Tag: stillness

Babel, Babylon, and Beyond | The Same Old Serpent

Fall is already upon us. Nature seems to have gotten ahead of itself in recent weeks and the world around me, from my backyard to the vast wilderness, has already begun to experience the cycles of death and decay that the fall season brings to prepare us to enter a season of rest.

I’ve found myself meditating on this as I’ve observed the process and explored the details of it with my camera lately. Here are some of the fruits of these meditations — especially the ones I experienced while studying this little corner of my backyard that has been unseasonably filled with the tiniest but cutest mushrooms.

We so often use falling leaves as the symbol of letting go in autumn — but mushrooms tell another side of the story. They are decay in action, the hidden transformation beneath the surface, breaking down what once was so that life can be nourished again. They remind me that endings are not passive; they are active processes of renewal, just as necessary as the more obvious metaphors we tend to notice.

What follows in this post may not feel “light and pretty,” but the deeper work is still life-giving. Much of it was born from reviewing and processing my recently captured mushroom images — small, humble, not glamorous, yet quietly essential. These considerations and introspections, though they may seem less than inviting, have at their core offered me encouragement.

When you strip away the politics, money, and power structures, what you’re left with is a spiritual war. That’s the root of it all.

The “deep state,” the “new world order,” whatever names we slap on it in the 3D — those are just costumes. The real battle is what Paul described in Ephesians 6:

“We wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, powers, rulers of the darkness of this world, and spiritual wickedness in high places.”

In short, demonic and low-level forces that have always tried to mimic, distort, and overthrow the authority of God.

From Babel to Babylon to Rome to today, it’s the same rebellion recycled. Every empire that tries to erase God ends up becoming a shadow play of Babel — the same arrogance, the same lust for control, and the same inevitable collapse. The schemes shift form — empire, propaganda, deception, perversion — but the spirit behind them hasn’t changed.

It’s the same old serpent trying to counterfeit creation and place itself on the throne. But here’s the thing you need to remember, if you are of the light:

Humans can choose to align with that darkness or resist it. That’s why it looks like whole institutions, movements, or leaders are “possessed” by this agenda. But the truth is, they’re vessels. Some willingly, some blindly. And even when people align with darkness, they are never the true source of its power — and they are never beyond God’s reach if they repent of and rebuke the darkness.

The vessels may change, but the spirit behind them is the same counterfeit. It’s not their power. It’s borrowed power, and because the Devil is a trickster and a liar, it cannot outlast the sovereignty of Source truth.

That’s why, in the light of evil tragedy, the instinct to pray “God bless and protect” is attacked and pushed down so brazenly by some, and depended upon and held on to so tightly by others. The only way for the dark to win is to try to sniff out the light.

The only shield that stands against the dark, though, isn’t more politics, more anger, or more fleshly fight — it’s divine covering. That’s why light beings, from Buddha to Jesus, called us salt and light — because no matter how deep the night gets, even the smallest flame cannot be overcome.

Light exposes. Truth cuts through lies. And no empire, no “order,” no demonic hierarchy driving human ego has ever been able to out-rule the Source of the Universe: Love.

The darkness may rage, but it has already lost. Its decay is inevitable. Our task is not to fear its noise, but to keep carrying the light that cannot be extinguished.

if you are only just beginning to see the reality of this battle and sense that light, do not be afraid of how small it may seem in you. Even the faintest flicker is enough to drive back the dark. Nurture it. Walk with it. Let it steady your steps.

The path may feel unfamiliar, but you are not walking it alone. Every spark joins the greater flame, and together we rise.

Keep going — the light you carry is already proof that the darkness has not won.

xo,

c.

August 30, 2025
A Pause…

Yesterday on my hike, I paused for a long while. I gave nearly an hour of stillness and reverence to the nature around me, watching as butterflies moved over water and earth, dancing with the light in a way that spoke of freedom and trust. I sat with it — what felt like hours, though really only about thirty minutes — before stepping back onto the trail, camera in hand. As I rose from the creek to walk on, almost by instinct — more a photographer’s habit than intent — I pressed record.

