Emotions as the doorway to higher frequencies
Abraham-Hicks Emotional Guidance Scale
Emotions as both a ladder and a doorway to higher frequencies. You can’t jump from Anger to Joy, you must climb the rungs one by one. Likewise, you can’t bypass the dense, bad emotions. You have to walk through the front door of an emotion and trust you’ll find another door out. Every emotion can transform you for the better. RELATED
See souls as orbs of light
Visual meditation inspired by the Emerald Tablets of Thoth
Strip away reality. Imagine yourself in a black void and every being you meet is a glowing orb of light. Some are dim and smaller. Some are large and bright. “These are the lights that are souls among men, growing and fading, existing forever, changing yet living, through death into life.” When you see people this way, you see us all the same. You see how we light the way for one another — banish the darkness that envelops us all. I see your spark of light in the void and I beam my radiance back at you — a cosmic wink — until we meet again.
How I stay grounded and soar in the skies
Me
I’ve seen what happens when a spiritual seeker becomes ungrounded. I used to believe I could only live in one world at a time, or have one and not the other, but that’s not true. You can have both.
You can be a bird with legs that grow and stretch past your current point of existence and consciousness and you can also come back home — down to earth — whenever you want.
This image was actually intuited by Kathy Crabbe, who is an artist and soul reader, and a psychic I trust. Her energy is beaming with love and creativity and kindness. I’ve been getting readings from her for more than ten years now.
She saw me as this bird and when I heard her describing the bird, I got chills (chills and goosebumps can be a confirmation of truth). She had her own interpretation of what the bird meant, and said it was important spiritual imagery for me — and it is!
And I took that imagery and I sat with it and I drew it out and in that process, I made the final decision as to what it meant for me — and that’s how all of this psyche archeology / psychic revealings should work — it can be collaborative, but ultimately, it is your fate to create.
A still-frame from a dream
I’m out in the backyard of a strange home that is my home. The sky is dim, like a French noir film. There is a little girl bathing in a kiddie pool. She is not mine, but she is an aspect of me — the young, feminine psyche baptizing herself in the shallow end of her subconscious. I look up and see an inflatable pool toy in the shape of a butterfly floating across the sky. It is colorful and striking against the grey light. The butterfly is both the spirit and the psyche and it belongs to me. It has broken free and glides across the forefront of my mind and thoughts. I reach for my phone to take a picture. I knew it would make a beautiful picture.
The Grounding Stakes or a Resolution for Trauma
You can feel free and blow in the wind and be grounded.
The psychic language of images is intimate. There is no universal visual dictionary to help you decipher your visions or dreams. Why would you want one anyway?
You are a Psyche Archeologist and this is a solo expedition. Your mission is to discover new aspects of your self, interpret your personal images, and then merge this new meaning into your soul. This is a long journey we are on.
On the inside of my left wrist is the word heal tattooed in white ink. It is fourteen years old and fading and it is a monument to my suffering.
After years of therapy and talking about the trauma and then not talking about the trauma, I wondered what the end game would be. What does a healed person look like?
What do I feel like? Someone who has sovereignty over her mind, body and spirit. Someone who can pause and reflect in the face of strong emotions. Someone who is grounded and open-minded, and most of all, open-hearted.
Still, the question persisted. What does a healed person look like? The answer came in the form of an image — an image infused with an overwhelming sense of gratitude and love and freedom.
I saw myself as an expansive tent — if not tied down — I would blow away. I saw the traumatic event in my life as a stake grounding me to the Earth. I felt grateful for my grounding stake.
I recognize and accept the event as a part of my history. It is not the suffering I appreciate, but the journey to heal and how it has widened my capacity to love.
Not all of my stakes are made of trauma. One of them is my loving husband. The others I am still getting to know, but each day I am grateful for them.
How beautiful that I can be a sprawling tent with the wind blowing in my face, and how it feels like I am flying, all because of my grounding stakes.
