because we're always creating the next level

July 11, 2010

Have you ever come upon a piece of music that you’ve wanted to listen to over and over? That you can’t seem to get enough of? A song or instrumental music that is exactly what you’ve been longing to hear? I mean, has this happened to you since you were a teenager???

Because it just happened to me again. About a week ago I was following links to you tube from my Face Book friends (which I’m so grateful for!), and balancing out frightening depressing scenes from the Gulf accompanied by ominous voice-overs predicting worse case scenarios—balancing this with watching beautiful uplifting peaceful pictures and words about love and higher awareness and unity and angels and so on… (Balance is key, now more than ever!)  And I came upon a lovely song. I don’t remember what video it was, what the images were. I just knew I had to download the music to play on my radio show. I was doing a bunch of them that day—all excellent and memorable and perfect for artists and ascension radio, but none of them pierced through so many layers of skin and muscle to resonate in my bones as this one did.

It’s called Sensing the Spheres by Enigma. I just now went back to you tube to try and find the video that I first saw, but none of them looked familiar. It was really the music, not the pictures, that got to me anyway. Please have a listen below if you like!

So, I downloaded it, and then uploaded it to the switchboard on blog talk radio. I made it the start-up audio. The beginning sounded to me like some kind of ancient call. It seemed perfect to start the show with, this kind of calling the listeners in. Then, when the show began and I heard the music through the blog talk system, it didn’t sound loud enough. In fact it didn’t sound impressive at all. I wondered why I had chosen it?

Oh well. Last week’s show was… let’s just say I wasn’t at all in the mood to do it. It was 100 degrees in New York and I don’t have A/C. Last year my co-host and I took the month of August off; I thought I would just take off July as well as August this year. It was just too hot!

But it was more than that too. Since the middle of spring I have felt in between things, unsettled. No doubt part of it was due to the Gulf situation. And then there was my son graduating high school and realizing his going away to college at the end of August meant an enormous change to the rhythm I have been accustomed to for so many years. There was also my acute awareness of the Shift occurring on so many levels. Just now I had a look in my journal, mostly neglected of late, to see if I had written anything recently. I had. On the Solstice I recorded a dream in which I forgot where I lived. I was on my way “home” to an apartment I lived in 30 years ago. I realized this while I was still in the dream and became very upset not to know where I lived in “the present.” What a relief to wake up and find myself home in Brooklyn! I immediately felt the need to get outside, out onto the streets with people and connect with where I was now. So I went for a walk and bought some groceries. I needed that grounding. I needed to get my bearings!

Anyway, it’s been an unsettled time. And in this time of shifting, of finding my bearings, and of saying good-bye to an old way of life as I prepare mentally and emotionally for the new, the radio show had begun to feel burdensome. I was unsure where I wanted to go with it. What my message was. I thought to give myself a break from it, get my bearings on that as well. Meanwhile, before the show began I took my laptop and headphones and notes into another room. A bigger room. A room that felt at least a few degrees cooler from my usual place of operation as radio host.

On the dot of 5pm Sensing the Spheres began to play. I went to the chat room. No one was there but me. Good, I thought. No one will show up and I’ll be perfectly justified in taking a leave of absence for the rest of the summer. Then one person came in, then another and another. The first person wrote, “This sounds like a fun show.” The next person wrote, “It’s a blessing to be here.”  Yikes, I thought. I can’t possibly tell them I’m bowing out for a few months. And then a very interesting thing happened. Perhaps it was partly due to my being in a different room than usual, the living room / dining room instead of my little bedroom / office. It had a different energy. I felt myself talking louder in this larger room. But I also felt braver. I think because I had let go of wanting to get it right. The show that is.

Wanting to be good is such a natural impulse, but it can also be a drawback in that it stops you from being completely yourself. It’s like when you’re on a date and you want the person to like you. Or interviewing for a job. I don’t know about you, but I’ve always gotten the jobs I didn’t care whether I got or not! And dates, well, same difference. Divine Nonchalance. Non-attachment. Letting go of results. The list goes on. I went from dreading the show to loving it—in about two seconds flat. Afterwards, I was energized and already planning the next show.

Now here’s where we get back to the music. It was a few days later when I thought of synching some of the new music I had downloaded for the show to my mp3 player. That was when I started listening again to Sensing the Spheres. I have my player permanently on the looping setting because I mostly listen to headphones only when I’m at the gym, and I like to hear the same piece for half an hour. When I’m painting I listen to music all the time. But I haven’t been painting for quite some time. I forget how wonderful music makes me feel in general. I forget…

Then one day I find something new, something I haven’t heard before, and I can’t stop listening. What I love so much about Sensing the Spheres is what I said about how it sounds like a call in the beginning, and then it goes on into this very pleasant non-specific melodic rhythm that just keeps you moving. Or gives you a feeling of movement, like you’re going somewhere. Like you’re on your way. And that’s the beauty of it. Not necessarily getting anywhere or arriving, just moving along.