Later, on the drive home, I found myself reflecting on that time as I listened to one of my favorite songs — one I’ve leaned on heavily in recent years, especially since the decline and death of the last of my human teachers and spiritual guides: “Oceans (Where Feet May Fail).” The two moments merged together in my heart.

After Ralph’s death, I finally understood where I should have been leaning all along. He — and my dad — had both tried to guide me toward this truth while alive in human form, but I depended too heavily on them. And if not on my mother in person, then on her prayers. It wasn’t until they were all gone, when I no longer had any “training wheels” to lean on, that it fully clicked at a conscious level:

I had been depending on God all along, hearing Him, even resisting His direct guidance. I just hadn’t been consciously aware of it. That’s when I realized my faith had never left me — it had only been muted, even scapegoated, by my dependence on the faith others carried.

It was only when I allowed this song to become a foundational prayer of my heart that His presence became tangible in a way I could no longer deny. The veil fell from my heart and my eyes, and through His grace I saw with a clarity I had once resisted — the kind of knowing that hurts, yet somehow makes the truth easier to embrace.

The lyrics of this song speak of stepping out into places where our own strength isn’t enough, and trusting God to steady us anyway. That truth became real to me after Ralph died — especially about a year later, when I found myself in a moment of decision: to choose what I merely wanted to believe, or to stand in what I knew was real.

I understood the magnitude of that choice. I knew it would break my human heart, and I knew it might stir misunderstanding, anger, and hurt in those around me. It was the hardest place I had ever stood. But I also knew it was time. Time to trust Him not only with my conscious mind, but with my open soul — my entire being. Time to leap.

So I did. I quietly — nay, silently — forgave all that needed forgiveness, and I let go of everything: past, present, and future… even the things I still and always will love, but that I knew could never take root in this life. For just over a year, all that mattered outside of physical survival — food, shelter — and caring for my son was solitude in His presence.

I chose God. I surrendered everything. And in that surrender, I rebuilt and reinforced boundaries — not only to protect what was holy from the evils that I knew would seek destroy it, but also to shield those who weren’t ready to walk the path of full and true surrender from the consequences of my choice to do so.

Almost immediately, things began to unfold around me — things I had long since lost hope for, or had no idea how to overcome or achieve, in my life. None of it happened exactly as I would have liked, nor in the timing I would have chosen, and almost nothing came about in the way I would have planned or orchestrated it. But that was the entire point of surrender.

And in that realization, I understood something deeper: I had spent years trying to explain surrender to others with words, but the example — living it out, letting God’s hand write the story — was far more important, and a far more powerful testimony for Him.

Butterflies have always been a reminder to me of my grandmother, and of the simplest analogies of metamorphosis and transformation. But now? What I see most prominently in their flight is this — so fragile, yet so fearless in the air:

They carry the story of loss and love, of veils lifted and prayers surrendered — of a journey where survival gives way to presence, and presence gives way to peace. And for all of us, just like these butterflies, it is only through full surrender to the grace and truth of something higher than ourselves that we can be — and will be — fully loved, fully supported, and able to flourish.

Here, I’ve paired them with the piano playing of the song and these reflections as a reminder to myself, and to anyone who reads this, that even when we feel small, it is faith that keeps us aloft. I share this in hope that it might offer whoever sees it a nudge of encouragement as we continue the journey God has given us — the one He has called us to submit to and surrender.

After decades of seeking, struggling, and trying to show and teach others (while really teaching myself), here’s what I know:

If we ever want to find purposeful growth or true peace, we must fully surrender to the creator and orchestrator of it all — to His will, not our own.

xo,

c.

🦋💜🕊️

You call me out upon the waters…
The great unknown, where feet may fail.
And there I find You in the mystery.
in oceans deep my faith will stand.

And I will call upon Your Name,
and keep my eyes above the waves.
When oceans rise,
my soul will rest in Your embrace…
for I am Yours, and You are mine.

