Embodying Source Through the Act of Creating
Almost all spiritual practice accepts the idea of a Creator. Throughout my own personal studies, it has become amazingly evident that sacred design is found everywhere throughout the cosmos, suggesting very keenly that nothing is random. Sacred Geometrical forms are found from the microcosm of Quantum Physics to the macrocosm of the multiverse itself. In the discovery of this innate design, a beautiful story of creativity imbued throughout all things has become a major inspiration in my own work. The face of what many term as God, Source, One Infinite Creator, and so on, has presented itself most gracefully to me through the act of being artistic.
I have always had this desire to create things. During my childhood I was nurtured in craft through both of my grandmothers. My maternal grandmother was Native and very much enjoyed beadwork and crochet. Although I never really got the hang of these skills, we would still sit together for hours, especially close to Christmas, creating handmade ornaments. My paternal grandmother was an amazing chef and spent most of her time in the kitchen. Even though all 12 of her children were grown with kids of their own, she continued to make large meals for the entire extended family. I was always her helper. Many days, while things were simmering, she would often teach me simple little crafts like tie dying. She was a very proud grandmother, and there was always art from myself and my cousins hung throughout the kitchen. I was surrounded by music and art as a child and so I naturally gravitated towards these gifts. My mother has been leading the congregation in song at various churches for over 40 years. In my youth, we would spend a great deal of time together listening to music or playing church and folk songs. We would often work our way through all her music books many nights of the week, instilling in me my deep love for singing.
I was raised Catholic and was fervently devoted to my Christian upbringing as a child. However, once I moved away for school it became clear to me that the story of creation, and of God itself, was much broader than what I had initially learned. This preliminary spark of curiosity to broaden my spiritual understanding came to me one night as I happened upon a documentary on Edgar Cayce, The Sleeping Prophet. It couldn’t have been a more mind-blowing experience to come to the realization that we are infinite and have lived many lives. Even more exciting, the essence of what we are as humans is so much greater than I had ever understood. In my youth, I wrestled with the idea of a “loving” God that would allow people to be born into extreme poverty, war, or abuse. However, if it were true that we reincarnate then we would be experiencing all realities, and have the opportunity to learn all lessons though the dualistic nature of life on Earth. Dualism, can quite simply be personified in the Yin Yang symbol: a balance of light and dark. We experience “good” and “bad” and find ourselves with a consistent desire for the balance of the two. Edgar Cayce was also a devote Christian, which made this all-the-more palatable.
After this moment, which happened around the age of 20, I became almost obsessed with obtaining “the knowledge”. To me this meant that I must understand other religions, cultures, fringe topics, science, conspiracy, etc.
The lid had been blown off the little box I was living in and I felt like Scrooge McDuck swimming through my own treasury. My treasury was filled with spiritual knowledge and I became hungry for more.
The path of the spiritual initiate often follows a very particular pattern. The first step usually is a very intense experience of waking up to a world that is very different than the one you had believed to be true. Initiates often find this through trauma, but it doesn’t always have to be this way. My own initial awakening experience was not traumatic. This first step almost always comes with an insatiable thirst for knowledge. However, learning all the available information regarding spirituality does not assist you in living a more spiritual life if you do not practice what you have learned. This is usually where Ego steps in and gives the Initiate the false belief of superiority of understanding, and therefore separation.
This emergence of Spiritual Ego will usually last until suddenly the Initiate is thrown into a “Dark Night of the Soul” experience in which everything seems to come crashing down around them.
Without developing a new environment within themselves which includes this knowledge, the Initiate is forced to face the very real experience of the previous world they knew falling to pieces around them. This often is repeated many times, as the Initiate learns that to move forward truly means to start healing many of their inherited, false beliefs.
This process of healing is the second step of awakening. This awakening comes with the understanding that we create our environment and therefore our environment cannot change until we change. In the first step, Spiritual Ego usually has the Initiate pointing fingers outward at the things they see in the world that they feel are unjust. While understanding your external environment is paramount to real change in the collective consciousness (meaning the entire organism that is humanity) it is in the second stage that the Initiate recognizes the fractal nature of the universe itself. By healing themselves, removing whatever blockages they have and baggage they have been carrying, they are more powerful and useful to the collective. At this time the Initiate stops pointing the finger outward and starts going within to truly look deeply at themselves. They begin to drop all the labels that they have been carrying. These labels may include race, sexuality, illness, financial status, ancestry, culture, etc.
