Gifts from the Realm

Behind the Art

meeting our higher self

This artwork started with a simple question: if we each have a Higher Self—a divine, elevated, even angelic, aspect—how, when, and why might we access it in daily life?

I started with no tangible vision. All I had was a friend whose ethereal beauty verified her connection with the realms beyond Planet Earth, an afternoon, and a new Nikon camera that needed a workout.

The final painting is five feet long. Symmetrical. A version of Coming to Meet, the 44th hexagram of the I-Ching. The meeting of the lower self with the Higher Self. A story told in rhyme, from paralyzing sorrow to magnificent bliss.

the shoot

Summer 2018. My actress was Lauren Eglé O’Brien, of Earth N Balance and Facebook’s Lightworkers and Healers Tribe.

Lauren was a natural. With the slightest direction, she dredged darkness, healing, and hope from her soul. We employed the simplest of costumes—a Halloween cape, a pair of hand flower bracelets, a renfaire headdress. Yards of translucent fabric with a hole cut for the head: my most versatile and evocative “costume.” Look at her hands! Those eyes! That presence!

The backdrop was the multi-disc 5-in-one reflector and a saffron-colored wall in Lauren’s home. Props included a quartz pillar with an internal “staircase,” a metal Buddha in an ornate gold frame (not used), and rainbow patterns from “Sophia”—a monstrous chunk of Russian smoky quartz.

Without a plan, I called on Spirit to guide the work, leaning on intuition and listening at each step of the process.

the story

it starts with grief

Loss gives way to lost: adrift on the world’s Dreadful Ocean. The loved one vanishes, the Day Star hides, and she is imprisoned. Her consoler is a wan moon, that unreliable friend, the thief of constancy.

Where to turn? The chamber of self is cold, stiff with anger and sorrow and fear. Her crown is shrouded. Silence fills both day and night, broken only by sobs. Wails with a coda of hiccups.

listening

Through the silence comes the cry of a fellow creature. In suffering or joy? A bird craws, whistles, barks. The waves echo, first on stone, then for hours afterward in the hollows of her heart.

She can only contemplate anguish for so long. Memories ebb. The voice, the face, the scent of the loved one entangles with fractals of consciousness in the ever-present now.

The mirror opens to a pattern of life: vines twirling toward the light. The buried seed reaches up through the dirt of dead leaves and garbage and manure. Her heart tilts in its cage, all ears.

awakening

The grief comes in waves, like all energies in the Universe. Huge swells of sorrow followed by dips of exhaustion, numbness, rest.

The bird trills to the end of rain.

Is Hope a liar or a guide? Is Youth a blessing or a curse? How can a starving, homeless robin sing joyfully to its Maker?! Faith is a mystery of pretense, acting as if one believes a thing so, and—through that belief—makes it so. The One who created you will take care of you.

descent of the higher self

From the shimmering world comes She Who is Empty. She Who Dwells in Bliss. The Eternal She beyond time and space, awaiting reunion with she who dwells on Earth.

She comes through the portal, beyond which we cannot fathom, bearing gifts of cosmic order: light codes of the Fibonacci Sequence, the secret of the spiral, the Truth that surpasses all falsehood.

the gift of perpetual love

Down towards this day She comes with the power of endless possibilities, the rainbow of choices to be made, thoughts to think, ways to become. She approaches the gate between realms, Her serenity that of the unstruck bell, unshattered and whole and aligned with the Highest on High.

There is good inside. A light planted by the Creator in each and every heart. A star in the Heavens to light the way. A reminder of Light in the drowning, deadening darkness.

the meeting

Only when we ask for help do the Angels step in.

In the lower world, she arrives at the veil. From the Higher Realm, She blesses Her earthly embodiment. Their awareness vibrates through the membrane of consciousness: the illusion of separation and the Truth of Oneness.

The small self ascends from grief and loneliness, knowing the Divine is her constant companion.

If only she remembers to ask.

what i thought as i created

Gifts from the Realm of the Higher Self is the first artwork that I felt lived up to my hopes. Wrangling the data was a steep learning curve, mostly because of the lighting.

"Before" (left) and "After" (right) lighting effects.

On the left, I wanted Old Master-style golds and warm hues to cast that part of the story back in time. For the Higher Realm, my goal was a futuristic, heavenly abode without darkness or shadows—a domain afloat in a sea of refractions and prismatic effects.

The final image was over eight gigabytes (8G) and had to be split into five components, especially for the Higher Realm.

Mostly, I was awed by and grateful to Lauren, and thrilled to “visit” the Higher Realm!