“Love is the law. Love under will.” - Alastair Crowley
What is it like to be an artist, you ask? What is it like to be me? I think the better question is, what is it like to be yourself. At 7 years old my family moved from Cincinnati to a farm in rural Kentucky. Two years later my brother and I went from public school to homeschool. A year later I was in a car accident in which I lost two of my front permanent teeth. Shortly after that, my parents divorced. Then the following year, we went to a new public school. I was in 6th grade. My grade consisted of 32 children and the K-12 school was small enough to be housed in a single building in the smallest county in Kentucky. Not long after starting school, bullying began.
I’ve always been different. I’ve always thought differently and responded passively and that has often led to experiences of confusion, anger and aggression from the outside. Whether it came from teachers or students, friends or their parents, I seemed to trigger certain folks in extreme ways.
I have learned a lot from these folks. I have learned to be centered when things around me seem insane. I’ve learned about projection. I’ve learned about empathy. I’ve learned about forgiveness. I’ve learned that the extreme states of others are not my fault or my responsibility. I am only responsible for me.
Friends have always come and gone. Whether it is from moving across states, changing schools, parents moving away, or shifting mindsets, my experience of relationships has been deeply transient. Fundamentally, this has shaped the way I relate to others. At first the sense of detachment I experience caused me much suffering. I felt I could not connect in the loving way I wanted to. I felt that my desire to love others and my feelings of detachment were not compatible. I was afraid that the ending of a relationship was the ending of love. What I have learned is that love and relationships are not exclusive.
In relationships, there are two boundaries: there is the boundary we have with ourselves and the boundary we have with others. What I have learned is that understanding the boundary I have with myself allows me to clearly see boundaries with others. The spirit within me desires to love and unify with everyone. However, the being that my spirit resides in has its own desires. Primarily, it desires to feel safe and supported.
We can spend a lot of energy in our lives seeking the feeling of safety and support from others. But this is temporary. In truth, we can only provide this for ourselves. This begins with becoming conscious of our needs and desires and then showing up for ourselves unconditionally in order to provide them. I show up for myself and provide this safety and support to by choosing to be very selective about the things I allow in: The music I listen to, the stories I read, the topics I invest my consciousness in, the people I surround myself with… All of these choices define how I spiritually support my being.
One of the things about being an artist is that one cannot separate the artist from the being. Art is simply the creative language of self expression. Being an artist means being willing to express yourself creatively. Feelings of safety and support are essential to healthy creation. If an artist cannot find this within themselves, they will constantly feel defined by how they are received. This is what it is like to be an artist – it is reaching into yourself to be honest enough to share your truth, strong enough to support it, and soft enough to receive the truths of others.
There is this tendency for us to link the choice to live spiritually with the willingness to sacrifice ourselves. This is a misunderstanding that has plagued us for far too long. When we speak of sacrifice from a spiritual perspective, it is the practice of the seeker to sacrifice the idea of themselves and surrender to the service of becoming who they are. We become who we are as we discover and establish our boundaries and how we respond to others.
Our spirits have incarnated into a world of cause and effect. Karma is simply effect. So when someone gets really annoyed by what I share and wants to throw a pebble in my eye; karmically, I am experiencing the effect of sharing who I am with others. Yes, it is true, I really do see this world as a reflection of myself. That is the point of approaching life from a spiritual perspective. To choose to not use the world as an opportunity to reflect on one’s self is a huge missed opportunity. This is how we gain self knowledge and growth. It is sad that so many folks miss out on valuable opportunities for growth believing that they are being self-less.
Ironically, not allowing the world to be a reflection of yourself is extremely self-absorbed. This suggests that the world owes us something and that we are apart from it. That the expressions and boundaries of others are in opposition to us. As if we are so important that another soul would live out their blessings as form of revenge against us.
This state of mind is what leads folks to extremes. It generates suspicious thinking, negativity, self-centeredness, and violent fantasies. So a person desiring to throw stones and blame others is actually experiencing their own reflection, whether they are aware of it or not. When a living thing responds in violence, be it physical, verbal, or mental, they are actually conjuring the persona that they are projecting on to others.
Becoming aware of these negative patterns in ourselves enables us to make different choices, respond differently to our experiences, and establish trust with ourselves that we will act in alignment with our needs and boundaries.
So what does that mean in a situation? For me, it means giving attention to energies that I consider healthy and beneficial. Violence in any form is wholly unacceptable. But what does one do when they are presented with a violent approach from outside? Acknowledge it and then transform it. Does it sting to know that people have feelings of violence towards me? It can. But it also makes me grateful to know that the folks who use their creative forces to conjure fantasies of suffering in others have been successfully removed from my life and are now relegated to the internet dumping-ground.
What does it say about those who choose to annoy themselves and indulge in violent fantasies by following what I share? I mean, seriously. It’s like choosing to go to a movie you hate just to hate the people who made the movie. If what you are doing inspires negativity in your heart, you’re doing the wrong thing. It’s really quite simple. The one who curses others curses himself. The one who wishes for another’s suffering prays for a suffering of their own creation. He who puts his force into negativity reaps negativity. When another’s negativity gets projected upon us, it only becomes ours if we allow ourselves to take in and then reflect that negativity back out again – then it is ours and we must own it.
Choosing to live a spiritual life does not mean having to subject one’s self or attention to those who cannot understand or respect boundaries. It is not the job of a person choosing to live spiritually to tell others what their behavior is or is not. The job is to teach by example. The spiritual life is being the example. In being the example, you become the effect. That is it.
Violence is systemic and its temptation reaches deep into Earth’s psyche. Yet unlike other animals, humans have a more focused ability to choose their nature. It is not our fault that we are born into a culture of violence, but it is our responsibility to change the pattern and evolve it. That is what we are all here to do: evolve.
In order to evolve, we are given a point of perspective through which the nature of who we are is revealed to us in 3D. We get to have a sun and a moon and soil and fruit and brothers and sisters… these angels come before us to help us see ourselves and evolve our nature. Without them, we could never truly know ourselves or our nature. We would only be an idea of who we are. So we must act it out and in so doing, choose our nature.
Caroline Myss says it beautifully, “Imagine, before you incarnated, you were speaking with your committee of angels and they said to you, ‘In this lifetime you will learn to master the knife. You will experience joy and hardship and you may become a chef or maybe a killer. Either way, you will learn to master the knife.’”
So, to those it may concern - I’m sorry if in mastering my art, my nature brought suffering. Forgive me for the pain I have caused because of the nature of my limited awareness. Thank you for feeding me your truth. I love you regardless.
- OKH