Your grace abounds in deepest waters.
Your sovereign hand will be my guide.
Where feet may fail and fear surrounds me,
you’ve never failed, and You won’t start now.

So I will call upon Your Name,
and keep my eyes above the waves.
When oceans rise,
my soul will rest in Your embrace.
For I am Yours, and You are mine…

Spirit lead me where my trust is without borders.
Let me walk upon the waters,
wherever You would call me.
Take me deeper than my feet could ever wander,
and my faith will be made stronger
in the presence of my Savior.

Oceans (Where Feet May Fail), written by Joel Houston / Matt Crocker / Salomon Lighthelm.

August 27, 2025
I died, and it… was okay. | Notes from the Other Side

The First Illusion

How can an illusion free an illusion?

It can’t.

Impossible.

And yet, freedom itself is not impossible.

But what we often mistake for freedom is only substitution. We trade one mask for another, one prison for another, one dream for another.

Replacing one illusion with another does not set us free. It does not bring liberation. It simply shifts us deeper into what I sometimes call non-happening happening — the endless cycle of movement that looks like change but never truly is.

So where, then, is freedom?

Maybe it’s in understanding that simple truth.

Maybe it’s in seeing clearly that nothing we have called “freedom” has ever been real freedom at all.

Maybe that was the point, all along.

Is that awakening?

Awakening as Death

Awakening is the death of the familiar.

Because what is “familiar” to us — what we call “our life,” “our personality,” “our world” — is illusion.

Nothing we are familiar with is actually real. None of it is actually us.

We are not real. We are not what we think — what we are told — we are. And yet, here we are.

So when awakening comes, it feels like death. Because it is death — the falling away of everything we thought was “me.”

And without that death, there is no birth of what was real all along.

Meaning Before and After

Before awakening, there is no meaning of our own.

The only meaning available to us is what others have told us is meaningful. Parents, teachers, religions, governments, lovers, friends, enemies, cultures, systems — all of them have fed us their meanings.

And we absorbed them as if they were truth.

We were conditioned to believe meaning is handed down, not discovered.

We were punished for expressing anything antithetical.

Yes, that is a word. I did not make it up. I checked, as always, when I returned from the other side.

I digress.

Even when we think we are thinking for ourselves — are we? Have we ever? Do we even know how?

This is the prison of the familiar.

But those of us who have never been able to simply swallow it — those of us who have spent our lives being told we are crazy, too deep, over-analytical, antithetical — maybe we’ve always been a little closer to freedom.

Because we have always been with ourselves. We have always lived in the company of our own questioning. Our own introspection.

And that has saved us.

Moving Through Darkness into Light

My entire life has been this movement — through darkness into light.

And then again. And again.

I never stayed still in a 3D thought long enough to let ideology calcify around me. Never settled enough into the world’s definitions of reality to say: “Yes, this is it. This is reality. This is me. This is final.”

No.

I couldn’t.

Always, incessantly, I questioned. I sought. I chased myself. I chased I am.

Because each time I reached for that exactness, that rigidity, something in me would die. And something deeper would awaken.

So instead, I’ve kept moving. Through darkness, into light.

Through lies, into truth.

Through death, into life.

Over and over again.

And each time, what I found was not more of “me,” but less.

Until I began to understand that the “me” I thought was the center of the story was never the point at all.

And then, I actually… died.

And then, I came back!

What?

I know. That’s what I said, too.

And that is when the fullness of both illusion and irrelevance were clear to me, and the illusion and irrelevance… both shattered.

Freedom.

The Irrelevance of “Me”

“Me” is irrelevant.

Yet somehow, everything has always been about me.

That’s the paradox.

The small “me” — the conditioned self, the mask, the name, the history — means nothing. It is dust. Illusion. A temporary construction.

But the deeper “I” — the one who moves through the dying and the awakening, the one who is aware of even that dust falling away — that “I” has always been the ground of everything.

So in a sense, “me” does not exist.

And in another sense, “me” is all that has ever existed.

It was always… the I Am.

The Misunderstanding

This will be misunderstood.

