting to be validated within the dream of this world, and one that longed to awaken me from the dream of this world.  I knew if I chose the art world I would be feeding the voice that lived within the dream; the ego.  I saw how insidiously the art world fed this voice, moving the individual between various degrees of success or failure.  Wrapping individuals up in reaching for more, better, best.  I saw the class system at work as well.  The leaders and the followers.  It was a grand game and one I could see myself doing well in if I focused my energy there.  If I fed the voice seeking recognition and accomplishment it would indeed flourish. I had already experienced a taste of it and it was certainly captivating.  But I didn’t want to be held captive.  I also knew that if I did focus my attention there, eventually I would not be able to hear the voice attempting to awaken me from the ego’s dream; freeing me from captivity.  I had to choose which of the two voices I wanted to follow.  

The choice wasn’t difficult but it was isolating.  The art world was a huge, exciting community for those driven to create.  The spiritual community focused on awakening from the dream of separation is not only minuscule in comparison, but it is also not necessarily aligned with an artistic community.  So, for a while, I did my own thing while occasionally playing with others in the art world.  Then I dropped the art world and purely focused my creativity on my own awakening.  

I believe the art world, like all systems in the dream serve those within it.  Those playing there will only stay as long at it does.  It is like church or anything else for those truly on a spiritual journey.  We only stay as long as we are being fed.  Asking myself what aspect I was nourishing made all the difference in my choice.  Respecting creative energy enough to hone incredible skills, then focusing that energy as a tool for accessing a portal for illumination and healing is the path I have most enjoyed.  It is the one I share because I learn and awaken as I do.  Writing, painting, sculpting and stitching are the lenses I use to peer deep into the mystery.  What I find there are always aspects of illumination waiting to be born.  I have been told repeatedly that when it comes to spiritual matters there are some things we just can’t know.  I have come to realize that is because there is not a ‘we’, there is only an ‘I’.  It has been my experience that when I focus my creative energy toward a spiritual truth I want to know, the answer is always revealed!  I have also come to understand that this is the truth ‘we’ must each discover for ourselves.  

9- Photo-realism

9- Photo-realism

Despite the mystical experiences connected to my spiritual journey, I had never researched or entertained any kind of paranormal explorations.  Not that I avoided them…they just weren’t on my radar.  Despite my own mystical experiences, I was a clinician who primarily believed in addressing the here and now with the here and now. But an antique photo in a tiny shop would expand that understanding, proving that the ‘here and now’ also holds the ‘there and then’.  

Each time I put the antique photograph down and walked away to explore other things in the tiny shop, I felt myself unexplainably drawn back to the woman in the portrait.  In those days there was something about old things that called me.  Along with my sister and girlfriends I often perused dusty old shops and antique malls, and this day was no different.  These places resonated with a kind of timelessness that we each found captivating.  Our homes were furnished and adorned with treasures from such places.  For me it was not so much a shopping adventure as an appreciation for the craftsmanship and beauty that I feel has all but disappeared in our modern, make-shift world of the instant and disposable.  But my attraction to this particular photograph had nothing to do with any of that.

For some time I had been collecting antique cabinet card portraits of women for a Women’s Issues class that I was scheduled to teach.  I had planned to use such images to connect the students of today to the energy of women in earlier times.  However, I never expected to connect so deeply to an image myself.  Having more photos than I needed, despite the attraction, I put the photo down and left the store with my sister and girlfriend.  Halfway down the sidewalk I was compelled to return to the shop and the photograph.  As I picked it up and looked into the depth of the eyes staring back at me, I was completely captivated and clueless as to why.  But to free myself from the pull, I marched straight to the counter, purchased the seven dollar obsession and tucked it into my purse.  That was that…or so I thought.

All day long I felt the urge to take the photo from my purse and look into her eyes.  Time and again I found myself staring into them as if they held some great mystery.  I even asked those with me if they got any vibe off the picture and they both denied any kind of draw what-so-ever.  My sister further commented that she didn’t even find the woman particularly attractive.  This threw me because I found her to be quite captivating.  It wasn’t that she was a beauty, but there was an undeniable strength and presence about her that I found compelling. 

That evening I sat with the photo and wrote whatever came to mind as I imagined the life of the mysterious woman from the turn of the century.  Alone on my sun porch, I fashioned a character study of sorts that was impossible to verify, but verification wasn’t what I was looking for.  I simply wanted to understand what was calling me to this image so I wrote whatever filled my thoughts.  The things that came spoke to a strength of character and her determination to be heard and unrestricted in an age where women had very little freedom and even less voice.  The message was one of self-knowledge with regard to her personality; a quiet type of inner-strength that was unmistakable in her presence.  Not foreboding or arrogant in any way,  I felt she held a kind of self-awareness that was purposeful and directed, without ego yet very centered.  

A few days later I had the image copied and enlarged so I could frame and display it prominently in my home.  I knew this was very unusual behavior but I just went with it.  I intuitively felt the need to ‘be with her’; to have her share my space.  Fortunately I lived with people who didn’t question my quirky ideas or spontaneous notions.