I went outside to do my errands and wore my headphones, something I haven’t done in ages. What a difference it made! The god-awful heat, the dreadful humidity—didn’t affect me at all! I was in a different mode. I suddenly realized I was not only going to get through this summer in one piece, but actually enjoy myself. And all because I had found some lovely new sound.

But it’s more than that really. It’s about resonance. Finding or locating what you resonate with, isn’t that what fish do? That sounding thing they do under water? I don’t know much about it and I don’t want to look it up right now. It’s obviously something basic, something natural, to humans as well as to other beings—plants too. We know that now. And I know that I have shifted into a different place. It’s ongoing, not necessarily permanent. But I have found what works – for me – a sound, a vibration I resonate with, that is allowing me not only to feel more comfortable with what is going on around me, but is allowing me to enjoy being in the movement. Being in the moment in the movement… Just being, really.

And it’s about finding your balance during these changing times, these often discordant times. Finding your flow, staying in the flow, staying centered and balanced. We know that if we feel stuck, what we need to do is take an action. And often that activity will be smoother if we’re listening to music. Because life is all about movement and rhythm and flow. From the first breath to the last.

Do you have a piece of music that does it for you? Do your tastes change every few months? What is it like for you?

We are living through such an amazing time of change. We’ve experienced the Solstice and then the partial lunar eclipse and now, today, the 11^th of July, another solar eclipse. We hear there is more to come. More openings, more energies coming in, more resonance. At this moment, all I am listening to is the hum of the fan and the bird chirping outside my window. It is enough.

© Nancy Wait 2010

watercolor by NW

What is ascension if not expanding to the next level of consciousness?

What if, instead of your life being a journey in the usual ways, i.e., ups and downs, worries and fears, it was a fantastical, mysterious voyage through space and time?

It all depends on our point of view. Our perception. Perception is everything, as has been said by many. It is also said that we create our reality. I believe this to be true, in the sense that we create our perception of reality.

What is our main task in life?  Self-fulfillment? Satisfying others? Making a difference? Staying out of trouble? Causing the least amount of harm? When we’re small our task is to grow and learn and become strong so that we can handle those slings and arrows that will surely come our way. But whatever age we are, our task seems to be to discover who we are.  Some people don’t ask who am I? They just accept what society or the culture or the family tells them.

Who am I, why am I here, what am I supposed to do? These are not the questions for everyone, because we are all at different levels of development. The accepted thinking on the subject is that we have many lives and after a certain number of lives we begin to question the whole process of incarnating on Earth, of living in physical bodies, because we want more. What used to satisfy us no longer does. We begin exploring. Reading, listening, talking with others, meditating. Going within because the outer world has ceased to be such an adventure. The outer world has become predictable in its sameness. We know there is something else because we have awakened inside. We have become conscious of other levels of awareness that cannot be touched with our hands, but we see it in visions or dreams. We hear it with our inner ear. Maybe we smell it. It is something we know on a gut level. On a heart level.

Maybe we go through a phase now of withdrawal from the physical pleasures in order to stay close to this non-physical world. Or maybe we just chose our foods very carefully, or change our location, or just chose to live very simply. Everyone responds to their own call. What’s right for one isn’t necessarily right for another.

Feeling / feeling with all of the senses

My son was watching me whisk something the other day – olive oil and pesto paste actually, and he remarked how he hasn’t mastered the whisk yet. It’s all in the wrist of course, and hardly moving the wrist at all. I was whisking some eggs for pancakes this morning and thinking about that, how I have a feel for the whisk. Using a tool or an instrument is all about developing a feel for it. Even for the lowly wooden spoon. I thought about that, too, as I spooned away the batter from the sides of the bowl.

At various times I’ve tried to teach painting, but I’ve also taught pie-making. With painting I expected a novice artist to be awkward with the brush. To be shy of colors and what have you. I didn’t think making a pie-crust would be so difficult for some though. But then I realized again that it’s all in the touch. The feel of the butter or fat in with the flour. The feel of the rolling pin on the dough. Anything we do with our hands is about the feel of our hands, our fingers, with the material we are working with.

Of course not everyone is so tactile. Some are more attuned to sound or to smell. I have had the misfortune to be acutely attuned to everything, so much so that when I went deaf in one ear it actually felt like a blessing. Likewise my eyes being nearsighted, allowing me to relax into an impressionist painting as soon as I remove my glasses.  My senses have only become more acute since I have evolved. There were times when I prayed for an isolation tank to retreat to, or a sound-proof room with soft lights. Or better yet, darkness.

With age and experience I have been able to cope much better though. The curse of hyper-sensitivity is also a magnificent blessing. For some time now I have been taking my enormous power of feeling within.

English From Another Angle

Ascension:  Ascend – to go up, that’s the normal regular explanation. But what about taking that  word and breaking it up into two words, ‘as’ and ‘end.’ As in, to ascend to the end. Ascend to the end of conscious evolution on the earth plane of physical 3D awareness. That could be the meaning.

