My beautiful friend Rhina sent me this quote:

And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.
- Anais Nin

Right now, I feel like the most important work I can do is to heal myself. To create the life that I so desire for myself. To stop telling the stories of the past and to focus on the blank slate that is the present moment.

To live the life. Travel the path. See the journey through a little further. Finish building the foundation.

I’ve been so eager to share all my insights of the last few years with others, to let them know that there really is a way forward. That there really is a way out of this mess – and that the huge surprise is that it’s really not all that difficult. Just a simple shift in perspective leads to a huge shift in how we interact with the world, which is the beginning of the new world: new relationships and a regenerating environment.

But it’s time now to withdraw within. To realign. To finally see how I can make things happen. So I can show, rather than just tell. So I can have a life that finally feels whole, like a complete circle.

It is whole, now. I can already see wholeness in the baby steps: my alignment with the spirit of the gift, the growth of my art. I recognize it here and now. I celebrate this evolution. Sometimes incremental, sometimes exponential. Always unpredictable.

As I begin to heal, I want to share my healing journey with other kindred souls who are undergoing a similar process. It’s time to evolve. Soon it will be time to flourish.

Sometimes, things are so simple. Whenever I spend time in nature, I’m back in my body, heart and spirit. Nature engages all the senses. Even ones I’m not usually aware of. Nature comforts – I’m part of a whole that I cannot understand. And it’s fine to not be able to understand intellectually. Not everything can pass through the mind.

In nature I perceive wholeness. This wholeness is regenerative. It’s an essential break from the dividing duality I usually experience when I function solely from the intellect.

I want to abide in this wholeness. It is possible to live a life in this knowing, this grace, this appreciation.

In nature, there is only now. There is no past to torment us, no future to live up to. There is no struggle for enlightenment (or any other mental concept), because none is necessary.

Looking for transcendent beauty in an environment that doesn’t see the need for transcendence, in a culture that doesn’t acknowledge its reality.

Within the walls of this glass city lie endless prayers to survival needs. Ancient fears and apocalyptic visions encoded in stone: submit, or else. They push, pull, subdue, torment the human ego.

But I feel lighter tonight. I am a visitor on Lexington Avenue. The buildings are dark, imposing. Powers that seek to dwarf others. To cannibalize.

But it is also the early 21st century and I can feel in the air that the human spirit is awakening to something … different.

Perhaps all of this is the ossified exoskeleton that we cast off – individually at first, then finally collectively. Shedding skin, we evolve.

And I’m settled in my soul, a deep breath out. I am a traveller, a visitor. Not a resident. My home is the endless flux that is life energy. Perhaps this is the real lesson of New York City: that none of this ultimately really matters at all. That the system is only as real as you let it be. And that everything can be cast off all at once in a simple, knowing recognition of what is more important.

Reality is malleable: the great, subjective unknown that we can enter in every new second. The freedom to create.

Travellers choose where they want to go and what they want to look at. Ultimately, they rest only in the galactic. The universal. The pause between breaths.

The light that reaches us from star systems millions of light years away.

“You must be the source of your own illumination; remain tenacious, patient, determined. Some days you won’t be able to summon any of these feelings, and in that case, give yourself the day off. But come morning, rise again.”
- The Outsider as Visionary, Part II

Tai Carmen of Parallax has written a beautiful article about being an outsider and a visionary. It’s powerful and offers important support. Support that I feel is so necessary and so rare.

I’ve come to a deeper realization of the fact that I do not care for convention. My purpose here on Earth is to realize my dreams, actualize my human potential and discover the universe through my subjective experience. And to share all the beauty of this experience through art. This is what I live for.

I’m starting to see the necessity for a supportive, creative community of geniuses, outsiders and visionaries who want to use their lives to celebrate how beautiful it is to be an embodied spirit. Who want to consciously allow their imagination and creativity to soar free. Who realize that there is strength and beauty in this way of life.

I envision a space in which we can all flourish on our own terms. A space in which we can gather to support each other and to understand that we’re not alone. A space in which we don’t have to feel self-conscious about our dreams and our loves. I want to help support others who may not necessarily have access to support, like I never used to.

No-one should have to feel alienated simply because they do not want ordinary. For people like myself, there isn’t much that a conventional lifestyle has to offer and this is perfectly fine. Despite what many around us may lead us to believe, this doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with our psychology or way of life. In fact, it is actually so important to let go of the idea that there is something wrong with us and that we’re obligated to undergo a painful process of ‘adjustment’ before we have a rightful place in society. Remember what Jiddu Krishnamurti said: “It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

We can let go completely of feeling forced to adjust and in feeling obligated to sacrifice our unique individuality in order to placate those around us, but it is really important to also focus on growing our beautiful potential so that we can self-actualize. How can we use our gifts to create experiences and objects invested with truth, beauty and spirit for humanity? We are needed, whether society recognizes this or not. There’s so much we can contribute to humanity, especially at this juncture in its existence. Sometimes we have to take the first step forward to realize this for ourselves.

