“And yet, I know artists whose medium is life itself, and who express the inexpressible without brush, pencil, chisel, or guitar.
They neither paint nor dance. Their medium is Being. Whatever their hand touches has increased life. They see and don’t have to draw. They are the artists of being alive.”
When I first read these words, I jumped beside myself.
I’ve been going through the process of stripping myself bare of the identity that I have formed over the last 36 years.
This sense of being no one, nowhere, in no time, feels quite expansive to me.
From a rational and ideological point of view, it’s also quite uncomfortable because it’s contrary to the conditioning within our society, where one primarily seeks meaning from their career and image.
There’s a logical comfort in saying “I am performing x to help you with y.”
When in reality, what has become more apparent to me is that each time I try to label myself, I experience a misalignment between who I am being, and what I am creating.
To be more specific, who I am being, or who I am, is always more significant than the shape I attempt to squeeze myself into.
Labels have always felt as though they limit the expression of my soul, kind of like a bottle-neck, narrowing the essence of who I am, limiting the expression of enacting what is present and alive within me.
I’ve always felt this inability to use words to encapsulate the essence that moves through me, to the point where when I try to do it, I just look blankly outside in this melancholic way.
There is a certain sense of freedom that is palpable when you are able to be fluid in life, to feel, see and experience yourself beyond societal constructs and conditioning.
To develop your own sense of self, which I experience to be a re-emergence of cyclical death and rebirth. Revealing a more evolved version of you, with a deeper connection to what is present within you.
You know there’s a seasonality to life, a rhythm, if you watch closely, you notice that you find yourself uncovering layers and patterns which sit between who you think you are, and who you truly are.
Sometimes we hold on so tightly to the identity we create, that we aren’t allowing the grandeur that awaits us to be fully self-realized.
The last few years have felt like a full re-orientation of my reality. To be able to feel, see and experience life without attachment to how it should look, or be, or with whom.
With this letting go, it has brought and continues to bring about great discomfort, as the ego wants to have a sense of certainty and familiarity. It only knows what it know’s and whenever its state of being is threatened, the ego makes sure to have its presence known.
Especially when you are crossing the threshold into a new state of being. This also happens cyclically.
One of my teachers and dear friends, Velan once said “As soon as you name it, it’s gone.”
I’ve heard this phrase echoed through the grapevine before. I really like it because it articulates the innate desire we have to create meaning out of who we are, in order to try and relate with people and the world around us.
But at what cost?
I feel for me, that trying to “fit in” is a trap, we never question whether this approach is actually serving our growth, as we risk ostracising ourselves from our tribal group.
At the same time, it’s kind of an initiatory process I guess, to absorb cultural conditioning and find yourself waking one day and saying “Who the hell am I ?”
I guess what I’m saying is, I knew as a kid I couldn’t wait until I was 50 or 60 to have my big existential crisis and buy a Harley Davidson. I needed to know what was going on there and then.
Everything was too painstakingly apparent that things weren’t adding up that I needed answers.
So once I came to the understanding that the next chapter of my life was about unlearning all of the programming I had acquired, which had limited the expression of who I am.
“At some point when you create yourself to make it, you're going to have to either let that creation go and take a chance on being loved or hated for who you really are, or you're going to have to kill who you really are and fall into your grave grasping a character you never were” - Jim Carrey.
This is is what it all came down to for me, I was not willing to forsake who I truly was in order to fit in by forming an identity around a ‘character’ that didn’t represent who I truly am.
My burning passion was to pursue the unchartered path, to explore the unknown and see what lay deep beneath the surface, not because I thought it was cool, but because I felt I had no other choice.
I remember when I experienced eye gazing for the first time, I could see all of the aspects of my identity that I had created in order to protect myself, reflected in the eyes with whom I was gazing.
It was actually a truly beautiful moment because I had no idea I was hiding until then. I’m grateful because it showed me a path toward truth. It showed me that we are all interconnected.