If we pronounce ‘ascension’ in a French accent, it becomes something else again. A-sonce-e-on. Well, sonce sounds a bit like source, at least it does if you say it very nasally.  So now we have a source. A source-e-on. Well ‘e’ is short for ‘he’ – at least if you’re a cockney. A source, he on. Or, a source, he is on.

He is on a quest to the source?  Or, perhaps he is onto the source. And that is his ascension. Or hers.

I also like ascend-see on… ascon-see-on… see more. See On…onwards… Go…

What a week for celestial movement. First the Solstice, then the Grand Cross and partial lunar eclipse. It was the Solstice that brought my awareness to what is happening in the Gulf. I became focused on “D” words—Disaster, Debacle, Down, Dark, Depression… Words like that.  As everyone else I felt helpless staring at the footage and reading articles of current Devastation undoubtedly leading to further havoc, loss, and Destruction. I didn’t know how I was going to do my show last Tuesday. Art and anything to do with the arts seemed superfluous, meaningless. How can one go on creating in the usual way after coming face-to-face with the killing of birds and marine life, the killing of the Gulf itself? This is not even to mention the economic devastation that will only keep building, and the loss of a food supply… I could go on and on. It just keeps getting worse. Grief and sadness know no bounds.

And yet, and yet. If you believe as I do that we have incarnated at this time for a reason, to be here during these Earth changes, during the Shift, to bring the light of knowledge and understanding that will uplift our brothers and sisters living in fear and peril, then you know as well that we can’t afford to spend too much time reeling in despair. We must get on with it and do our jobs. Do what we came here to do and not wallow in grief.

After my Dance with D words, I connected with other lightworkers, resolving to stay in the light and find the positive to uplift, to be in courage rather than in despair. And it was then that I moved into “E” words from those Darn “D” words. I moved into Enthusiasm! I moved into Excitement! I moved into Eagerness. Is this bi-polar behavior? Or, is moving up into another letter of the alphabet, one with positive connotations—not part of what we mean by Ascension?

I never wanted to believe all those gloom and doom predictions of the shift, 2012 and what have you. That wasn’t the world I wanted to live in. And yet I found myself getting caught in the polarizing trap of Us vs Them, the good guys vs the bad guys. It’s hard not to be angry. Yet anger also has positive effects when it draws you into taking an action.

Now more than ever we need to stay in touch with our inner guides, our soul awareness. For me this has meant going within to forge a deeper connection to Purpose.

I give you this wonderful video of Bashar, who reminds us to…

“Use every single situation as an opportunity, as a blessing. No matter what happens it is neutral. Only if you define it as a negative do you get a negative feedback effect. But if you define it as an opportunity to do something positive then you will only get a positive feedback effect. It all depends on how you define it because nothing has built-in meaning. Nothing.”

Ascension by Kynthia

As those of you who listened to the radio show yesterday will know, I had some difficulty in keeping to the prepared topic. In fact, I could not even go there. Current events had started to overwhelm me. It is one thing to know the Earth Changes are coming, and quite another to realize they are here. As I have been learning and reading more about the dire situation and what it could lead to, my current program began to seem meaningless. Today I realized that I had to go within and make a stronger, deeper connection with my fellow Lightworkers who are not so overwhelmed as I am. So I offer you this wonderful article below! There is much more on their site to explore as well, if you have not discovered them already — now is the perfect time!

From “Vibration Is Key” ~ Children of the Sun ~ www.childrenofthesun.org

“Gushing oil and chemical sprays are two examples of what will continue to outplay for our human race through this very necessary “6^th Night Galactic Underworld Cycle”, as described by the Mayan calendar. So much is transmuting and transforming on a cosmic level and Earth, as a  plane still with dual natures, experiences the trickle down in a physical cause-and -effect karmic reality.

To endure this short lived cycle while remaining in heightened awareness to unhealthy energy bombardment, both intuitive and practical sensing must be utilized. This will help us to quickly make necessary adjustments from an illumined and grounded center of being.

VIBRATION IS KEY in all that we say, think and do. It is so important to remain above the increasing toxicity and not get distracted or delayed in the nets of emotion and material plane attachments. Gaia is ready to birth big and we must keep accelerating our vibrational frequencies in exact pace with her movements and quickening pulse. The alchemy of her love within us is to embrace everything that each moment presents. In this way, the inner debris is neutralized, body rhythms are calmed and transformation happens.

There’s your life, then there’s the story of your life.

Watercolor by NW

“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story instead of the actor in it.” (Baba Ram Dass)

Okay, what does that mean, being witness to the story instead of the actor in it? It means changing our perspective. Altering our perception. It means becoming the Watcher of yourself instead of only the player. Awareness of yourself on the stage of life, acting out the play, participating in the game, while watching the whole thing play out from a seat in the audience. So for instance if something upsetting happens, instead of tearing out your hair, you might say, oh, isn’t this interesting?  It’s the difference between feeling helpless over events that occur, simply at effect of them, and instead knowing you are at cause of them. That for some reason you created the situation to further your growth. It’s the difference between being conscious and being unconscious.