Mostly by anyone and everyone who reads it.

If they even make it past the first few lines.

Because illusion defends itself. It doesn’t like being called what it is.

But misunderstanding doesn’t matter.

Life takes care of itself.

Life Happens

Even when you are not there to see it, life still happens.

Everything still unfolds — rivers flow, winds move, earth shifts.

Even if you choose inaction — even if you refuse to eat, drink, or sleep — things still happen. The body dies, yes, but death itself is a happening.

Because everything is always happening. Always in motion.

Even in stillness, there is happening.

And everything that happens has a result. Even nothingness produces consequence.

Life is self-correcting. Even ungrounded, it finds its own balance.

Sometimes that balance looks toxic. Sometimes it looks destructive. But it is always balance. Always motion. Always happening.

Death Must Occur

Death, then, is necessary.

Not the physical death we fear — not suicide, not the cutting short of the body’s days.

Though that death is really not all that bad, in my experience.

The dying part itself is no fun.

The death?

Too many words — words are funny for this one; there is not a word, other than death.

It is nothing, and everything.

Alpha, omega.

I am.

Here? What must die is the illusory self.

The self we defend, cling to, and worship without even knowing it. The self we call “me.”

That death is the doorway.

The Last Illusion

And yet, even here, there is a final paradox:

If the self is illusion, then death is illusion too.

Which means — death cannot free us either.

Because an illusion cannot free an illusion.

I do not fear.

Why is none of this terrifying to me?

Maybe because fear only exists where there is something to lose. And what I am losing was never real in the first place.

Maybe because I have already died a thousand small deaths, the fear has already been burnt out of me.

Maybe because I saw it:

That what I am cannot die.

And maybe that — quiet, simple, unshaken — is what freedom has always been.

✨

xo,

c.

August 22, 2025
Maintenance as a Creative | Not Broken, Just Built Differently
There’s this list — never written down in one place, but always hanging over me like the hum of an old fluorescent light. It’s made of things that should be straightforward:
- Back up the photos.
- Untangle the art supplies.
- Organize the sketchbooks.
- Move the ideas from my head to a place they can breathe.
- Put the words onto the pages.
- Clean the brushes.
- Organize the books.
- Organize the ideas.
But they are never straightforward. Not for me. Not for anyone whose mind has a thousand open windows and refuses to shut them just because the world prefers tidy blinds.

Society has found a name for this: ADD. ADHD. Neurodivergence. The diagnosis may be true for some, but here’s what I believe — it’s not a flaw. It’s the original wiring of the artist, the philosopher, the restless creative soul. It’s the part of the mind that won’t collapse into the assembly-line cadence of “normal life.” And that refusal has always been a threat to the people who rely on compliance.

This is why so many people who are miserable in the 9–5 grind feel like they’re constantly drowning. They fight from one day to the next just to keep their priorities in order, forgetting things, feeling scattered, wondering why life feels like a treadmill they can’t get off. It’s not because they’re lazy or incapable — it’s because they’ve been convinced, by family, by school, by the whole machinery of society, that their purpose is something other than what their soul already knows it to be.

They’re creatives, not conformers. But they’ve spent their entire lives pouring all their energy into staying afloat in a stormy, chaotic sea they were never meant to swim in. And not only has the world’s rules kept them from living their purpose, they don’t even remember what that purpose is… and they certainly haven’t been taught how to manage or maintain reality as a creative.

The problem is, the tools that work for type A people don’t work for type B people — and vice versa. But the world, the powers that be? They don’t want any creatives to thrive. Why? Because thriving creatives don’t line their pockets, and they can’t control what they can’t contain.

By the late ’90s and early 2000s, the strategy had shifted. They started medicating us into focus, pressing Adderall into palms while preaching “Say no to drugs” in the same breath. It wasn’t just hypocrisy; it was the perfect kind of doublethink. They couldn’t get my generation — Gen X, especially — to trade curiosity for clock-punching, so they tried to sedate the wonder right out of us.

