Tag: meditative photography

  • The Oldest Tree and the Newest Truth

    The Oldest Tree and the Newest Truth

    Yesterday, I went shooting. I collected over 1,500 photographs in a single morning.

    It’s been a long time since I’ve been that focused, that immersed in the creative energy that sustains me. It felt good to be so deeply aligned with The Flow—Nature’s and God’s flow, not mine, not anyone else’s.

    For hours upon hours, I alternated exploration and randomly sitting still with nature, and with my favorite tree—the oldest documented in my state—for a long time. I quietly observed every detail, inner and outer, letting my mind wander and my spirit settle.

    So long, in fact, the chiggers are still feasting on me. A worthy price, though, for what was finally made clear to me—the missing puzzle piece that’s been keeping me from being able to help others fully grasp my perspective when I talk about grounding and meditation:

    So many people deeply misunderstand meditation.

    Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Telephoto. VSCO (G6 PRO) + Lightroom (watermark only).

    It’s not about escaping the body, 3D reality, or floating above your life. It’s not about leaving. Healthy, true meditation is the opposite of escape.

    Meditation is about stillness, observation, and rooting in. It’s about grounding into the physical body, and the earth itself, consciously connecting with both.

    It’s about sinking into the body—not running from it. Anything rooted in “escape” isn’t meditation. At any spiritual or energetic level, escapism is a cop-out. Worse, it’s a lie.

    Meditation is about bringing the physical, mental, and emotional into balance so that rising energetically, emotionally, and intellectually becomes not only natural… but possible in the first place.

    This shift in understanding can (and will) change everything for anyone who is willing to open their minds and hearts enough embrace it.

    🙏🦋🕊️

  • Focal Point

    Focal Point

    It’s as important as perspective. Perhaps even more so…

    We talk so much about perspective—about changing our view, reframing the story, finding the silver lining in the storm cloud.

    But sometimes, perspective doesn’t shift easily.

    Sometimes, circumstance leaves you standing exactly where you’ve always stood. The view is the same. The light hits the same edges. The shadows fall in familiar places.

    But even when the scene remains unchanged…the focal point doesn’t have to.

    Focus is a choice.

    A sacred, stubborn one.

    It’s the difference between staring at the problem and noticing the petal behind it.

    It’s where your attention lands, and where your energy follows.

    It’s learning to zoom in on grace even when grief is still in the frame.

    In these frames, nothing moved.

    Not the flower. Not the light. Not the angle.

    Only the focal point changed.

    And with that subtle shift, a new vision — a new truth— came forward.

    Almost always—including in life, and despite circumstance—the best composition doesn’t come from changing the scene but from learning which part of it to focus on.

    catacosmosis // 2025

  • Lifted

    Lifted

    entry twelve — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.
    Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. VSCO (A6 PRO) + DistressedFX + Lightroom (watermark only).

    There is a moment, early in a few blessed summer evenings, when the heat—the oppression—sighs and lets go.

    Not in protest, but in quiet surrender—the sun lingers, the sky softens, and a hush moves in with the rain.

    Steam rises like incense from the bones of the earth.

    You’ve felt that coveted shift.

    It’s not loud. Not showy. Just the heaviness loosening its grip on your ribs as breath returns without warning.

    This is how some battles end—

    Not with victory, but with survival.

    Not with a roar, but with a breeze.

    No fanfare—just rain through fractured light, and the ache leaving your body before you even know it’s gone.

    What remains?

    A field of yellow flowers—bent but blooming.

    Tired, but free.

    And air that smells like something holy—finally lifted.

    catacosmosis // 2025

  • Where Abundance Lives

    Where Abundance Lives

    It’s never been money or material success that has defined wealth for me.

    For most of my life, I chased meaning in moments loud enough to echo—grand gestures, perfect timing, outcomes wrapped in validation. But it was my most treacherous and grueling experiences—the ones that stripped me bare and rebuilt me from the soul up—that taught me something higher.

    They taught me to be still.

    To be quiet.

    To kneel at the altar of the subtle.

    A blurry cloud, simultaneously barely and boldly defining its own form, illuminated at just the right angle.

    Lumix GX7 + Lightroom (watermark only)

    A battered feather, found in the dead center of a forgotten dirt road, caught in evening light.

    Lumix GX7 + Lightroom (watermark only)

    The soft hush of trees at dusk, whispering the memories of the ghosts that still roam underneath them.