This show is about being a few steps removed from your reality.  It’s a little like “being in the world, but not of it,” that famous line of the Christ.  Coming from that place of the observer.

I think though, that if you are not connected to the heart energy, feeling your oneness with the “other,” with the “all that is,” it can come across in a negative way as disassociation. We don’t want that. We want to be able to feel everything, but not get caught up uncontrollably in emotions. It’s better if part of ourselves can always be aware on the outside, observing, oh, this is what I’m feeling now. So as not to get swept up and go unconscious.
Yet this feeling of being swept has its uses and its time. There is getting swept up while painting or creating a piece of music. Just letting yourself go. Getting lost for a while in the feelings and emotions. I used to do that a lot when I was painting. Listening to music while I was working helped me get into the right brain where I was able to pull out all the stops and reach into my deep subconscious for feelings and ideas that were normally hidden from me. It was like going into a state of deep meditation, beyond the mind. Some of us have also experimented with psychedelic drugs at one time or another just to get into that state. The key word here is experimented. Using the drugs as a tool at a certain stage of the game in order to go beyond the usual borders of mind. Because  what we really want to do is to be able to get there ourselves, without foreign substances, even if our experience is only a fraction of what it was on drugs. It’s the difference between being drunk on life and drunk on alcohol.

“The conscious mind is not the decider of reality—it is the experiencer of reality.” (David Icke)

There are all sorts of tricks and exercises to get ourselves into that mode of perception. One is to look at your life as a research project. “I came here to study xyz, and now this is me, studying xyz.” You can only play this particular game if you have already perceived yourself as conscious on other planes, so already this exercise assumes a certain level of awareness. And even when we’re not there, not at the place where we would to be, we can always act as if.  What if I was here on a research project, given my particular set of circumstances just in order to see what I would do with them?
It’s the kind of thinking that takes away all thoughts of this is good, or this is not so good, or this is terrible. It just is what it is. And we take it from there, leaving behind judgments and the separation that judgment causes.
It’s the difference between thinking things just happen to us, that we have no power, no control to make anything different. It’s the difference between feeling helpless, and knowing that we have manifested our reality. That we are the creators of our reality.

So you might be thinking, I didn’t choose this! Why would I have chosen this awful set of circumstances? That’s what I used to think about my life. I always thought of myself as a good person. Someone that good things should happen to. I certainly didn’t wish anyone else any harm, so why should I have been so harmed?  Did God hate me? I didn’t usually think that. But I did get into the bad habit of thinking there was something terribly wrong and bad about me that I should experience so much emotional pain. About fifty percent of the time I had such a feeling of helplessness over my circumstances. The other fifty percent of the time I was alright and able to keep moving forward.

For me, painting became the tool that allowed me to get beyond my little self, the self that was buffeted about in the waves, thrown hither and yon with no capability of steering the ship. I found that when I could paint a still life or a landscape, I could feel in control of my circumstances. Before we can let go of control, we first have to experience a sense of control. You can’t let go of what you don’t already have.

Painting was the first step of the journey. It gave me the awareness of the conscious mind not being the decider of reality, but the experiencer of it, as in David Icke’s quote. I was able to observe reality and decode it for my own purposes. But in order to get closer to the truth of my own reality, I had to learn how to write. And then I had to learn how to make a story out of my life.

What I have termed Story-Me is the short form of “make-it-into-a-story.” It means taking an episode from your life, something memorable because of the emotions attached to it, and creating a story around it, a narrative that doesn’t part with the facts of the situation, but one in which you observe as a witness instead of as the main character, or the one being done to.

When you Story-Me, you take your experience to a different level. It could be an experience with painful memories, that we heal by changing our perception of what happened. How different things appear once we change the lens in the viewfinder!

“Everything changes once we identify with being the witness to the story instead of the actor in it.” (Baba Ram Dass)

For one thing, life suddenly becomes more like play. Hmmm, you might be thinking, what will he/she do next? How will he/she resolve this situation? Life begins to be more interesting.

When you are able to create your life as a story, you are beginning to see your life as an art-form.

Bashar:  from the you tube video –   On Abundance and Trusting What Is:

“The first art form to master is simply being here, now, with what is happening.  Trusting that what is happening is happening for a reason. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be happening. So if you are willing to accept that whatever part of the process is happening, is happening for the purpose of putting you more in touch with yourself, so that you can expand, and get that reflection back of your expansion, then you’ll be excited about anything the process has to show you. It will actually be experienced as a piece of performance art. And by getting into it and diving into it and being the performance artist and the art piece itself, then you will allow it to move very quickly through you, to process it very rapidly, because you’re willing to accept everything that’s happening to you as necessary, as part of the piece, as part of the art. As something to look at, as something to investigate, as something that will increase your understanding of who and what you are as a co-creator. If you look at it that way and stay in that energy, believe me, very quickly, you will explode in many different directions, and your reality will explode towards you, with many different things that will support you. ”

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of Story-Me, the way it alters our perception, is the way we are able to change our view of the past. The past is not unalterable, written in stone. The past is a moveable beast, shifting with the currents of our present. The facts may stay the same, but the story is all in the telling.