It had started long before my generation. From the ’60s onward, every decade had its rebellion, but something about our era cracked the pattern wide open. We remembered how to slip back into our creative current, to say — without apology — that the system wasn’t built for us, and we weren’t going to rewire ourselves to suit it.

The boomer generation fell for it enough to punch the clock and hold the grind in both hands. But my generation? The ones who were school-aged in the ’80s and especially high school/college aged in the ’90s, raised as latchkey kids, left to our own devices? We had just enough space to keep our own ideas and double down on our self-expression. We rejected the rhetoric outright, but we still had the foundational work ethic, the grit, the stubborn drive to show up.

Unfortunately, that refusal was met with more control, more noise. By 2012, the hum had become a low, constant pressure. By 2016, the unexpected and unorthodox split the air like lightning, and nothing went back to sleep after that. By 2020 — and certainly by 2022 — largely thanks to Covid (which I will forever believe was a purposeful attempt to tighten the reins of control), the result wasn’t the obedience they hoped for. It was the opposite. People were waking up in numbers that mattered.

And here we are.
And here I am.

Sitting with a computer that holds hundreds of gigabytes of uncataloged photographs, each one a memory or a moment, all of them waiting for me to find them a home, if not on someone’s wall then in beautiful posts they can enjoy on their computer screens. Art supplies scattered in a way that makes them impossible to ignore and yet impossible to start sorting. Projects that live half in the physical world and half in my head, where they multiply faster than any app or planner could contain.

Digital tools have not tamed the chaos — they’ve only given it better hiding places. They’ve bred a new kind of loathing, a quieter form of procrastination and lethargy, one that makes the struggles of pre-technology life feel almost romantic in hindsight — like a fairy tale we didn’t know we were living, a beautiful dream we only learned to miss once it was gone.

This morning, I pulled a book from my shelf. It’s been there since Ralph died:

How to Be an Explorer of the World — Portable ~~Art~~ Life Museum.

I haven’t opened it yet. The title alone feels like someone has tossed me a rope, and I’m still deciding whether to pull. Even without turning a page, I intuitively, automatically know — as every creative does — what waits for me inside. The “Art” in the title has been struck through and replaced with “Life” for a reason: because that’s what it truly is. A reminder that we’re not here to live as curators of someone else’s museum, dusting off exhibits we never chose. We’re here to explore — to step into new rooms, to rearrange them until they make sense to us, to claim the space as our own.

And yet, here’s the truth I keep circling: maintenance is the perpetual loop where I always seem to get stuck.

Not the dreaming, not the making, but the keeping. The tending. The part where you have to hold the door open for what you’ve already made so it doesn’t fall apart while you’re off chasing the next thing. Somewhere in the tug-of-war between vision and upkeep, I drop threads. And when enough threads fall, the rest of my life starts tangling with them — homeschooling, daily meals, the way the pantry and the jumble of household chores scribbled on random scraps of paper looks like a metaphor for my brain.

This is the quiet battle no one talks about: how to keep creating without losing the things you’ve already created. How to tend your work without caging your mind. How to make room for the next idea without letting the last one turn to dust.

For people like us, maintenance is never just maintenance. It’s a negotiation between the world’s idea of order and the wild way our minds are built to move. And maybe the truth is that we aren’t the ones in need of repair.

Maybe the wiring was never the problem.
Maybe it’s the world that’s broken.

And what does all of this lead to? Yet another idea tossed onto the pile: maybe I should explore it in an in-depth series of articles here.

Ha.

For now, though, here’s a brief gallery of shots of my favorite tree — the oldest in my state, and one I’ve found myself referencing often lately. A couple are completely blown out. One feels especially dull to me. But while they may seem ordinary, even boring, to the casual observer, my passion for this incredible 400+ year-old short-leaf pine runs deeper than any skill or lens could ever capture.

And that’s exactly the point — this tree is the living embodiment of what I’ve been trying to say above. The uncreative soul may never understand the pull, the quiet reverence, or the way beauty lives in the details that can’t be measured or monetized. But to those who do understand, no explanation is needed.

