Author: Grand Providentia United

Firmly rooted in the moment. Consciously aware. I practice Authenticity.
Mindful Creativity

The Nuts and Bolts of Reinvention

Grand Providentia United

Christmas Morn

At an early age, around 5 years old, I discovered an inborn magnetism toward creativity. In fact, I could already sense it growing at the very center of my newly developing personality. With pencils and paper, Play-Doh and Crayons, I would spend hours and sometimes even days, inventing magical realms where the only limits to the breadth of my creativity were set in place by my own inexperience and underdeveloped imagination. Through grade school and on into adolescence, I nurtured creative aspirations. I chased the dreams, followed the mentors, and studied the world of art with an unbounded enthusiasm that always kept me thirsting for more. As I entered adulthood, respectable influences in the world around me, seemed to demand that I must put down my unrealistic dreams of being an artist, and find useful employment just like the other real men in my life. You must earn a living through hard work. You must provide for your family, just like your hardworking forefathers. And so, right out of high school, I acquired a typical and reliable “day job”. I then remained employed by a steady succession of employers for the next 28 years. Before, and during the raising of 2 children in partnership with my wife of 23 years, I worked hard at a number of skilled labor jobs – growing and selling Christmas trees, pipe installation on nuclear submarines, concrete construction, chemical manufacturing, and (during my 4 years at the Ringling College) landscape maintenance and neon sign fabrication. After college, I worked in a digital animation house for two years, then returned to the world of skilled labor for a 6 year stint at a bronze sculpture-casting foundry. During all those years, I refused to let the lifelong dream of being a Professional Artist wither or fade. With patience and persistence, I held on to the hope that one day I would be ready and able to create meaningful art as a profession. In 2008, I QUIT MY DAY JOB. I know, “Woohoo!” right? In an eleven year trial-by-fire effort, I managed to build a reasonably successful business in the commercial art and services industry (specializing in cast sculpture). At the end of the ninth year in business, I realized a major flaw in my strategy for success; I had built a business with hopes that I could earn a living performing the work that I loved, namely – creating powerful artwork from the heart, and what I had actually accomplished, was to turn the work that I loved into a laborious day job. The icing on the cake was the realization that every client that I worked for, was in reality, my Boss. Creativity had become just another way to make the money I needed to survive. I was not a starving artist. Nor was I a thriving artist. Just a surviving artist.

Patina Prep

I’ve heard many tried and true proverbial adages during my upbringing in a blue collar community. One of those old sayings that stuck – “If something isn’t working, fix it!”. In 2018, I decided it was time to “fix” the direction (trajectory) of my artistic career. I began to question the motive and purpose behind every creative act and endeavor I was involved with. I’ve been in a full-out artistic transition ever since then. I started by phasing out the commercial and service aspects of the art business I was running. And then, I began seeking out and encouraging the work that allows me more self-expression and therefore, more creative fulfillment. It has taken me many months, and patient diplomacy, to release myself and the business from clients who were dependent upon the creative services that I had offered them. Many of them did not want to hear that I was changing direction. They tried dutifully, and sometimes valiantly, to persuade me to continue working for them on a “limited basis”, or “…perhaps it was more money that I needed?” For more than a year, I’ve been standing my ground, insisting that this is an important transformation for me, that in fact, it is more like a complete overhaul and reinvention of my creative journey. So now, I find myself standing at a major fork in the road of that journey. I’ve chosen which road I’ll take, because I know where I want to go. My will has grown strong during the years of struggle it’s taken to stay on course. Now, it’s only the nuts and bolts (details) of the reinvention that are yet to be made manifest. I believe that anything is possible when positive conscious intentions travel on the highways of universal potentiality.

