So, I took the installation of my paintings that hung in the library during the month of July, and created a new one at our clinic. We take pride in offering healing through chiropractic and functional medicine, and now I add my part, which is to create an environment that soothes the soul as well. You can see better portrayals of each painting on Instagram and Facebook under: maryfrancesflood. Let the healing continue and magnify.
Here is a new painting I’m working on of a young east Indian girl selling balloons. The balloons are the only thing that will be painted in color, the rest is in grey scale…which is a perfect representation of today’s post, the colors of which are still unclear to me.
When Teilhard speaks of “cosmic love”, he is speaking of a real, physical energy of attraction that is binding the universe together. It is the driving force that is pulling all creation toward a unified divine state called the Omega Point. He also personalizes it by saying that love is not just a human emotion, but is a basic and foundational property of the universe. Just as gravity draws physical bodies together, cosmic love is the internal “within” or expression that draws human beings into a deeper connection. As separate parts of the universe feel an affinity for one another, it draws them into deeper connection. It ensures that creation does not fall apart into chaos, but instead grows more conscious and personal and creates higher levels of complexity and awareness. From my standpoint on this journey, I do see this happening all around me. Cosmic love is being manifested in powerful ways, of which I am a willing participant, and it is from this viewpoint that my journey is directed forward…until I was stopped dead in my tracks (and I shouldn’t be surprised, since just when I think I have a handle on “things” I am stopped and presented with another perspective).
The perspective I received is this: walking on a higher plane, with the clear understanding that we are all connected, also means extending ourselves both physically and spiritually as a utility, i.e. acting as a source of keeping extra power in reserve to extend or use when needed, especially when demand is high. While it is my understanding and deep belief that the power of love is an all encompassing, inexhaustible, and inextinguishable source of power and renewable energy, humans who act as a utility are not, our power and physicality is finite. There is this great line from “the Lord of the Rings”, where an aged Bilbo Baggins explains this concept clearly: “Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread”. It is such a simple and yet apt expression of how I am feeling at the moment: simultaneously enthused with all I’m learning, proud of risks I’m taking, and the happiness that comes with who I am taking this journey with, and yet at the same time I feel like a battery whose utility is spent. I think it is because in order to utilize cosmic love it must include both extending and receiving it like an electrical charge does that transforms the energy in quartz making it vibrate inside a watch to keep accurate time. Giving and receiving are inherent qualities of cosmic love, one cannot exist without the other and I forget about the receiving part a lot. While giving cosmic love is an unequivocal unlimited endeavor, receiving it is not, and while I’m not sure quite how yet, I did learn a few things yesterday that clarify what kind of energy transforms the receiving end of cosmic love and what does not.
Yesterday was my artist’s meet and greet. I wasn’t afraid or uncomfortable, which surprised me a bit…but I didn’t like it either, The interaction of explaining how I started over and over seemed a waste of time…it was already in the bio I provided that was on the wall with the drawings/paintings for everyone to read. While I genuinely appreciated kind words about my talent, I wanted my art to speak for itself and find out what they saw when they looked at each piece, and perhaps inspire them to appreciate the beauty in people from all walks of life in the future and also tap into their own undiscovered gifts. What made me uncomfortable, nervous even, is that putting the focus on “me” as a utility, somehow changed the energy of the cosmic love I put into the art, that somehow I was different from them, and that is what felt draining. There is a difference in receiving adulation from someone who doesn’t even know me and appreciating the illumination that comes from what I produced…and there were both kinds of people that day. The latter felt like a kinship, the former, well, it just felt draining. I do get nervous about what is to come in the future, and I wish I could put into words what I mean by that, but right now I just can’t articulate it.
Kinship and connection restores my utility, adulation drains it. I’m not happy with the word choice here because it sounds so worshippy, (and I am aware that I am but a drop in this cosmic bucket) but as I explained to someone recently how much I needed love to survive this, I was just as ill-equipped in the moment, to ask for and receive it. The giving of love unequivocally has never been the problem for me because I have such strong faith in the inherent gifts of those who I send love to, but in order to recharge and renew this inexhaustible source of cosmic love, receiving real love, and not the kind offered in a sycophantic, manipulative, or self deprecating kind of way is an absolute necessity. While it may still may appear in my line of sight as greyscale, I am hoping this is simply what comes when moving into unknown territory…and the color will come to me eventually as my understanding grows.