They accept the term “human first”, and start seeking the seeds of their traumas, diligently working towards healing them.
This self-healing continues on throughout the Initiate’s life and assists them on the next evolutionary step toward spiritual awakening: Oneness. Recently, I had watched a very interesting interview with Dr. Bruce Lipton as he compared the collective organism of humanity vs. the human body itself. There are close to 40 TRILLION cells in the human body. In the vast majority of the human life, these cells work harmoniously toward a common goal of balance and health.
40 trillion separate entities working as a community to make up the singular organism we see as our bodies. The cells in the human body work much like the entirety of humanity.
They perform certain jobs, and cluster together to create tissues, organs, blood, and bones. They even have a currency, energy, which they share. Certain cells require more currency to perform while other require less. However, when the cells that require more “currency” have received the sufficient energy to complete their task, they do not keep that energy but store it to be used by the entire collective when required. An example of this would be when the body is injured. Autoimmune disease is literally when this harmony is lost and the cells within the body begin to compete. Isn’t it interesting that at this time of great disharmony and competition in society, that the rate of autoimmune disease is growing rapidly throughout the human population? As within, so without.
In the third step, the Initiate realizes the most powerful lesson of all:
We are ONE.
In the 1990’s, an amazing experiment was done by Dr. Nicolas Gisin of the University of Geneva and his team in which they so beautiful demonstrated Quantum Entanglement in their twin-photon experiment. To simplify, in this experiment Dr. Gisin and his colleagues built fiber optic pathways, which ventured away from each other. Two photons, which originated together, were sent along these pathways in opposite directions, following the random path of which they chose. It was when they reached their maximum distance from each other that the scientists would send a stimulus to just one of the two photons. At this same time, the team would measure the time it would take for the second photon to react to this stimulus, if it did at all. Albert Einstein called this idea of entanglement “Spooky Action at a Distance”, meaning once energy (in this case a particle of light) comes into contact with another they become permanently entangled with each other, regardless of the distance between them.
The astounding result to this experiment is that both photons reacted SIMULTANEOUSLY to the stimulus, although they were separated by approximately 7kms.
The implications of this are astounding. If everything that exists in the universe came from an initial Big Bang, then this means that everything existing is entangled.
We are one very large energetic network or web, and everything that we do, every reaction itself, is sent out into this field for the entirety of the cosmos to experience. With this knowledge, the Initiate realizes the absolute power of it’s worth and how a great deal of responsibility lies within its existence. If this is true, everything that exists within us, exists without us. By affecting change within ourselves, raising ourselves from self-service to service, we are healing. Indeed, we are sending out that energetic signature of healing throughout the entirety of this infinite Oneness. In assisting ourselves, and being in service to help others, we then start to reshape the environment of which we live in. We begin to sincerely heal this dis-ease that is happening in the Macrocosm of the Collective of Humanity.
There are many additional examples that I could go into that have ignited my passion for healing, specifically when it comes to my art practice. In my experience, many of the revelations I’ve received came to me during the actual practice of creating artwork, not through the finished piece itself. It is as if I have a more direct connection to my higher, more enlightened self when I get into the meditative, trance-like state of creation. These revelations include a variety of solutions to daily challenges that I am faced with. New ideas on how to function more powerfully in my own life, seem to come out of nowhere. I’ll find myself thinking of the things that I have studied and often receive images in my mind to help me understand how to apply this knowledge directly in my life. It is if the practice of creativity creates a bridge between me and a higher power. This makes sense, as when we practice creativity in our lives we are truly embodying the very nature of the cosmos itself. To be creative does not necessarily mean that you must create art or music. It is connection to that inner child and allowing our imagination to thrive. This could be in the kitchen cooking up a meal, or out in the garden tending plants. It could be in planning out a trip, and even reading. When we allow ourselves to connect with that child-like wonder, we are able to more deeply access our innate spiritual gifts. It is no surprise then that many different healing modalities, from traditional to holistic medicine often suggest creative practices such as art and journaling as tools toward healing. Even the act of daydreaming can be a creative and meditative practice.