Heros' Quest

In the next post – Mapping out goals and aspirations for the journey ahead. Making travel plans. And finding a way to bring Play-Doh back into my Art. 🙂 

 

 

 

      

 

Living in Presence

Setting Down Intentions

Grand Providentia United

I intend to live intentionally. I want to consciously design and build a life that is suitable to my preferences. This requires goal setting, organizational planning, and follow through on a daily basis. For long term success, it will require a plenitude of willpower and persistence. For most of my life, I’ve been on an internal journey. It has revealed my personal weaknesses in ways that have often forced me to understand and accept my own limitations as a human being. I’ve learned humility. This internal journey has also taught me to embrace the whole of myself, both the strengths and the weaknesses. After years of struggling with inner conflict, I eventually learned to forgive myself for weakness and love myself for strength. I learned self-love.

Potato and MeI now find myself in the autumn years of this life, having spent most of it overcoming the inner turmoil of self-acceptance. It is time to externalize the journey. With a heart of gratitude, I will move forward, into the remaining years of my life on this planet, with conscious intentions to leave a legacy of positive change. This is the best way that I can honor the incredible gift of life I’ve been given by the God of my understanding.

One of the personal strengths (gifts) I’ve been given, is the ability to create powerful visual imagery. I intend to use this strength to forward ideals that are in harmony with the preservation of the Earth environment and humanity as a whole. Casting aside all self-doubt is not only beneficial, but imperative to the manifestation of this life goal. And so, this is a stepping out point in my life. An externalization and implementation of positive intentions through the voice of creativity. I personally believe that there is a Great Creator, God, and that God has given us all the power to create, for better or worse. It is our individual will to choose whether we create for the light of life or the darkness of death. I hope to move ever closer and closer to the light.

Many people who have been reading this journal may be thinking that the intentions I’m setting forth in this post are obscure, heady or over-philosophical. For those folks, I promise that this coming Wednesday’s post will be down to Earth and almost entirely pragmatic. In the next post, I’ll lay down the foundation for the logistics and physical work involved with the fulfillment of these intentions, in my artistic career, and my externalized journey into the future.

Dream Reflector

 

 

Living in Presence

Hanging With the Good Guys

Grand Providentia United

You might say we finish last. You might say we die young. You might even say the road to hell is paved with our intentions. We ‘good guys’ have heard all of that before. If you say these things to me, your words will have fallen on deaf ears. The way I see it, all these derogatory cliches are simply the worn out protestations of weak people. People who are choosing the easy way out. Every day, these bad guys compromise their internal moral compass, choosing bad and turning away from good, until finally, their conscience gets so jaded that they can no longer perceive where good ends and bad begins. In their habitual weakness, they’ve decided it’s easier to be selfish, unkind, greedy and hateful, rather than to rise up and walk on the high road, striving to be a more kind and compassionate human being.

OntheBridge

Most of us are taught the difference between right and wrong, good and bad, helpful and hurtful, from a very early age. We learn things like sharing, caring, giving and receiving as soon as we’re old enough to practice and retain these positive social skills. Unfortunately, we also learn other, more negative social skills, such as selfishness, cruelty, carelessness and envy in our early life experiences. Some people decide early on, that they will not be taken advantage of, stolen from, bullied or abused. And so, they draw back and self-isolate, going on the defensive whenever it becomes necessary to  interact with others. Some go on the offensive, rationalizing the need to strike first, before they are hurt – they must hurt others, before they are robbed – they must rob others. Personally, I decided long ago, that I would always try to treat others as I would like to be treated myself. Many times, I have fallen short of this ideal, but I can honestly report that my intentions were focused on good results and positive interactions, even if they were unintentionally paving the road to hell. As a self-actuated ‘Good Guy’, I sleep with a clear conscience and a full heart. I wake each morning with the willingness and ability to care for others. I am grateful to be a good person. If indeed, all the good people of the world are finishing last, then I don’t think it’s a race that I’d want to win.

HopeNJoy

There are those who see it as a weakness to be kind to others. I’d be willing to bet that many of those very same people are waiting day after day, year after year, for someone to teach them the true strength of kindness.       