The more you can story your past experiences, the more you will be able to create the story of your future. It will be a story of the soul, and soul lessons. Something that takes our self-understanding to a whole new level.

Everything changes once we identify with being

the witness to the story

instead of the actor in it.

Baba Ram Dass

Story-Me is the short form of “make-it-into-a-story.” It means taking an episode from your life, something memorable because of the emotions attached to it, and creating a story around it, a narrative that doesn’t part with the facts of the situation, but one in which you observe as a witness instead of as the main character, or the one being done to.

When you Story-Me, you take your experience to a different level. We are talking about an experience with painful memories, healing them by changing our perception. How different things appear once we change the lens in the viewfinder!

Story-Me uses intuition, psychic abilities, creative abilities. Everything is used; nothing is made up. We use the experiences of our lives to create a new story. Meanwhile, in the process of creating story, we are removed from the center of the action. We are outside, looking in. We begin to see ourselves as a “character” in our own lives.

When you are able to create your life as a story, you are beginning to see your life as an art-form.  Perhaps one of the most important aspects of Story-Me, the way it alters our perception, is the way we are able to change our view of the past. The past is not unalterable, written in stone. The past is a moveable beast, shifting with the currents of our present. The facts may stay the same, but the story is all in the telling.

The more you can story your past experiences, the more you will be able to create the story of your future. It will be a story of the soul, and soul lessons. Something that takes our self-understanding to a whole new level.

As we move into the accelerated evolutionary pathway, the telling of our stories has never been more popular. Take a look at a sampling of recent links:

Marta’s Audition for Oprah.com (Please vote for her too!)

It’s All About Writing
The Blog of Nicole Humphrey Cook
for great articles and info on writing and publishing

How To Use Stories To Change The World
Weaving narratives about our lives is one of the things that makes us human

Writing to Change the World
by Mary Pipher
From Publishers Weekly:
Pipher talks about the importance of point of view in writing, and she has a definite point of view here, tilting to the left: the world is in a bad way, and writers can serve as a “rescue team for our tired, overcrowded planet” by “tell[ing] stories that connect readers to all the people on earth.” Pipher offers some good examples of how to accomplish this, particularly in a thoughtful and clever essay that presents the U.S. as a patient in a therapeutic case study (“Diagnosis: Post-traumatic stress disorder, multiple addictions”). And she offers useful advice in her sections on defining success (measured not in terms of sales but in terms of “giv[ing] our time and talents to help others”) and revising, which she compares to pruning and weeding.

Daniel Pink – watch this slide share on his Chapter 5 of “A Whole New Mind” – The Power of Story

Inviting visual artists who paint, draw or sculpt to call in or send a written comment to be read aloud, stating their reasons on why they make works of art.
Is it just self-expression, or does the need to express go beyond the Self? Is it part of how we evolve? Do we create in order to know ourselves and our world better? Or do we just do it because we CAN?

Does being commercial change our priorities? Are we the NEW EXPLORERS into the unknown? Or are we exploring our own psyche in order to know the collective unconscious? Do you find being an artist ROMANTIC?  Or did you at first?

If you are a visual artist who paints draws or sculpts – or otherwise works with their hands to create, please feel free to call in or send me a written statement to be read aloud. You name will be heard, as well as your words, and your website information. Let this be a day when we recognize one another and celebrate our commitment and intention (and reckless bravery!)

Tuesday June 8th we will look in depth at some of the reasons why artists create their works.  LINK TO SHOW

Artist Statements

by Cynthia Pechenick

From Cynthia Pechenick:

Cynthia Originals

I cannot help but paint. I was in an accident a few years ago and could not paint for a year. Once I could pick up my brush and paint again, I knew I was on the road to recovery.

Painting is an extension of me. I do not think I paint for posterity, but to express myself in the here and now. When someone buys a painting of mine, it is not the business aspect that makes me happy, it is that someone validates my talent!

From Catharina Van Leeuwen

Wall Hanging by Catharina Van Leeuwen

http://www.catharinaleeuwen.com/

…I had an insight today: my creative work and my spiritual life fused into ONE!
What I have been doing for the last 6 years is making Bricolage – a process of breaking down old things to making them into new compositions.

What happens in my spiritual development is exactly the same: the Evolutionary Impulse inside of me forces me to leave the Old patterns behind moving me into the New. My Intuition is always ahead of my Ratio…when this ‘fusion’ became clear to me some 6 years had gone by!!! Can one be so slow in getting it? I apparently can!!!