So between a shit show and shining success…that is the attitude of what yesterday and today felt like, to which I write with a quick deviation from instruction on learning to live on a higher plane, because I’m not all too sure that what I feel at the moment is actually representative of living on a higher plane. To start, the day of the move to memory care ( and the day of my show) was laden with anxiety, mostly for my sisters who were on site, directing the move right under my mother’s nose (first time I’ve name her as THE family member), and me not being present, because I had committed to participate in an art show, feeling powerless to help in any way. At about an hour before I was done with my first day showing and selling my art, I started getting emergency phone calls dispatched from my mother’s life link button she wears around her neck. I spent the last portion of the show walking back in forth in the parking lot desperately trying to, and and delicately explaining to this company not to dispatch the emergency crew because she was safe at her new memory care facility, and was just unhappy with her circumstances. Finally, in a hysterical laughing, crying way…I just had to tell the truth, that my mother would continue to push this button because it was “her means” to call her husband, Elon Musk to whom he had given her full responsibility to distribute his money, to come and get her. I could hear silence on the other end, and then a choking voice (I knew she was covering up her laughter) that she would transfer me to her supervisor. Once connected, the same funny noise came, when she read the explanation of her underling, and I had to interject and say out loud, that yes, I knew it was crazy, and yes, it was it was ok to laugh…to which she let out the loudest guffaw I have ever heard. Her response: Mam, this is the singular best story I have ever heard in this job (most of the details, I did not share here). She closed the account and even gave me a refund. for the rest of the year…to which the full staff at her new place and my sisters now think I am a rock star (because the staff finally witnessed, first hand, the transformation that we, my siblings, all knew personally that was akin to the most frightening horror story character ever created). In this moment, and I know I’m not being kind and loving unequivocally and I’m OK with that, given how this ordeal unfolded, I am not sorry for it, I released a huge burden. And if God happens to give me a smack of karma, I’m ok with that too. The true heroes of this story are my sisters and the people that have to deal with her now. We all did the best we could for her to honor my dad’s promise and keep her safe, and now realize she has made her bed and well….enough said.
The other side of the last two days is the pride I felt when so many people were amazed and impressed with my art. I received an invitation to display some of my pieces at the new libraries’ artists gallery wall this summer and also met a wonderful gallery owner who is excited to what we can do in the future. I would be lying if I didn’t admit that I felt pride at my ability to squelch the fear that started to rise up when I accepted the invitation at the library and also when I told the other gallery owner I would be proud to have her present one or more of my pieces in her space. There was also an artist who saw the piece I did called, “A portrait of an artist at rest” (Wang Yibo), and said that it reminded him of one of Rembrandt’s techniques regarding shading and depth. I absolutely had no fucking idea what he was talking about, and also didn’t tell him that I just acted by the seat of my pants, and simply thought that if I added an iridescent paint to the black it would give the appearance of a velvet background….which means that I guess that the attempt was successful…and even though I didn’t have a clue about anything else that came out of his mouth. I just smiled, like Mona Lisa and shook my head in the affirmative. Also, both my brother, (who came in from Florida) and my youngest sister came up to see me, in leu of seeing my mother and I was so shocked and pleased because my brother had never seen my art in person before. So, as far as I’m concerned at the moment, I am happy that I stood on my own two feet and weathered both storms…my mother and my own fear of success. I still have one more day to show tomorrow, but somehow I already feel like I’ve won and passed the test, because I know my mother is now safe, regardless of how angry she is…and I believe that am really good at what I do, end of story, which leaves me better equipped to live and love on a higher plane.
One quick epilogue that I am amending to this post…I added a picture of a little hedgehog who picked out a piece of jewelry…my favorite customer of the weekend. Also? I have conflicted feelings about a lot of the gushing about my work…often, I didn’t like it at all, because it felt like the focus was on the wrong thing and was often followed by words like I have no talent, or you are so lucky. I wanted them to be moved by the art, or feel encouraged to make their own or use their own gifts. Regardless of how many times I explained that I only started this a few years ago, and didn’t know what I was doing either, that if they felt a passion for it, they should just try. The important part is in the creation…because it changes the individual as well as the environment…most looked at me like I was nuts…and it made me feel sad. I am even more resolute to bring love into the world one piece of art at a time.