So I ask these questions, why isn’t our culture supporting the natural order of life?
Why isn’t our culture mimicking the ecology of nature and the elements?
Why isn’t the foundation of our culture focusing on promoting connection to self, connection to others, and connection to the land?
It’s no secret that western-society has conditioned people to seek their personal value and worth by focusing primarily on material wealth accumulation and social status, which by accordance creates separation and division.
You also can’t really blame people for acquiring selfish tendencies either, we are a reflection of our environment. So we can’t deal with the problem at a symptomatic level, we need to go to the root.
In my process of unraveling the areas in my life that don’t reflect who I truly am, one of the main themes I was challenged by in my earlier years was centered around financial wealth accumulation.
From an early age, we are conditioned to craft our identity around how we are going to pay our bills.
Initially, I did indeed follow this path, I tried it out, and I made some good money, but at the expense of eventually feeling deeply unhappy and misaligned. I knew the career I had chosen was no longer serving me.
But most importantly I had the courage to let go of the security this brought, and jump into the unknown. I was also young and I had no dependents, I’m aware of the freedom this has brought to my life, I am also aware that I have specifically designed my life to be this way.
Anyway, so I hit a crescendo of discomfort and I tapped out of the “daily grind.”
This then lead me on a journey to uncover what felt true to me, I was focused on dissolving all of the conditioning that limited my highest expression.
This process completely stripped me to the bare edges of my soul, where I was able to witness and see what was present and real within me.
During this process, I realised that I didn’t have to “perform a role”, to be worthy of receiving abundance, abundance is my birthright, not because I am performing a role, but because it’s who I am.
When we perceive money from this place, we are not separate from its essence because we are experiencing ourselves as the very nature in which it is derived, it’s just energy.
At the same time, this is nuanced as I am not talking about commodifying spirit.
I’m saying that, within the wholeness that I am, I no longer experience myself as separate from receiving the support that I desire in order to live the life of my highest expression, the life that I dream of living, the life that I am living now.
Abundance comes in many forms.
Many people hold powerful beliefs around this topic, and whatever you believe sticks, so my view is to find the path of least resistance and be true to yourself.
At the end of the day, everything comes down to reciprocity and who you are being.
“It’s not what you are doing, it’s who you are being.” words echoed by Lenita, one of my dearest teachers.
To be honest, at the time, I really had no idea what she was talking about?
But this comes back to the title of this essay “The Artist Of Being Alive”
What I want to express is the infinite multitude of potential that exists within the presence of truly being here now, and how this intelligence will help to inform who you truly are.
I’ve been sitting with the message that is carried forth within “The Artist Of Being Alive” for a few years now, watching it creep in, inch by inch.
When I feel this energy, it feels like I’m acquainting myself with a living intelligence or universal mind that exists beyond thought.
This living intelligence communicates with you when you acknowledge it, and you acknowledge it when you trust your heart, when you choose to keep your heart open.
This intelligence communicates with you when you are slow enough to hear it. This is the place where I feel at home, this is the space in which I desire to know myself.
The significance of this place cannot be spoken to in a way that will truly do it justice, it has to be felt, and it has to be experienced to be understood.
I desire this place to reveal itself to everyone on this planet that wants to know it, because, within this place, you don’t have to be anyone other than who you truly are, and who you are is magnificent beyond your wildest conception of what you thought possible.
There is no trying, there is no force, there is only who you truly are, and the essence of who you truly arises from being conscious of who you are being.
“It’s really time for you to see through the absurdity of your own predicament, you aren’t who you thought you were, you just aren’t that person, and in this very lifetime, you can know it, right now. The real work you have to do is in the privacy of your own heart, all of the external forms are lovely, but the real work is your inner connection.” - Ram Dass
We are not separate from that in which we desire, the invitation here is to come into the living representation and experience of this very truth, in the here and now.
Life yearns to be experienced as you, the same way you yearn to experience life beyond yourself.
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