Unraveling and Creating your Myth
Each of us is an artist of living; a unique genius of a specialized form or archetype –which includes a personal mythology that we unravel over time. By focusing your abilities through this personal blueprint, you shape and mold your niche or life path. The mythology is the over-arching container of your gifts, talents and interests. It also contains your passions, attractions, your heart’s deepest longings, and the deep feeling tones of your being or your individual vibratory signature; that, when pursued, will reveal your deepest fulfillment in this body, in this life, to fully blossom, into “living a life in flower.”
I grew up in middle class America outside of Chicago Illinois. I felt unseen and bored by my family life and usually escaped into my imagination and art. I realized the little world I was living in was a kind of prison so when I found a true friend who lived a life of privilege and abundance, my life opened up to new and unimagined possibilities.
By high school I was beginning to feel the pull of my ‘blueprint’ and the pulse of my life was leading in new directions as I went wholeheartedly into the world of fashion. I was very successful at a young age working for Saks 5th Avenue and J. Magnin, among others. Yet by the time I had finished college, I had already become disillusioned with the politics and superficiality of fashion.
It became clear there was a deeper soul calling that was pulling me in the direction of becoming an independent artist of living: an artist a mystic and explorer.
By the early 1970’s I had moved to Boulder Colorado. It was the tail end of the Hippie movement and something new was in the air pointing to the collective ‘New Age’ emergence and transformation of culture. It was a mass awakening. The creative pulse for the forces of freedom, transcendental meditation, kundalini yoga, health foods, psychedelics, and free love was cresting and I was riding it high and proud,—unrecognizable to my self (my old self) and yet not quite who I was meant to be.
This was only the initial awakening though, the first blush of the ‘blueprint’ coming to life. And I knew I had to get to California…
I have always had a sense of the new and was willing to follow my own intuition. This has always led me to real world adventures of places, people and events, but more importantly, it has led to my studies of the inner world of the mind and spirit.
While studying at the Macro Development Center (in Arizona on my way to California) I was introduced to a book, “The Nature of Personal Reality” by Seth that would greatly impact my life. These teachings were to resonate with me so deeply as to become the basis and core of of my life philosophy; that we are each the artist of our lives, creating a 3-dimensional living canvas as we go……
Becoming a Conscious Creator: The Hero’s Journey
“The secret of creativity is; you create your own reality” Seth.
Everyone comes to a point in their life where they want things to be different than the way they are and to be a conscious creator rather than living or “creating” by default.
Often people feel powerless to change their circumstances simply because they are unaware of the power they have waiting to be awakened inside them.
We wonder and want to acquire the skills of how to create and attract our own experience, to learn the art of actualization–the ability to project our thoughts and feelings outward into physical form, materializing mental acts, creating a 3- dimensional living canvas forming our lives, using the tools of thought and feeling, emotion and intent, expectation, belief and imagination….
We are each the artist/architect/designer of our lives and we are given the gift of the Gods to be nothing less than creators, shaping and molding our individual lives into an utterly unique existence–realizing that there is no objective reality independent of us–but in truth reality is an extension of us. Our thoughts feelings and mental pictures are materialized into the world we experience which reflects our inner world
to perfection….
By the mid 1970’s when I was living in Laguna Beach, California, I experienced an awakening to what would become my true life’s work of bringing spirit (consciousness) and the path of beauty into the perennial ‘Art of Living’.
The template was laid which I was to find out later would take a lifetime to fulfill and live into. I created “Ecclesia”, a non-profit holistic lifestyle service which would eventually evolve from a business into my world view: that we blossom like a thousand petal lotus into full-potential; I call this “Living a life in flower” –meaning the highest form of self-expression; turning your life into the ultimate creative act: the recreation of the self over and over again willingly, joyfully, without regret, and regardless of circumstance.
To test my world view and experience my creative will first hand -I embarked on what I would later understand symbolically as “The Hero’s Journey”; I left everything behind to go to India to be with the guru of the times; Osho or Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh. This forced me to reevaluate my conditioning and turned my world inside out. It broke the boundaries of the known and blazed new trails giving me new insights into what freedom and individuality could mean.
