Good morning.
Awaken creative day 20 out here in the desert.
There's a lot of space and time for the mind to wander.
Now,
Because I am on a new or next journey through this desert,
Because we all face many often in this one life,
I say if we're lucky,
Because I'm here again,
I'm reviewing,
And reviewing can bring around those voices in the head that want to demonize,
Chastise the choices of the past.
If you stay here long enough and you let those voices filter through rather than get stuck,
There's an amazing opportunity.
Everything happens for a reason and in its time.
That's not a platitude and it certainly can't be used to placate in some circumstances.
Nonetheless,
It's got a whole lot of truth held tight within it.
When you're out here in the desert,
That mind chatter can start sending you in many directions,
Asking questions of the past,
Looking forward onto the vast landscape,
Searching for that one spot for your eyes to land.
Today,
I'm asking you to stop that.
Peel off the layers of chatter,
Close your eyes to the searching,
And travel down to your core.
When I began in this field of art,
Creating my way into the future with a paintbrush in my hand,
There are a lot of iterations I hoped it would become.
It would have been a delight to have the demand for my work to hang in museums and New York galleries,
Show around the world,
And be known as that cutting-edge artist.
It would have been amazing to have become different versions of what an artist is in our world.
But when I distill it down to the core of who I am,
This trajectory I've taken,
And the one that's still where I'm stepping,
There's one truth,
One through line,
If you will,
That has stitched its way from my beginnings and keeps stitching on until my end.
Go to your core.
Ask for the truth.
You may have great dreams about what you want yourself to look like.
But be open to the possibility that that is exactly what's happening.
It just might not be exactly like you'd like.
My one truth is that I create beauty.
Like I said,
It's not the beauty that's life-changing and earth-shattering and showing up in museums around the world.
But it is the beauty that sets other lights afire.
When I go scattering off to think of myself as a great artist,
Or think I have some power to transform lives,
I've gone off the rails.
My true path is not to be responsible to such things as those.
My true path,
That through line,
Is to stay on course to creating beauty.
To making space where all those things can come to be.
They're the result of,
Not my end goal.
Out here in the desert,
This next visit that I've said I'm in,
This realization has come home.
I've come to realize that I tried to take the reins once again.
To think that this creating beauty assignment or purpose of my life was to make some dramatic change in the art scene,
Through my art.
But that's just not so.
It falls dead on the surface.
That's the first clue.
As I struggle and strive,
Thinking if I just work harder,
Try more,
I'll manifest that grand creation that will put me on the museum walls.
More falsehoods arise.
More chatter disrupts.
I've gone off course.
I can hear the still small voice,
But I'm not paying attention.
I think I've heard right and I stubbornly push on.
But it's there,
Still saying,
Um,
That's not what I said.
That's not the message I sent.
You've misinterpreted.
Let's start again.
So here I am.
The realization that the simplicity that I seek has always been there.
I was the one convoluting the word.
Create beauty.
Keep it simple.
Make space.
See the magic happen from there.
Dig down.
Awake and creative to that one spark at your core once again.
It's telling you the right thing.
Today.
