After months of rain, the sun finally came up on Olympia. Everyone complains about the rain here, but I like it, I feel it cleans the air and makes it crisp; however, I do like the sun better… ;)

So in the last few days I’ve came out of the studio cave and I’ve been walking around downtown and taking pictures. It’s so interesting to look at the people on the street. I think about their stories, most of the time you can see them in their face, the way they walk, their mannerisms, there is so much everywhere…

For the last 2 or 3 weeks I’ve been contemplating on the direction of my work, what is it that I’m doing, why?

I’ve been studying how to find the people that are interested in my work and one thing that I keep running into that I haven’t figured out, is the trainings asking me to hone my message so that I provide for a specific niche market; and every time I run into this, it feels like electroshocks —it knocks me down!

I don’t want to limit myself to one thing. I want to be able to do one thing today and another tomorrow and another the day after. I need that freedom. Unlimited creativity provides me with the sanity of knowing that there is a world out there, the ethers to be explored; that it’s not all said and done! With my work I can go anywhere and do anything, I need this —read: How Creativity Saved My Life

So I’ve been struggling to integrate these two elements —to do my thing the way I want to do it, and finding a way to deliver it so the people that are interested in it can find me…

However,I feel that I’ve crossed a barrier and a new reality is unfolding right now. Sometimes as weird as it may sound, you have to burn the field down in order for a new crop to grow.

I feel like that. I feel almost empty/clear, there is not much left in my reality but the essentials: the bare bones and the burnt soil. It’s a bit scary but it feels good. I feel I’m on track.

I’ve been a bit sad too… I had to cut off from my life a person I held quite dear in my heart and I’ve been mourning the loss, looking at the lesson and integrating it.

After the intense experience I was so angry. It wasn’t until I realized it was my blaming what was keeping me angry that I decided my inner peace was more important.

So I took responsibility. I had given my power away to the person, expecting them to behave like I would, but people are who they are, they are not what you want them to be, those are your own expectations of them and they are illusions.

This is how we give our power away to others: in our mind we make them what we need and when they fail to fulfill our expectations, we blame them for it but this is not self loving and not respecting of people’s individuality.

When I realized why I was angry I also realized that I had to forgive, to just let the whole thing go. That didn’t mean I would have this person be in my reality anymore (a boundary had been crossed), but it was all part of a deeper plan for my higher self to take me in another direction and for me to just let them go their way. Forgiving people, understanding, compassion liberates me from the burden that resentment brings, it gives me peace again.

This was a wonderful pinnacle for the lesson because I’ve had this experience surface time and time again throughout different faces as people would betray my expectations of them over and over again.

What I learned was that I’ve been putting people in prisons of my own mental constructs. I wasn’t seeing them for who they are, but for who I wanted them to be for me and this is not love, it’s control and of course they would betray me because ultimately everyone wants to be free, no one wants to be put inside someone else’s machiavellian construct, lol!

My next step, I see now, will be learning how to see people for who they are and make honest decisions —if I want to do business or have any type of friendship/relationship with them.

This does not mean that I don’t consider them as part of me in the sense that we’re all still connected as one universal whole, but to see them as a unique expression that must be respected, while simultaneously respecting my unique self-expression.

This has been my self betrayal: Disrespecting the awareness that I have, an awareness that can see who people are, what things are, what is going on on at any given moment. An I-just-know, gut-level awareness that I’ve been betraying my whole life for the sake of being accepted.

I’m a bit giddy, I can feel new experiences bubbling in the cauldron of reality from now on —because to make decisions from my real awareness is going to attract into my life a whole other level of people. There will be lots of sifting but now I understand the process. It feels something like this:

• People manifest in my reality
• I look at them with absolute honesty
• They will not be what I want, they are who they are
• I love them and let them be and let them go
• This will repeat again and again
• Every time the experiences will get more and more refined, they’ll be deeper and more beautiful and more profound
• However at some point, for whatever reason, the experience will end and I’ll have to let them go
• A new reality will appear afterwards
• Every single time my knowing that the person is free, will always enable me to appreciate them and let them be who they are, instead of me trying to make them fit within my limiting constructs.
• This is how I now can see a new level of the experience of love

…something like that :)

-Epiphanio.

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Check out my Artwork by clicking on any of the thumbnails below to see the gallery for each painting, full size resolution and zoom detail.