As a fine artist it goes like this for me: the image that appears on my minds’ eye is worked by my hands into an object of art…a moment in time fixated in form.
World of Form = Spirit in Action = Evolution.
I often do not know what the image means until later when my mind explains what my heart received!

From Marta Luzim

Till Death Do We Part by Marta Luzim / Great ecstasy lingers and waits. I have no claim to love, it claims me without mercy

http://www.martaluzim.com/gallery.htm

My art starts off as a feeling of fragmentation, loss and yearning to know parts of myself that are burning, hungering to emerge and to break free from what Anne Schaef, author and psychotherapist coined as the, “Process of a Promise.” Schaef says, “The promise is that as long as we conform, things will get better. Someday, if we are good enough, get it right and compromise we will magically have our dreams come true.”

For me art is a sacred promise to leave behind conformity and “being good enough” and to have a relationship with a God that births passion and compassion through my entire being and awaken people to perceive life as a kaleidoscope of possibilities. Art is a journey, a mystical angst, a sorrow and ecstasy of something I once knew, but lost, like the Garden of Eden; it is mythical and elusive, yet I get up each morning praying that I will find the entry point into my heart and soul that allows me to marry the many aspects of the SELF that makes me whole. To stand in the fire of my art is to burn up my ego and surrender to the unknown, to flow in the hands of the Creator and be led down a path of Love that is beyond my comprehension. To bust through every emotion, from anger to joy, to engage in every experience from sorrow to elation and to venture into mystery of creating. The process of art is a unique, intricate and individual practice that allows me to in-power my voice and vision to integrate the complexity of life’s ongoing purpose.  This remembrance of who she is frees me to come alive and shout from my belly the truth of my soul’s expression.

From Valla (Valentina) Mezei

http://www.sculpturebyvalentina.com/sculpture/

Great Expectation by Valentina

I began sculpting as a catharsis following a failed marriage and a dissatisfaction of how my life was subsequently unfolding.  Frustration, disappointment and an emptiness washed over me and I searched for some way to feel creative, productive and fulfilled.  My soul was neglected and hungry.  I looked for a way to nourish my soul and sculpting was there waiting for me.

I was always a physical person so I needed something to do with my hands.  I wanted to build, work hard to create something, shape, mould, hammer and file.  I could have been a carpenter but I turned to sculpting instead.  It was as natural as if it was my calling; as if I was a sculptor in my previous life.

With sculpting there’s a tremendous satisfaction watching something beautiful morph from a rough stone.  With some elbow grease and some deep concentration a rough stone evolves into a work of art.  It never ceases to amaze me when I see my finished works.  I love each of my pieces.  Sculpting is in my blood.  I sculpt for the love of it but when a piece sells it feels so good to be validated as an artist.

From Rhona Konrad

Conversation in the Ghetto by Rhona Konrad

http://www.rhonakonrad.com/

Rhona Konrad was born in Montreal into a family of artists and musicians. Konrad says the following sums up her philosophy…”Through my studies and explorations, I have discovered the world is one interconnected whole. Whether it is the destruction or creation of subatomic particles, the Temple in Jerusalem or reciting the Shema, everything is interrelated,” she says. “ My whole life I have tried to balance knowledge and imagination and I am constantly brought back to something Albert Einstein said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”

Konrad has developed and employs an ethereal technique combined with an opaque use of watercolours to express her vision of spiritual and mystical elements of our existence. This is juxtaposed by the use of architecture, winding streets and archways. The movement through these doorways and streets offsets the ephemeral spirit world as well as a way to delve into the layers that mask the truth in our lives.

Recently, Konrad has worked on a series of miniature paintings, titled, Spiritual Manuscripts, using mixed media. Other series include the human body, synergetic nature, Judaica, which also incorporate mixed media as well as digital imaging.

From Lisa Locke

Memories of Waterloo Bridge by Lisa Locke

http://www.zazzle.com/whenyoumakeawish

The wonders of silence, meditation, music, humor and artistic expression have nourished me as Iworked as a healer for many years. I feel this expression helped my work as a healer and, conversely, being a healer assisted my journey as an artist.

Shaping a person’s energy feels very similar to designing a painting or singing a lullaby to one of my children. Healing translates into painting and bringing forth the connection to nature and its ability to heal and transmute struggle into a colorful acts of grace.
My artistic journey began as an instinct to connect to my roots as a human being and my role as a healer, citizen of the world, and part of the expansive, every changing landscape of creative expression.

From the time I was a child, I have always felt a connection to nature and ephemeral energies beyond the surface of material reality. Artistic expression has been a vehicle to express the worlds I visited; present, past and future.  As a child, I channeled those energies into a love of dance, theater, music, and writing and felt drawn to many kinds of cultural expressions in the arts. My paintings come from a place found in dreams, nature, shades, textures and frequencies where we meet one another in time and space and celebrate our connection toward one another.

