That which is all of you

Today I meditated, and I felt through all my chakras. And I saw again how my stuckness is in chakra 3 and 4. Power and Love. And that through my love of 3 and 4, my liberation of 3 and 4, I will become whole and fulfill my destiny.

I talk about destiny because I feel it. It’s a feeling in me, that I’ve always had. It’s consistently there and it always relates to voice, of being seen and heard. Of reaching many people. My destiny always speaks to me of the child, of the woman, and the man. My destiny speaks to me of love. My destiny speaks to me of innocence and kindness and creativity. My destiny speaks to me of community. Of human potential. My destiny speaks to me of transformation—the butterfly. And annihilation and creativity—the spider. And what is the symbol of love? The heart. And what is the symbol of wholeness? The circle. And what is the symbol of integrating opposites—the mandorla. The circles overlapping. And so these are my symbols.

What is unique in you that must emerge in this lifetime?

It is your duty to give birth to it.

During my meditation, I wrote something in my head.

It went like this:

Let’s assume for a moment that you do have gifts. That you possess something so unique and so beautiful that no one can touch it. No one can reproduce it or steal it. It belongs only to you and will be with you through this lifetime and possibly into the next.

And if you trusted and had faith in your gifts, you would know how to nurture and protect them as if they were your children.

And then what?

You must find a way to look unflinchingly at your inner truth. You must find a way in, and bring wholehearted compassion to all the dark corners of your being. You must love all of yourself. The pettiness of the ego, the fear, the hatred, the intense neediness of the child. You must love all of it. And through that love, you will find the secret gold of your empowerment, and the fullness of your unique gifts.

You must, by any means, find a way to let your ego work in service of your gifts. You must learn to work hard, harder than you thought you were capable of, not hard in the sense of rushing around and busyness, but hard in the sense of steadfast and devoted. A labor of love. That kind of labor—where it transcends work, and feels like deliverance of your soul.

And then, by all means, you must find a way to share the fruits of your labor. You must be willing to dig down deep and face the fear that keeps you hidden and keeps your vulnerability disguised. You must find a way to let this work by seen. Not by anyone. But by those who have earned your trust. One at a time, gradually, with gratitude and non-attachment, lifting the veil, sharing the truth of your soul.

I came here to liberate the soul from the constrictions of culture. The constrictions of gender, of identity, of race, of abuse, of neglect, of trauma, of avoidance, of apathy, of the illusion of isolation, of brokenness. I came here to teach you how to liberate yourself from the box in which you put yourself. I came here to remind you who you really are. That you are complete and full of love. That you are much more than your mind. Or body. That you are both a fully unique soul that lives on this planet in this precious lifetime, and you are part of something much larger than any one mind can fathom. Your heart beats in the universal rhythm of the one heart, the one love. This is the one love of Bob Marley, and Jesus, and Buddha, and Mohammad. This is the one love of Rumi and John Lennon, and Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. And what about the women, hidden in history, who felt and feel this message? Who know this with out even speaking its name. Yes, them, too. Us, too. This is the one love of all of humanity.

We are all of evil and of good. We are all of darkness and of light. When we encompass all of who we are in love, we no longer suffer. We find our wholeness, and we can shine.

7.4 billion bodies. 7.4 billion minds. 7.4 billion souls.

One Heart.

Life as Art Manifesto, First Try

We have faith in love & creativity as the underlying forces of evolution. We are at a crucial moment in time—a crossroads, where humanity is in grave danger. We can allow humanity to self-destruct, allowing the baser aspects of humanity: apathy, greed, violence, addiction, control to win over the elevated parts of humanity: compassion, creativity, passion, connection, joy, kindness or we can make the hard choice to take responsibility for ourselves, as individuals, and see the underlying truth of universal oneness. Within and without. We can start to awaken the truth behind our collectively accepted delusion into the idea that we are separate. From the place of separateness we compete, and create hierarchy and inflict deep suffering on our ourselves and each other.

We have inherited a split and fragmented world that is reflected in a split and fragmented psyche on the individual level. There is a fundamental flaw in the way we approach life, this is learned, and not part of the essence of humanity. The split. We tend to see things as either/or.  We force ourselves to choose, over and over, between self & other, male & female, republican & democrat, east & west, power & love, mind & body. Creating, at every turn, a hierarchy of choice. Instead, we must acknowledge that a balance or overlapping of two opposites is the space where truth resides. The list of splits is infinite in itself. For every truth its oppose is also equally true.  However, true love is whole because it contains everything within it. The opposite of Love is not Hate, but rather, separation. Underlying so much suffering in this world are feelings of fear, loneliness, shame, and inadequacy. This does not have to be so, but it requires great emotional risk to allow ourselves to connect, to belong to each other. This is a process that can  happen only one moment at a time, one relationship at a time.