Here are three other things that people have said that have really stuck with me, these last few days:

1. “If the absurd experience is truly the realization that the universe is fundamentally devoid of absolutes, then we as individuals are truly free. I had to believe in this because: if there are no absolutes, then mistakes are okay. Bad experiences are okay. Good ones are still awesome. Since I’m a speck of dust and will go back together with the universe, then I’m fine to experience all pleasure, pain, goodness, wrong-doing, etc. Living now and creating any purpose = the most beautiful thing we can cherish with this life.”
- Matt Ramos in an email

2. “It’s not even about what you DO or don’t do — just for existing, people won’t like you. So we might as well be who we really are.”
- Gala Darling

3. “Recently I started thinking about that saying … do what you will & harm none. It was weird seeing that quote in a new light … it became literal instead of a platitude. You could literally do whatever you liked and behave however you wanted so long as you didn’t hurt anyone (who wasn’t purposefully hurting you first). It’s like liberation.”
- my good friend Cat, in an email

We’re free, you know? I live now with this knowledge in my heart, irrevocably transformed. We can’t control how other people will react to us or what the outside world will deal us, but we’re absolutely free in how we choose to deal with this thing called life. We can fashion wonderful things out of it.

To choose to do this out of free will is something beautiful that deserves encouragement, love and nurturing.

We are free in the moment. The moment is not the past nor is it the future. The breath anchors us to the present because the breath is always in the moment.

This moment sees full freedom of choice.

It is pure potential for limitless creativity.

It is free of the subject and the object – a formless flow of pure energy.

Thanks to Brainwomb for help with editing, colour and converting this video for the web. Watch it in HD on Vimeo.

The spirit is wild and free.

My entire life I’ve been told to change my essential nature. When I believed this was necessary (and even possible), I suffered greatly.

Today, I’ve decided to let go completely of the need to conform to convention. Instead, I let my soul fly wild and free. For me, this is the only security: union with True Love. I did not come here to conform and I did not come here to fit into other people’s boxes.

I came here to grow – naturally, organically and in my own time. I came here to create. I came here to understand that nature has perfect timing and perfect reasons for allowing things to be the way they are. I came here to expand, to float and finally to learn how to fly.

As I release the need to be liked or accepted by others, I come closer to the center within: the knowledge I have always known, the self I cannot struggle against. Silence, truth, dynamic balance. I begin to understand that many others simply will not understand. I begin to find peace in this, without bitterness. Everything is on its own road for a reason.

Parallels meet in infinity.

Perhaps in some distant future all of creation will share the same meeting point. For now, I start to appreciate contrast and seek clues to my own path. And I rejoice in the fact that there is no going back.

Only forward to evolve.

Return to play.
Quit your job or leave school and find a way to make a living doing what you love.
Let go of those that do not support you.

Connect with others on a similar path.
Open your mind to wild possibilities.
Expand your definition of reality through new experiences.

Find ways to defuse habituated thought patterns that you no longer have a need for.
Give up on everything that’s not working.
Experiment and see everything as constant experimentation.

Work out of inspiration instead of obligation.
Know that deep change is possible.
Come into contact with powerful ideas.

Realize that this is your life to change.
Act on this.
Make your life your biggest art project.

I live a new life right now based on trust and a conviction in my deepest good and the good of all around me. I’m tired of a lot of things that the dominant culture tries to jam down our throats – that humanity is evil, that we need to be ‘saved’ and that our natural impulses are always to be distrusted, repressed or indulged to excess.

Not interested. Don’t buy any of that anymore (never really used to anyway).

I now live a life based on the simple idea that I’m here to have fun – to appreciate how beautiful this universe is and to experience being a part of it. I have full freedom of choice in what I do. I am not interested in how so many people seem to live lives in which they are completely estranged from their dreams and inner selves – it is their choice, they have their lives to live. I want to live a life that supports, nourishes and intensifies my dreams. When I choose to see these things and have faith in myself, I can feel my vision growing. I can feel that the beauty of life is very much present in me and continues to grow.

In my life, I have become well-acquainted with marginalization and injustice. I understand the mechanics of privilege pretty well. I’m not interested in contributing to injustice or in strengthening systems of prejudice. I choose to use my life and my words to empower: you can go where you want and you can do the things you want to. You don’t have to play a game you have no interest in and which serves only to weaken you.

You can create a new system.

I want to set myself and others free. We already live in the new world we desire – many just don’t realize it yet. We are naturally supported. We don’t have to live out of the mental and emotional patterning that characterizes our conditioning. We can choose to create something different.

What we choose is so much more important than what we are born with. Powerful, creative acts are not limited to the few – everyone is capable of such creativity. Within, I do not inhabit a world governed by hierarchies or limits. I simply do not buy into collective limiting beliefs anymore. Instead,

I want to meet the ones who will settle for nothing less than magic.

The magic of a life lived consciously and devoted to inspiration. I’m interested in how beautiful it is to be human and how wonderful it feels to simply be. All that is not love, I let go of.