My painting, “Memories of Waterloo Bridge” is a Monet-inspired journey; an impressionistic  land and bridge where the physical meet the nonphysical worlds and faith is restored. This meeting of the physical and nonphysical sustains the magical, sometimes enigmatic and heartbreaking, yet enduringly beautiful journey in life.

From Nadine May

http://www.ascensiontopics.com/

I’ve always had this inner desire to express the reality I experienced as a young child, but the frustrations of lacking the skills to do so often made me withdraw into my own fantasy world. My thoughts are always in pictures, and I could see and hear what others, especially grownups, were thinking before I reached puberty, but then something happened and I clammed up. I’m not even sure what made me lose that ability. I suspect that the education methods had something to do with it. I kept thinking in pictures, so my inner need to make them physically visible drove me on in life. I learned to listen to my intuition and over the years I tried to formulate my thoughts on a canvas, in drawings, through using the medium of leather or through sculpturing.

When the time of computers arrived for me in the nineties, a new world opened up for me. Nothing was as gratifying for me as learning the skill of story writing, with the help of a word processor. Now I could paint a virtual reality with words. Then I learned how to make web sites, manipulate photos and create images in several layers, and at this moment videos. Today I’m grateful for the years that I used many different creative media. My computer skills are self taught, but by traveling in virtual reality in cyberspace, I often feel as if I’m in a space ship. Especially when I’m uploading articles, images, PowerPoint slides or lately videos into cyberspace. In this new internet reality the telepathy, clairvoyant and clairaudient skills I naturally had as a child, are now my navigation tools which I use to interact with other like minded people through cyberspace. For me this is what evolving means. By sharing our human experiences through the internet, we form a unity wave in cyberspace. This interaction through networking form the communities that I saw as a young child, but could not yet become part of, like I can today.

Down with obfuscation! Down with left-brain thinking about right-brain activities!

Up with Direct Knowing!

Am I coming on too strong?  Sorry!  But, I’ve had it. I’ve really had it with art reviews full of empty sentences that speak to my mind and leave my heart cold. I’ve had it with this whole culture of art criticism that curdles my stomach and leaves me gasping for air. As far as art is concerned, both the making of it and the reception of it and the writing about it, I must come from a different planet! Except that I don’t. I’m from here, same as everybody else. And I’m fed up.

A bit of background is necessary I think. I didn’t go to “art school.”  I came to painting and drawing because I was fed up with show business. Too much “acting” going on! I was at least as bad as anyone else, and I wanted to get real. I studied at the Art Students League for a few years, and ended up leaving because I wanted to find my own style, not do what “the teacher” was telling me to do.  Someone asked me who my favorite artist was at the time and I said Rembrandt.  Oh, everyone likes Rembrandt, the person said, and I felt like I’d given the wrong answer, or a stupid answer.

I have three favorite artists: Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and Cezanne. They have been my favorites since childhood. Rembrandt speaks to my soul, Van Gogh speaks to my heart, Cezanne speaks to my mind. All three men were products of their time. All three were rebels and misunderstood.  When I visit museums or galleries I might marvel at the work, the dexterity and complexity, the beauty of composition, the brilliance of color and form, but none can touch me as I was originally touched, because first impressions to a young person are lasting.  Children know truth when they see it.

What saddens me is how so much of contemporary art is really commentary on the culture and doesn’t take us anywhere new. Just read the art review in today’s New York Times and you’ll see what I’m talking about. 

“Ms. Meckseper’s dazzling surfeit of reflective surfaces takes the animal fascination with shiny and runs with it. “Americanmuscle” updates Duchamp’s bicycle wheel with a chrome car wheel on a mirrored pedestal. Other ready-mades, hanging from chrome display stands and racks, include a tail light, chains of different sizes, fox tails and rabbits’ feet. Gender differences are acknowledged in the display of a nylon stocking and crude approximations of designer handbags made from metal mesh and chain, sometimes with a car logo attached, using a bit of tar- or crude-oil-like substance. “Brillo” consists of a chrome treelike counter display stand, each of whose nine small platforms holds a metal pot-scouring pad, as if it were a precious object, perhaps a feminist hood ornament.”

Well, it takes all kinds, and there’s room for all, albeit not in galleries necessarily, where what is trendy and fashionable too often takes precedence. Anyway, I saw the writing on the wall long ago and just went my own way because my goal was never to have a “career,” but instead, a “life in art.” These two things don’t have to be in conflict, but their meanings tend to be vastly different. More on that another time perhaps.

Perhaps it is foolish to try and speak or write about works of art anyway, as visual perception is so very different from that part of the mind that seeks to create logical sentences and be verbally coherent. Many years ago I was happy to be interviewed by Joy Blair Nager, creator of a pamphlet called Preview: Visual Arts. I had never been written about before, and was excited to hear what she would say about my series on the AT&T Building.  Oh dear. I’m afraid it was a terrible disappointment!