After the peak experience of India, I returned to Southern California which seemed flat and mundane but I had a strong inner urge from my ‘blueprint’ to again make a radical change. I did feel a wholeness that could only come from a profound encounter of the deep spiritual self that was revealed in India but I knew pieces were still missing, especially someone to share it with; my hero’s journey was leading me into a shared journey: the meeting with the Soul-mate.
I moved to Los Angeles and was living in West Hollywood and got a job working at the now famous Bodhi Tree Bookstore. I felt whoever I wanted to meet, I would undoubtedly connect with him there. One night while working he came in, I was absolutely sure, and I went up to him and said “your cute…what book can I help you find?…”
Weeks later when we were finally able to do something other than sit non-verbally back to back, we decided to map out our life vision on a large piece of paper. It was very clear we were meant to be together as our designs complemented each other perfectly. We decided to journey to Northern California to find land and create a home.
For the next 25 years we worked on our labor of love on the several acres we found in the forested mountains, clearing the land, tearing down old structures, remodeling and building. We built yoga, art and music studios, a spa, meditation and tea house, fish ponds, vegetable and flower gardens, all with walking paths connecting our compound.
Both being artists we continued doing our art, teaching yoga, holding retreats and renting cottages on our land.
During this time I also immersed myself for years with several bay area Satsang teachers who would go on to become world famous. Adyashanti and Gangaji as well as the teachings of Abraham, that furthered my interest in the teachings of Seth. This was a crucial period in that those teachings and teachers prepared me for what was to come…
The Hero’s journey turns inward to the Heroine’s Journey
In our search for wholeness we unravel the threads of our unique myth, we practice the art of actualization by learning how to create our reality consciously rather than unconsciously by default, and to make the circle complete it is necessary to submit to another kind of journey; the ‘Heroine’s Journey’ as a continuous cycle of development, growth and expansion balancing the opposites of masculine and feminine, doing and being, ego and Self.
Through the sacred marriage, the uniting of all polarities, we birth “ the divine child”, a being who is whole, awakening to our true nature.. this is the invitation and the opportunity of a lifetime and (or) the second birth…
Near the end of “completing” our sacred space which we named ‘Turiya’ (the experience of pure consciousness) I was initiated into a shamanic test. Here my journey from being in a divine partnership took a turn to facing my path alone…the only way one can enter into the heroine’s journey.
For a year I went through a relentless death and rebirth process which took me further into the unknown than I had ever been before. I was interested in transformation but did not know how radical a metamorphose experience would be.
Embracing the shadow and the unknown I had to face my fears of mortality right when I was completing the work that had taken so long to achieve and in fact, more than ever before, I had to walk my talk and trust my deep intuition; I had to find my path out to the other side.
In this place of not knowing if I could even physically survive (I could not eat or digest my food properly for many months and was wasting away) I was submerged into an inner journey that led to the core of my ‘dis-ease’… That of making conscious the male-dominant tyrant in my psyche that had unconsciously ruled my life in the guise of personal dissatisfaction, fear and the need for control. These beliefs could no longer serve me even though, part of the process of releasing them was understanding that they had indeed served me very well up to the point where my body simply could not hold up under the stress.
By seeing through this illusion inside my own being and psyche and taking responsibility for the new self that was emerging my strength began to return; the food that I was eating started to nourish me again.
I was forced to discontinue my old ways of doing and controlling and surrender to being.
This turning point and the dispelling of a deeper layer of collective conditioning became my greatest gift as I was empowered to become my own inner authority rather than continuing to seek outside myself for answers… It was wholeness and freedom I was now interested in and I realized they are here now for one willing to claim their own innate power.
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I now write and communicate because I want my message, which comes from my direct experience of living my myth and learning to consciously create my reality, to be an example encouraging others to give themselves the ‘Power Of Permission’ to live their own path and personal mythology.