Yes, I am aware that the title of this piece is from a famous documentary about climate change. I appropriated it, but not for the reasons you may think. It did not originate from my clever mind, hence why I’m telling you this upfront. Also, this post is not about climate change, I borrowed the title to make this point; every idea, thought, both academic and non came from direct learning and experience from me alone. Perhaps my age will give validity to this statement, but there is and never will be chatgpt, or any other mechanism available today for taking shortcuts to understand or describe how I know what I know and how I got where I am today (a portion of the old hard copies of books and curricula of what I’ve been studying are in the picture above and are what I’m talking about). And while I will never claim to own or control an idea, because they are not mine alone to begin with, I am the walking, talking “inconvenient truth” of this experience, i.e. the protagonist of this story; no one can make any claim to, here or anywhere else I am present in the world, but me, and I, and only I, am in control of that. I am not saying that whatever “this is” is so great, but I am saying that as I move forward this year, that I am the one responsible for where and how I move forward on this path. No amount of appropriation or manipulation will ever change the fact that there is no way in hell that ‘I’ can be duplicated or manipulated in any way, shape or form. As I’ve stated many times before, this journey of mine is one of a kind. My words may be, and perhaps already have been used to give credence to others who may lay claim to the wisdom of them without going through the work, but the fact remains that living on a higher plane demands that you walk the walk and not just talk the talk (another phrase I am appropriating). If you think you can get there as an academic exercise, it will just become a fools errand for you. In fact, if you are truly serious about living on a higher plane, say the prayer I did all those years ago in Russia when I asked God to never, ever let me become an arrogant asshole (I was unkindly speaking of other representatives of the cloth). God will hold you to it every time you think that you, as a vessel, are more important than the lesson…a literal shitstorm will follow if you do :).
So, let me share some of the inconvenient truths of what this year may feel like for me, and, like I never want to, a conversation with my spirit guide days preceding the beginning of this journey.
Sitting in my favorite place, my spirit guide came from behind and gave me a hug,
“Hello”, I said, I was excited to get started.
“Hello, to you too. Before we begin, let me remind you that the Kingdom of Heaven is within you”. he said as he sat down next to me (in this incarnation, he was the Savior).
“Why do I get the sudden feeling that I am not going to like what comes next…” I said with a bit of trepidation.
“Because you won’t”. He paused and just looked at me.
“I muttered, Oh shit”, under my breath, “what does that mean?”
“To put it simply, it means that this years theme is not an internal one, a discovery of self, it is a year of action putting into practice and bringing out the Kingdom of Heaven that you have been developing within”. He paused and let the words sink in.
My heart rate skyrocketed and I immediately felt a rising terror…”You mean I actually have to go out and DO stuff? I have actually no idea how to do that, plus, I am terrible at being in the center of anything, you know what I mean by that. Plus people never listen to me “out there,” hell, I’m not sure anyone listens to me here. I am not good at that, I was born to create environments to help others, to remain in the background, to be a quiet whisperer. I wouldn’t have the first clue what to do, and well, I DON’T WANT TO.” The tears were starting to come, of course I’m still not very good at the emotional stuff.
He was calm, comforting and yet I could see in his eyes unrelenting. “But you will, because what has this journey been for if not to be instrumental’, and when he saw me start to hyperventilate he said, “don’t worry, not in a demonstrably huge way, but instrumental, nonetheless, you felt the same way when you promised to go where I asked you to go and it worked out quite well actually. So, this is simply the moment, the time of opportunity and action, of encapsulating all that you have learned and professed to believe out there” he pointed to a road that suddenly lay ahead of me. “I would never put you in this position if I didn’t think you were up to it. And please note, my imagination is so far beyond yours, that never in a thousand years will you be able to know where this road is leading you, so let go of whatever horror story you’re creating in your head right now”. He actually smiled. And while my relationship with the Savior has always been open and honest, I didn’t dare get snarky at this point. I just quietly shook my head in the affirmative
The rest will remain private. But the Savior did give me the comfort of knowing that there are those who love me, and support me and that won’t change. They will give me strength along the way. And as for those inconvenient truths…let me just say that art, in multiple forms, will be the most instrumental mechanism of sharing the Kingdom within, the song of my soul, the melody which at present may still be elusive, it is becoming clearer by the day. And to conclude, when I reread this last paragraph and it almost made me cringe at the presumptions of it, I got a spiritual slap upside that head reminding me that it only takes the faith of a mustard seed, that anything asked for in goodness shall be given, and that love never fails. Let the craziness begin.