AT&T #1 by NW

She began with, “Nancy Wait’s architectural paintings of the AT&T building, in watercolor and oil, seem to approximate the complexity, largeness and pleasing anonymity cities offer. Through a fusion of two sites in View #1, the viewer is in two places at once. The abundance of windows in View #2, creates disorienting possibilities and angles of vision. Reality seems illusory in View 3, in which two slightly different views of the same scene are placed side by side.”

#2 by NW

Well, actually that’s not bad. I guess what was really disorienting for me was when she described later on in the article, “…a move toward subtle gradations of color,” and how #s 9 and 10 “seem as much about paint and color as they are about the architecture within them.”

About “paint and color”? No! I don’t think so. Paint was just my medium. Paint was the vehicle I used in order to express a feeling, an idea. Color was the tool. Golly-Gee-Whiz. It’s not about those things! Never was.

It was about a journey I had embarked upon, an impossible journey to illustrate using 3D methods – because – as I see it now, it was about entering into a different dimension.  Going beyond the strictures and rules of this one, while yet using this one to portray it. Recently, I tried illustrating it a different way by creating a video. It was partially successful, yet leaves much to be desired. I’m thinking of adding a spoken commentary to it next.

I have to say straight off that I’m not a believer in explaining art. It should stand by itself, with people, viewers, bringing their own understanding to it. But what happens when they don’t get it? I take full responsibility for this “flaw” in my work. And yet, can you feel my frustration?  To be able to “see” something and want so much for others to see it too?

In further blog articles about this topic and also about comprehension of art in general, I will be discussing some of my favorite books from the 70s such as Modern Art and the Death of a Culture by R.R. Rookmaaker, and New Life For Art, a collection of Essays. Also The ReEnchantment of Art by Suzi Gablik (1991).

I am of course fascinated by my own journey, but I am also fascinated by others. Hence my upcoming show June 8^th, “ART, Why We Do It.”  Stay tuned. And please don’t hesitate to comment if you are so moved. I would so welcome it!

I got up this morning feeling I had to write a blog. Then as I went to make a coffee I thought, but what am I going to write about? By the time I came back to my computer — yes, I always turn on my computer first thing — and went to my email, there was a new message from Chuck Spezzano’s RSS feed called “Healing the Fear of Greatness.” Oh yes, I definitely wanted to read that. So this is what he said,

“HEALING THE FEAR OF GREATNESS is the card for today. Greatness is our natural state. It comes from fulfilling of purpose on one hand and our identity as spirit on the other . Both of these things are anathema to the ego, which either wants to exaggerate us or shrink us, mostly this latter. Every heartbreak or shattering in our lives is our siding with our ego and having our best excuse not to show up as evidenced in our subconscious minds. HEALING THE FEAR OF GREATNESS is being true to ourselves. It is upholding the sacred promise we made to contribute to awakening from this dream, which for many is a nightmare. To embrace our greatness is to step up and give it all. It is to put it all on the line. It is to be real and come out of hiding. Have a great day today as you get to know more of the real you.”

So many juicy nuggets in that one little paragraph and don’t I know it! For many years I struggled with swinging between the two poles — an exaggerated notion of my importance, and the belief that I was a nothing, an idiot, a failure. Finally I found a level where I could see and believe that as far as “greatness” goes, it was a relative term, and I was as great as I could be for me.

But it was the other thing he said that most struck me this morning — the part about, “Every heartbreak or shattering in our lives is our siding with our ego and having our best excuse not to show up as evidenced in our subconscious minds.”

The word shattering resonated deeply. I painted this watercolor years ago. It came totally from my intuition. When I looked at it afterwards the word shattering sprang to mind. It was as if the figures were in the midst of glass shattering all around them. As if their world was breaking up. Two of the figures seem as if they are trying to  hold up what is coming apart. The third figure, the one on her knees, seems to be sliding through the chaos. Not protecting herself, not putting up a fight, but sailing through.

What a great position to take in these unsettled, shattering times of the Shift!

But here is something else. A few years after I painted “The Shattering,” I was introduced to the Alice Bailey material and came across passage about the importance of the “shattering.” It is something, a stage, all egos have to pass through. We have to be shattered. We have to come apart, break down, in order to break through to the other side. For me it’s like feeling like I am nothing and everything at the same time. No one and everyone.

It’s like we have to break and shatter in order to arrive at our true nature. Hit bottom and rise like the Phoenix from our own ashes. The figure on the right in my painting above is not fighting, she is going with the flow. But we have to be ready to stop fighting. And it’s so difficult if we’ve been hurt or wounded or damaged in some way, because then all we want to do is protect ourselves from being hurt again.

I had a friend once who used to get down on his knees and raise his arms and say, “Okay, God! What do you want from me now? Come on — I’m ready for it!”  Sometimes it’s the only way to go. To get down on our knees and proclaim to the heavens that we accept. Accept whatever is in order to move beyond it.