    Lumix GX7 + Lightroom (watermark only)

    This is abundance.

    There’s something sacred about catching these quiet offerings—the ones that ask for nothing but your presence. No performance. No hustle. Just your full attention. And I think that’s what I’ve been learning to fully morph into, slowly but surely, all my life.

    I’ve always been in love with nature, and over the past few years, I’ve begun to understand why—consciously, spiritually, viscerally:

    Nature doesn’t demand applause, but it offers everything to those who notice.

    Before caregiving and grief, nature called to me—quietly, consistently—and I always accepted her invitation to explore and to wonder. During caregiving, she became an escape. I retreated there as often as possible, weary and begging for rest that not even sleep could offer…and nature always obliged.

    Now? I don’t go to escape or to retreat, I don’t just visit. Nature meets me. Whether I’m deep in the woods or walking my yard…hiking a trail or running my neighborhood…now, I am always home.

    We live in a world trained to skim, to scroll, to monetize every breath of stillness. But this—this sky, this feather, this light that passes and never repeats—reminds me:

    Presence is the prize.

    It’s all around us, all the time, no matter where we are…but people don’t see it anymore. They no longer observe. Most have forgotten—that observation is a form of reverence. And reverence, when practiced daily, becomes a kind of homecoming.

    “Abundance is not found in money and material gain—at least, not for me. To me, it is found in nature’s unexpected surprises.”

    I wrote that in my memory while standing beneath the canopy of trees shared above as it held the last light of evening. There was no one else there. No applause. Just me, and the divine choreography of stillness.

    In that moment, nature herself invited me to remind you:

    If you’re searching for proof that you’re loved, that you belong, that there’s meaning woven through even the hardest days—

    Look up.

    Look closer.

    Be still.

    The abundance you’re looking for is already here.

    It’s been waiting for your eyes—and your heart— to land on it.

    Be present.

    Pay attention.

    Be observant.

    Your presence in the present matters.

    It’s where abundance lives.

    🪶💜✨

    catacosmosis // 2025

  • The Art of Being Alive

    The Art of Being Alive

    The real you is not a puppet which life pushes around; the real, deep down you is the whole universe. (Alan Watts)

    📷 Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH
    🛠️ VSCO (06) + Lightroom (watermark only)

    The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves. (Alan Watts)

    📷 Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH
    🛠️ VSCO (06) + Lightroom (watermark only)

    I stood in the green hush, face to face with a bloom so intricate it felt like a secret whispered by the wild. The passionflower doesn’t need to perform. It simply is. Unapologetically strange. Beautifully complex. Alive.

    📷 Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH
    🛠️ VSCO (06) + Lightroom (watermark only)

    I thought of the two Alan Watts quotes I’ve included above, and I thought of my dead loved ones. This is what I want to remember:

    📷 Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH
    🛠️ VSCO (06) + Lightroom (watermark only)

    That being fully present—here, now, in the middle of whatever hurts or heals—is enough.

    That passion isn’t always loud.

    Sometimes, it curls quietly out of the forest and dares you to look closer.

    This is what death has taught me about life.

    I’m really grateful I stayed, after they were all gone.

    🪽💜✨

    catacosmosis // 2025

  • A Reminder to Self (But We ALL Need It)

    A Reminder to Self (But We ALL Need It)

    Reminder to self:

    Disconnection makes you stop reflecting and start reacting. It’s not because you’re a bad person. It’s because you’re lost in the noise.

    Disconnection from awareness breeds reactivity. Connection with awareness invites response.

    📷 Shot handheld with Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH.
    🛠️ VSCO (06, 2.5) + Lightroom (clarity +7 + watermark).

    When you’re connected, you pause. You listen, and ask better questions. You observe your own patterns, and stop attacking or blaming others for theirs.

    When you’re connected, you become a space of calm in a world of storms rather than another disruptive, destructive wave in a sea of chaos.

    When you forget how to listen inward, when you stop grounding in self-awareness, you lose your anchor.

    Check yourself before you wreck yourself. It’s not about being perfect. It’s about being aware.

    Pause, and come back to yourself.

    Reconnect, and become the clarity you’ve been searching for.

    Remain connected, and become the clarity that helps to guide others home.

    🕊️💜✨

  • Someday…or Night

    Someday…or Night

    entry ten — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.


    Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta),
    a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed.  Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).

    My mother always told me, in every possible circumstance a child might ever need encouragement, “Do your best, and leave the rest. It’ll all come right some day or night.” 

    It was a line from “Black Beauty, by Anna Sewell.”  

    She was a third grade teacher, a grammar Nazi, and a mother trying her damndest to connect with me and, well, do her best. 

    And, as ornery and difficult a young person as I could often be, she never knew that I believed her…

    …even when I forgot I did.

    Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta),
    a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed.  Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).

    There was so much distance between us as I struggled through high school with her overbearing “sin obsessed” guidance, and she struggled to save my soul. 

    Even when the days were so long, when they bled into each other, and when the nights felt like punishments I hadn’t earned, as her brain and body were swallowed by Alzheimer’s. 

    Even when the thread broke, or maybe I cut it, when she died…I honored and nursed a clean, holy wound in the shape of freedom for both of us, from past grievances, from debts yet unpaid, from fear, from tension, from aching hearts and confused minds and the evils of that horrific disease.

    Still, that line stayed, like a soft breath. Like a healing balm. Like the part of her that couldn’t leave, because it lived in me.

    Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia hirta),
    a fading ember of late summer—graceful even in decay, still holding the shape of sunlight after the bloom has passed.  Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A10PRO), Mextures (personalized texture formula: MEZPZZC), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).

    Do your best. Not more than that. Not perfection. Just presence. I tried, truly. 

    Leave the rest… The story. The tragedy. The one who couldn’t stay.

    It will all come right…and maybe it already has.

  • Petalweight (Yield)

    Petalweight (Yield)

    entry nine — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.


    Weevil (Meibomeus musculus), a quiet laborer of the forest and the fields…carrying the weight of being, petal by petal. 
    Vision: Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S.
    Tools: VSCO (KP3), Mextures (personalized texture formula: QBHASZK), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).

    There is a kind of presence that doesn’t announce itself.

    No sound. No shimmer. No need to be noticed. Just a body doing what it does.

    Clinging to a petal, breathing the moment, belonging to the quiet. Sometimes, that is the work.

    Not saving, not proving. Just being.

    And somehow…it shifts the entire forest, the entire field.

    For some souls, there is a burden in being seen —not the fear of visibility, but the ache of being misread when presence itself was the offering.

    This is the shape of a soul made for stillness.

    This is the purpose of a hidden heart.

  • Crop

    Crop

    entry eight — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.

    Bicolor Bush Clover (Lespedeza bicolor), a humble member of the wild clover family. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (HB3 PRO), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).

    Zooming in, pulling back, reframing…
    …it’s the practice of shifting perspectives.
    Cropping is discernment.

    It’s important in photography,
    and in life.

    Focusing closely.
    Examining the details.
    Leaning into the moment.
    Studying the layers.
    Trying different angles—
    then pulling back to take in the whole.

    I do this with my art, my edits, my healing…
    …and my priorities.

    Bicolor Bush Clover (Lespedeza bicolor), a humble member of the wild clover family. Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (HB3 PRO), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).

    Cropping, and discernment.
    Both are framing what matters—
    letting the noise blur into the background.

    It’s not just a gift,
    not just a tool.
    It’s a process.

    With practice, it teaches clarity through choice.
    Over time, it becomes discernment embodied.

    Cropping alters perspective.
    It is learning to see again…

    …as many times as it takes to actualize the vision.

  • Black-Winged Hush

    Black-Winged Hush

    entry seven — scattered light, fractured grace: a quiet archive of light, loss, and what remains.

    Black Bee (Melissodes bimaculatus). Lumix GX7 + Panasonic Leica DG Macro-Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH. MEGA O.I.S., VSCO (A8 PRO), Lightroom Mobile (watermark only).

    Even the smallest life—

    black-winged, humble, and intent on its task—

    carries beauty enough to hush the noise of the world.

    We rush past so many moments like this.

    Moments where grace is not loud, not dramatic, not grand or sweeping.

    Just… present. Quiet. Steady.

    Doing the sacred work of being alive.

    To sit still long enough to witness it is to remember.

    Not some distant, complicated truth, but a very simple one:

    The miracle is not in the event.

    It’s in the noticing.

    Grace doesn’t need permission to land.

    It only asks that we pay attention.

    💜✨