When living Life As Art, we are not prescribing any dogma or adhering to any hierarchy. The one universal truth is is the universe itself. The totality. In this way, we acknowledge the source of our longing and the object of our longing is the same. We are simultaneously subject and object of our experience. We see the two sides of everything, but we do not take sides. We compromise between the two. We balance. We soften our hearts to allow for both. We acknowledge the ego, we can even love the ego, but we do not let it rule. We see it is as the smaller or unique self that plays an important role—it becomes a mirror for the universal spirit. A celebratory expression of god. The unique individual is soul’s expression of spirit, if we can allow its whole truth to shine forth, with out judgment. Judgment, used here, refers to value. Non judgment acknowledges that all experience is subjective, and therefore, no experience is intrinsically more valuable than another. Any experience is fodder for our art, and through art, we create our life. Through our life we create our art. This is the language of the soul that must be included, woven into our culture. We do not choose rationality over emotion, but rather, we allow them to co-exist, honoring their dual greatness and necessity for living. Even hate or violence—if it exists, we acknowledge it—we do not turn away from it—as then it would surely try to make itself known in a far more dangerous way. We learn to express hatred and violence instead symbolically—through storytelling, or games, or any art form or our choosing. This is how it is done in traditional cultures—the shadow is integrated into the rituals and rites, instead of being acting out unconsciously.

Living life as art, we celebrate the all of life through ritual, storytelling, & artmaking of all kinds. We acknowledge both our darkness and our light and locate ourselves at the center. We create space and silence for our creativity. We know ourselves, and make highest use of ourselves. We reach for our destiny through integrating our past. We exalt the beauty of life as it unfolds. We acknowledge our fears and bravely transmit our hearts.

(inspired by the gift)

The poets of past knew something worth knowing.

To value that which is invisible to the eye and to listen
with the open throats of baby birds.

There are secrets written
That hold truths unwritten
That live already inside.

We have unlearned listening
Because our minds are borrowed by
Our technology.

Free your mind to what is already here,
What you already sense.
The smallest voice
tickling
your smallest ears.

These secrets feel like dead language at first.
Foreign to the point of obsolete. But look again.
Take some time to open slowly,
like a morning flower.
Hold all calls.
Suspend all will.
It will do you no good here.

Let the words revolve around the brain spiral
getting closer and closer
the central heart
that beats in rhythm with the poets and the saints,
the givers of gifts,
that spoke of a kind of knowing.

We think religion is bad.
Religion is not bad
And it’s not good either.

It is time to design your own--
To value nothing is to be ungrateful.
Find your value. Your values. Unearth them from rocks.
Dig them out from ant hills.
Look for them in the sky. Touch them on your skin.

Create them out of the compost of the living.

Use what you have and then go make more.

Give what you have and you will be empty/full.

Knowledge of God does not help you here.

What helps is
what your toes are already touching. Let the floor’s voice speak to you

And in this tiny listening
A revolution will occur
In the part you least expect.

A List of Inspiring Documentaries

Last year I joined a new web platform about the nature of work in our evolving culture called Somewhere that combines what is best about Facebook and Linked In, and leaves out what is worst. What's nice is they offer what they call Provocations or Sparks that ask interesting questions about how you work. Today's question was: "What are some documentaries that have inspired you?". I was excited to share my list, because this is a list I am always working on. In fact, all I ever watch is inspiring documentaries, or Girls, or the new show I just happily discovered: Inside Amy Schumer based on the non-apologetic, raucous and sex-oriented comedy of Amy Schumer.

Each of these films was very inspiring to me in a specific way. They opened my eyes to fresh ideas, awakened my own artistic voice, or showed me a fresh spiritual perspective.

Here is my list of my Inspiring Documentaries:

ABOUT ART

1. Marina Abromovich: The Artist is Present by Matthew Akers & Jeff Dupre
2. Born into Brothels by Zana Briski & Ross Kauffman

3. Mistaken For Strangers by Tom Berninger

4. AiWeiWei: Never Sorry by Alison Klayman

5. Stories We Tell by Sarah Polley

6. Searching For Sugarman by Malik Bendjelloul

7. Rize by David LaChapelle

ABOUT EVOLUTIONARY CONSCIOUSNESS

1. Connected, An Autobiography about Love, Death & Technology by Tiffany Shlain

2. What the Bleep Do We Know? by William Arntz, Besty Chasse, & Mark Vicente

What documentaries have inspired you?