The Story Behind “Illumination” Buddha. How (Time-lapse) and Why (Is There Any?) I created it.
“Buddha of Illumination” lit up my second week of October 2019. It was not an emotionally easy week. It was a long weekend of Thanksgiving (in Canada) and I felt very lonely (despite being a loner by default). I missed people I love, particularly one. What I made out of these strong emotions will be shared in this post.
Every energy, regardless of it’s vibration (low or high) can be embraced, transformed and used a fuel for creating something beautiful. The stronger the emotion the stronger the energy, the greater the potential for transformation. After all, fear is the flip side of Love.
As I said, I am a faithful friend and daily gardener of alone time. I thrive on alone time. I don’t think that an artist/creator ever walked this Earth whose imagination and creativity would not flourish in times spent on their own. Obviously “on their own” only means physical presence of other people, because we, artists (and that includes you since humans are all artists (creative) by birthright), know very well that the good Spirits of Muse come pay us visit in such times the most.
But there’s old pains deep in my unconscious mind that come to surface in the times when everyone else is with their families and loved ones. Such is the ordeal of human predicament. We all have countless fears running in the background program of our subconscious that we’re mostly unaware of, unless and until we step on a committed path of self-realization and mindfulness, which is basically all about dissolving the old beliefs (about ourselves and the world) we created in our childhood. Unconscious part of mind is invisible to the conscious mind yet it forms 95% of how we think and react. This alone should stop everyone in their tracks and ask the question: how can I access it? Obviously that’s the key question because it is just SO important to open the door and gain clarity over unconscious mind. Anyone who wants to change their lives for the better and on permanent basis cannot do it with by changes in conscious mind alone. It’s a lost fight. Unconscious is the submerged part of the iceberg that won’t budge at the dance of penguins on top of it. We need to bypass the barrier to Ali Baba’s cave to harvest the unlimited treasures which wait for us in the real of “unknown”. And mind (thoughts, feelings, emotions, that constant chatter in our heads) is precisely the barrier that guards the entrance of the magical cave.
My particular pain that came to surface on the Thanksgiving weekend wasn’t a pain of “alone time”. It was fear of abandonment. Fear of being left alone. You don’t have to rationalize your fears with your current life situation. that is just the trigger. It’s very likely that the seed of that fear was planted in time that you can’t consciously remember, in early childhood. Fear we experienced in one moment when our mother was separated from us or punished us by isolation, or when we felt abandoned, unloved, unappreciated. That pain was resisted and so it planted a seed of Sanskara (karma) and stayed in our system as unreleased energetic loop (mostly in heart chakra). We learned to cover up that pain with a reaction loop so we would not have to face it and experience is again. Coffee, sex, alcohol, shopping, TV, validation by social media or meaningless banter with friends with no real listening – pick your drug of choice. Yet that thing which came to surface asked for our attention for a divine reason: it wants us to be free. The flip side of every shadow is a gift. Gift of freedom (from suffering) is where we are being called by life in every moment, if we only listened.
As I mention in the below YouTube video (thank you for subscribing to my channel!), any energy can be harnessed for good cause. There is only one requirement: awareness. With awareness, we step back from the seat of “reactor” and sit in the comfy armchair of “observer”. Observer is much more of an actor than reactor, if you now what I mean:) You don’t have to move a finger on your body to have a breakthrough to your unconscious mind, dissolve an ancient pain and access the quantum field of consciousness (some call it God) where everything already exists as a possibility. From there all you need is to of energetic match to whatever you want to manifest in your life. And you don’t have to dream up castles. You don’t have to make mind movies. It much more about feeling than any imagery. So don’t make it complicated and just feel GOOD and GRATEFUL. And the good news is: when you finally get over yourself and access that nurturing infinite blackness, you will feel not good, but GREAT by default. This is not a space of mind, this is not where you go around thinking. This is a place of eternal bliss, where you feel whole and all you radiate is just deep gratitude for the life that you are. If you just “react” from mind program you have learned years (ages) ago (we have one for pretty much every different situation stored in our body), you’re not an actor, you’re a slave puppet of something you can’t control. So take a deep breath and step back. Observe before reacting. The gold is being revealed to you, and if it was easy, it would not be rare.
So I did my best this weekend not to slide into the oh-so-familiar role of victim. It wasn’t perfect but it was was good enough. I took that emotion of sadness and abandonment and I embraced it fully, I let it all in. And then I dived in it so deep that I could feel its currents. I spread the wings of creativity and soared high on that pain, feeling its fire, making it out of the mud into the clear sky where my tears dried in the loving sunshine. What came of out of it is what you see here: Buddha of Illumination, which only took me a week to create from scratch.
I hope you enjoyed the story and the process. May it bring you courage in the times of darkness. May you always know that you are loved, and never alone. And if you don’t believe in God, just know there’s this guy Jan somewhere on this planet, who felt like you, and who loves you, as a comrade in arms on this poignant human journey.
This YouTube video shows how I created this piece and I also share a very personal story and give few more hints how to transform negativity into fuel. Thank you for watching and subscribing!
So Much Love!
Jan