Spirit orbs in Oakland
My studio in Oakland was a hot spot for hauntings. I would often sense when spirits would drop in. This is a photo (2010) of one my ghostly visitors.
Sophisticated and effective defense mechanisms
Some defense mechanisms are good tools for life. They help to transmute conflicts into something positive. Below is a chart of common defense mechanisms organized by their level of sophistication and effectiveness. Aim for Sublimation.
From Beyond the Narrow Life: A Guide for Psychedelic Integration and Existential Exploration:
The absence of defense is, in general, closer to psychosis than enlightenment. The ego is largely our friend. It’s doing its best with what it has. Expanding self-awareness isn’t about taking a sledgehammer to all our defenses. Some strategies, however, are more effective than others.
All roads lead back to yourself
In dreaming life I pulled a tarot card. I saw myself in a sacred circle surrounded by other versions of myself pointing what felt like staves/wands/arrows. At first I felt cornered — was this something to ward off?
No, my subconscious interpreter said.
This card means that you are never worried about a missed chance. These are all versions of you existing after each road taken. Opportunity after opportunity will continue to arise. All roads lead back to yourself. You are never lost.
10 of Arrows
All roads lead back to yourself
How am I not myself? T-shirt
I designed a t-shirt dreamed out of a favorite movie of mine, I Heart Huckabees, and put it up on Society6.
I drew the chalkboard art depicting how everything is the same even if it’s different. See: The Blanket Truth — “We’re all connected.”
“How am I not myself?” is from the scene where Jude Law is confronted about the “mayo” story. A reminder that the repetitive stories you tell about yourself are propaganda.
Update: The hologram as visual took for grief
Grief Deck is a free visual resource for grief support. All the cards were made by artists or caregivers or someone who has lost someone. Anyone can contribute if you have something to say about processing loss. You scroll seemingly endlessly for an image card that resonates with you, when you click on it, it flips to deliver a prompt or meditation to focus on and let your feelings arise. Grief has never been something I expect to go away, but it is something I learned to coexist with. The best advice I ever received regarding grief was to schedule it — daily if you need to. For a month, I would hold in my tears until I was alone and then I would cry until I was exhausted. After a month, it became less and less, but I never stop making space for it. Here is the card I contributed to Grief Deck, inspired by my father-in-law who we lost last year.
We’re taught at a young age in school that form is in flux. Water can change its physical state from solid to liquid to gas a million times and never lose any part of itself. We forget this fact in grief. The ones we love die and we forget to sense their new state. We only miss the form which we lost. We cry and grieve, but somewhere in this realm there is a hologram, and it is made of love, and it has no physical form — only feeling — but that feeling is one that heals and integrates and transcends all sadness. Try to spend some time feeling this new form.
Visual: Mind Voyages I
Here’s a gif I made of what I see when I meditate, attempting to traverse space consciousness.
“For the scientist who has lived by his faith in the power of reason, the story ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountain of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.”
— Robert Jastrow, The Enchanted Loom: Mind in the Universe
Cute and short explainer video about empathy
A chart for finding your reason for being
Ikigai is a Japanese concept that translates roughly to “reason for being.” Your Ikigai is found at the intersection where your passions and talents converge with the things that the world needs and is willing to pay for. Make a list of all the things you're curious about and figure out where they intersect. Then, find a medium through which you can express that passion.
High school wisdom
Here are scanned pages from my high school notebook where I collected what I considered to be sage advice and quotes.
A lot of these quotes, which now seem banal, really helped me survive the discomfort of high school and bullies and a broken heart.
Here are the quotes that still resonate with me twenty years later:
“Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.” — Natalie Goldberg
"Do you imagine the universe is agitated? Go into the desert at night and look at the stars. This practice should answer the question. The superior person settles her mind as the universe settles the stars in the sky. By connecting her mind with the subtle origin, she calms it. Once calmed, it naturally expands, and ultimately her mind becomes as vast and immeasurable as the night sky.” — Lao Tzu (apparently refuted)
“The greatest unexplored territory is the space between our ears.” — unknown (to me)