Awakening

Finding True Purpose in the Light

Grand Providentia United

As I awoke from a fitful sleep this morning, I experienced a deeper understanding of my own relationship with the Light of Ages. Upon rising to meet the new day, I saw clearly the reason for my restless dreams, and I also better understood my personal preference to live in the Light. For many years during my youth I flirted with darkness and negativity. I thought that I could stand against anger, violence and hatred, if only I kept the Light of love and peace bright in my heart. At the same time I was attracted to the darkness because I thought I would miss out on the excitement and adventure of a life lived on the edge. After more than a decade of loneliness, frustration and emotional pain in my late teens and early twenties, I found myself backed against a wall of despair, in a dark prison cell, that I alone had created. I had lost track of the light within, and all was dark, inside and out. Through a near death experience, brought to me by the strangling hands of the last so-called friend who could tolerate my dark tendencies, I was able to find my way back into the gray area between lightness of being and the dark night of my soul. It took close to twenty years for me to fully recover the light I had regularly experienced as a child. During my search for redemption, I married the woman I intended to spend this lifetime with, and fathered two amazing children. I found purpose and self-acceptance in my roles as a husband and father. I even managed to forgive myself for my past failings and personal shortcomings. I became quite certain that the light of my spirit had defeated the darkness within and was holding at bay the darkness without, and so, I would never be required to wage battle with it again. My certainty was ill-conceived, however, because the energy of darkness has its own seasons, its own priorities, independent of the Light which helps to define it. Darkness waits in timeless anticipation for the passing of the Light of Ages. While we stoke our passionate fires, with hopes and dreams of self-preservation, the darkness lingers beyond the firelight, waiting for the rains to come. We are schooled by forces both dark and light. Today, when I awoke to another day of precious life, I reconfirmed my loyalty to the Light of Ages. I live in hope, that the Light of Life will eternally rule over the darkness of despair.

Cover

The year of 2020 can be a year of balance, rebirth and redemption for the entire human race. I embrace the gift of life, today and always.

Awakening

The Benefits of Embracing Change

Grand Providentia United

We all live in a reality that is defined, perhaps even brought into being, by external and internal, perpetual change. Without change, there would be no way for us to perceive the passage of time. The concepts of past, present and future, are perceived of in terms of comparative experiential changes, in truth those very same changes are weaving the fabric of each individual’s life experience. Change happens, whether we as individuals, are in agreement with it, or not. The entire record of human history, would be unexpressed, were it not for perpetual change. All growth and decay, chaotic disruption and divine order, are forms of natural and everlasting change.

waterFilter1

Despite all of this, many human beings enter into a lifelong power struggle with change. We either fear change, so we are constantly running and hiding from it, or we attempt to dominate it, by forcing our will upon the inevitable changes, hoping to sway the tides of change toward our own personal preferences. In my experience, both of these strategies are a setup for frustration and defeat.

DisturbedAll things and experiences are passing, ephemeral. All castles built with the sands of time eventually dissolve and return to the cosmic sandbox, to be reformed, regrouped and presented anew, somewhere further down the timeline.

This line of thought, invariably leads me to the conclusion that the healthiest strategy in dealing with change is to not only to accept it as part of our reality, but to completely embrace it and enter into its natural flow. Harmonizing with perpetual change can be liberating, exhilarating and effortless. Once we overcome the fear of losing our perceived control over the future, we also become wise to the idea that we were only fooling ourselves, thinking we could control external changes in the first place. It is here that I will insert the idea that we are all completely in charge of internal change, while external change exists on a plane which is beyond our control. However, when we are in harmony with external change and see it for what it is – inevitable, we can then devote more of our time and effort toward making changes within ourselves that are energetically in tune with the natural and perpetual change all around us. We can naturally become one with perpetual change, thus releasing the full bounty of potential benefits to our ever-changing life journeys.

ProsperWhen we were children, before we started regularly enforcing our will upon the world we lived in, we were more apt to view change as exciting and beneficial. As we grew older, and realized that all our expectations weren’t being met, many of us began to look at change with dread and fear, hoping only to survive it. By changing the way you perceive change, positive rather than negative, I truly believe that you can see through a child’s eyes again. Seeing change as a natural progression. Seeing it as healthy. Seeing it as growth. Seeing change as a lifelong companion on the highways and byways of your life’s journey.