It was the early nineties and we had a nice apartment just outside of Dallas, Texas.  I say this to emphasize that there wasn’t anything in our area of the bible belt that openly addressed the paranormal.  Quite honestly, despite the mystical experiences connected to my spiritual journey, I had never researched or entertained any kind of paranormal explorations.  Not that I avoided them…they just weren’t on my radar.  Despite my own mystical experiences, I was a clinician who primarily believed in addressing the here and now with the here and now.   But the woman in the photo, unbeknownst to me, had come to show me that the here and now held more than I realized.  Being all that existed, the ‘here and now’ holds everything!

A few days after finding the portrait and writing down my thoughts, I randomly turned the TV channel following a local home-school program my son had just finished watching.  An interview type talk-show I had never heard of caught my attention.  This episode featured a detective who used the services of a psychic to assist in finding missing persons.  The detective, a credible sounding, middle-aged man, introduced the psychic and sang her praises with regard to her assistance in his cases.  Curious, I watched the interview through to the end.  When an invitation to call the number on the screen reached out to anyone with a story they would like to share about the paranormal, I found myself jotting the number down. 

Not only did I know nothing about the paranormal world at this time in my life, I had certainly never entertained the idea of calling a television show, much less a psychic!  But there I was, only minutes after the show aired, dialing the number. Hoping to get information for contacting the psychic, my mind was questioning my actions even as I watched them unfold.  I had no idea why I was calling to connect with a woman on a TV show in California simply because I was obsessed with a photograph I’d found in an antique shop in Texas, but there I was.  Imagine my surprise at being told that the psychic actually lived only three hours from my home!  For Texans, that’s a day trip! Without missing a beat, I called, she answered, and the synchronistic breadcrumbs continued to fall into perfect alignment.  As it turned out she was in my area twice a month seeing clients.  Needless to say, I scheduled an appointment.

On the phone I was careful not to give anything away.  I told her that I had seen her on the TV show, and being a counselor, I wondered if she had ever assisted in that field in some way.  She said she had and we agreed to discuss the possibilities when she was in town. Two weeks later I waited outside the office she used when she was in town.  The photo tucked inside my purse, I thought about how I was going to approach the subject.  When it was my turn to see her I found the woman to be just as she was on TV.  Warm, friendly and very approachable.  After introductions and pleasantries the two of us went into the room she used as an office.  We sat across from one another at an empty table, but for a small cassette recorder next to her.   I reached into my purse, took the photograph out and said “I was wondering…”.  Before I could finish my sentence the woman reached to take the photograph from my hand, and upon touching it she gasped slightly, drew it to her and hit the record button and said, “This was you in a past life.”  I sat speechless and suspicious until she began independently stating much of what I had written after finding the photo….and then some.  I’d probably taken it all with a grain of salt had her reading not been so close to the things that I had intuitively written.  However,  I had never even remotely considered a past life connection.  In those days I didn’t even think in such terms.  Since then however, I have had three other very gifted psychics confirm the connection and I have no doubt they were honestly telling me what they saw. 

While it is fun to imagine that I actually connected with a photograph from one of my own past (parallel) lives, that has never been what most astounded me.  Connecting with that photograph in such a profound way marked a trajectory that opened me up to a much larger picture of life.  After that experience and hearing about the possible connection, my studies turned to exploring life as an ongoing continuum rather than a single appearance.  Weather she is indeed one of my own past/parallel lives, I don’t know.  However, those who knew me during that time can certainly attest to how strongly her energy influenced my life, and the doors that opened up for me following our uncommon introduction.  I eventually began to explore past life regression.  I assisted a friend in unraveling and validating her young son’s comments about the lives they shared prior to this one.  And my world view expanded far beyond the limits of my five senses.  

I came to understand that we simultaneously project our eternal essence into many incarnations at once in various dimensions.  These fluctuate along bands of frequency and actually influence one another across what we experience as time and space.  I’ve learned that shifts in awareness which I experience in this life literally impact other lives that the larger self is projecting which I’m not even consciously aware of and vice-versa.  I have also been shown that our life is not one of continuity.  We are not limited to a chronological continuum of experience, but do indeed seamlessly pop in and out of experiences according to our perception and focus.  I have felt sudden shifts and become aware of literally shifting from one timeline to another without needing to experience the gradual steps I could have used to get there.  This awareness continues to expand in me as does my understanding of it.  It is these kind of lessons I enjoy exploring and dissecting.  The world I experience today is far from what meets the eye and this has made life quite an adventure.  One that was prompted by a photograph experienced along two timelines which crossed in the eternal now.

The enlarged framed photograph is still in my home and long ago I painted a portrait of the two of us.  Together we are more than I was alone and I feel a kinship to the energy that reached out to me in such a profound way.  Understanding that we all exist beyond the limitations of time and space is what matters most.  When we live from that awareness we open ourselves to infinite possibilities in the seemingly here and now.  The captivating woman in the photograph ushered that awareness in for me. I am both grateful I followed the intuitive nudges that led me to her and forever changed because of it.