Tell me something about yourself that you are proud of

In my journey of teaching myself to compose music using Studio One and a keyboard controller, I really only have two songs that I am proud of. This one is my favourite because I achieved what I intended to achieve — I made a song that I would want to listen to.

If you’d like to support me, a like on the video on Youtube would be appreciated ❤

When All is Won [Original Music]

Once in a while I manage to create something I really like. It’s a good feeling — it’s what keeps me going.

Creating Space for New Possibilities

By changing your perspective, you can make new models of reality emerge. The benefit of doing this is to prevent an unbalance of mental “closure” – a word Kenneth Smith uses in his book “Shamanism for the Age of Science” to describe being stuck or too rigid in one way of thinking. Closure is like fundamentalism in that it closes off your capacity to see potential and transform or awaken yourself to new levels of knowledge. So I have a few exercises to offer that I find useful, which can open you to new experiences, new insights, and expand your awareness in all directions, pushing against any limiting boundaries you’ve perhaps unnecessarily accepted.

These exercises are actually fun – to me, anyway – and they stimulate your imagination and challenge your attachment to particular models of reality. They are meant to tease your perceptions of being, creating room for new possibilities.

1. Walk as if you are not moving forward, but actually turning the Earth with your feet. When your feet glide over the ground, push a little and imagine that you are bringing the environment directly in front of you closer, rather than walking to it.
2. Imagine reality is merely what you see, exactly as YOU see it. For instance, the distant trees are really that small and objects are fully solid (not full of mostly-space and atoms). Perhaps the Earth now seems flat; or try to come up with a new experience of perception other than the examples I’ve listed.
3. Consider: everything you can imagine must be real. What does that imply? If everything you imagine must exist, can you therefore imagine a spirit, decide it must be real, and have a whole conversation with them that must also be real? If you imagine a future self that can communicate with you, are the thoughts you imagine your future self saying therefore real?
4. Imagine yourself pulling the future against you in order to experience the present moment. You are not helplessly flowing forward along with time – you are pulling time past you.

After these exercises, where you go next is up to you, but I think it creates a prime stage for self-reflection and creative work.

Doll Sculpt in Clay

I made this doll head tonight, sculpted in polymer clay with needle-felted wool hair. Her face is coloured with chalk pastels and she has acrylic eyes.

What should I do to finish her? Hmm!

Yanantin: the Infinite and the Instance

In the beginning there was Nothingness, and it was so infinite in potential that it was also Everything. This was the first pair of all the complementary dualities to come. From potential comes actuality and manifestation. So we are born from potential and slip back into potential, but never does this energy disappear.

This is the Peruvian Q’ero shamanic view of Yanantin: complementary opposites that are in constant, eternal relationship. Without the Everything, there cannot be the Nothing. Without the Infinite, there cannot be the Instance. Without the Familiar, there cannot be the Other.

Imagination is the purest spiritual energy; material experience is the essence of physical manifestation. But both are types of one giant experience of yanantin – the dream and the dreamer together.

It can be hard to connect to spiritual things, because we fear the imagination – the very sense through which we access the spiritual! So we start to look for physical signs of spiritual things, which we pursue in vain. Instead we must forge a new path in our journey of connection, seeking ground we’ve never crossed before.

It takes bravery, creativity, and faith, but we are meant to be in partnership with the infinite – call it God or Spirit or Source. It is half of what we are.

Little Stinker! now on Etsy

I’m working on my needle felting skills, trying to achieve a realistic look to my animals. So I did a baby skunk, with synthetic whiskers and plastic eyes. He’s very sweet and soft, made of 100% wool, and best of all, he doesn’t stink!

https://www.etsy.com/listing/260507725/realistic-baby-skunk-needle-felted-100?ref=shop_home_active_1

I put up the little chipmunk too 🙂