I was in the studio today laying down some early layers on a couple of encaustic paintings that I hope to show in June, and it got me to thinking about how a seemingly insignificant action—making paintings, for God’s sake, who’s going to benefit from that?—is in truth the heart of why I’m here on the planet, because it leads me to a place where I am simply all of and nothing but myself.
I believe that we are witnessing a huge rise in consciousness, which is flushing all of our broken systems and unhealed collective wounds right up to the surface. It’s a damn mess but at the same time all of this chaos makes so much sense to me. Lightworker types like myself have been walking around for decades now feeling the amping-up of energy, something that has lovingly but persistently roused us from our deep sleep.
I believe it’s that energy that has led people like me to play with more and more freedom for a while now, clearing paths for more and more permission to be the selves we were born to be. Sooner or later all our be-ourselves-ness was going to reach a fever pitch where folks who don’t want to grow and change and give up the illusion that more stuff and more money will make us safe were going to have themselves a fit and fall in it, all this marrying whomever we want and being whatever gender we want and recycling in different curbside containers. There was going to be pushback. And here it is. And it’s spectacular and grim and yet it sort of reassures me that yep, enough power has gathered on the planet to really shake up the old order.
A friend just shared an insightful post with me about how, if progressives want to move forward, we need to start creating and inhabiting a future as a way of responding to the current administration, which has a built a brand around dragging us back to the past.
And how do we get to a future that works? By starting from our authentic core. Our heart centers. Our truth.
Authenticity is a raw, dangerous place. It’s where we remember what it is that makes us feel profoundly alive. It’s loaded with truth about what we really love, what we really think, what we’re available for, what we want to say. It’s no good at all for a conforming, cookie-cutter life. Authenticity isn’t interested in what the neighbors drive or what’s on sale or what’s on TV or whether or not we’ll get a 3% cost of living raise this year. Unimportant. Authenticity wants to sink its teeth into fierce experiences. It wants us to love with our whole hearts. It wants to paint, to dance, to sing, to write poems and read them to small groups of friends by candlelight. It wants to do the things that only we can do, those interactions and inventions that only one human life can produce, those original moments that are tiny, fleeting masterpieces.
I mean, what else really matters?
I’m not here to save the world. I’m here to contribute to it. I’m here to spend a Saturday afternoon moving paint around and letting the magic of making overtake me. I’m here to remind you that you are a glimmer of magic too. Your voice is the one that completes the choir. The way the Spirit shines through you exists nowhere else in all creation. That’s pretty important.
So the boys on the Hill are going to be bunch of raging insane people and there is zero I can do about that, but I can stay centered, I can stay real, I can stay—incredibly, in the face of so much turmoil—joyful. My heart is lit. I feel free. And from here I can reach out to you, too. Let’s be our wild, half-hysterical, unkempt creative selves. Let’s be all of who we are, and let’s revel in the trembling thrill of being alive, right now, today. It just might be the way through.
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