I hope you enjoy these images as much as I enjoyed the process of shooting and processing them.

xo.

c.
August 13, 2025
The Line Is Always Open

A while ago, God asked me to step away from the noise. The purpose was not just to “rest,” but to enter true solitude. It wasn’t the kind of solitude that simply quiets the mind; it was the kind that strips away the need to convince, the compulsion to rescue, and the reflex to correct every error you see in the world.

When you live in that stillness long enough, especially when you begin to examine how deeply and how long you have been misunderstood in your own life, you finally grasp why no one was truly listening. You begin to understand:

The time for saving people by warning them and trying to teach them by telling them, begging them, or reasoning with them has passed. Just like with a child, there comes a time when you have to let them just keep screwing up until they learn. Experience is the only teacher that can accomplish anything fruitful.

At some point, you realize your job is and always has been to just be the example and let them hate you or blame you if they wish. The time now, and the purpose, is to show up anchored in truth, walking forward for the sake of those who are searching.

It is time to lead without any guarantee of who will follow, even if the path takes you to meet God alone. In the end, it all comes down to free will — and on the day you stand before Him, the only life and soul you will ultimately give account for is your own.

There is no bureaucracy at the Pearly Gates, no worldly process to pass through. Character witnesses don’t exist there. Your actions, your choices, and the truth of your heart and relationship with Source will speak for themselves to the one and only true Judge, whose authority is absolute and divine.

After months of this solitude, returning to public spaces feels different. The peace you find in solitude makes the digital clamor almost unbearable. You realize most people are not listening, not because they can’t, but because they don’t want to. They’ve been taught to fear the very silence that would heal them.

Still, there are always a few — maybe only two or three in a sea of millions — who are listening for a different kind of voice. And for them, we show up.

As I dipped a toe back into social media in recent weeks, I saw exactly why Source had been directing me as it had. Then, this morning, I saw a post on Instagram that reminded me exactly why I hesitate to return.

It was a meme “conversation” between two cats:

Cat 1: I don’t know who I am anymore.

Cat 2: That’s okay, everybody feels that way sometimes — the universe doesn’t have a support line or customer service to tell you how to fix the problem.

It’s clever on the surface, but the truth is: this is false.

Yes, everyone struggles with knowing who they are from time to time — that’s life. But somewhere along the way, society began labeling that struggle as illness, defining solitude as unhealthy withdrawal (thereby denying people access to the solution), and filtering human experience through a narrow definition of “normal” set by a handful of powerful voices.

And the part about the universe not having a “support line”? That’s the deepest untruth of all.

The universe — God’s creation, and the divine voice within it — is always speaking. The language is there for anyone willing to learn it. The signs are constant. I know this because I have been hated for decades for striving to be a translator.

The problem is not absence; it is illiteracy. Most people are not listening, or even looking, because they’ve been conditioned to tune in to the wrong frequency.

Depression is not always depression, but many times (and this was my experience) the immediate response to anything that feels unpleasant is to label it as depression and drug people to Timbuktu and back again. Honestly? That is the reason many people can’t hear and don’t care to try. Not all — but so many.

Lost is not always lost. Not every ache in the soul is a disorder to be medicated or pathologized. Sometimes it is simply disconnection from self and Source. The remedy is stillness, quiet, and the willingness to listen, and to then face and accept the truth — the very things people are told are “unhealthy” or “unproductive.”

Society has been trained to fear solitude and invisibility, to measure our worth in noise and visibility. And then, when society meets those who have rejected that conditioning — who have done the work through blood, sweat, and tears — it labels them as “too deep,” “too intense,” or “problematic.” Society dismisses them because the truth they carry is rarely the easy answer the world wanted to hear.

It’s willful ignorance, fed and nurtured by systems that benefit from a distracted, disconnected people.

Those same systems encourage shallow comforts and praise the very mechanisms keeping us miserable. And when you break free, find balance, and refuse to play the game, you’re labeled extreme or hateful — when in reality, you are simply walking in the narrow space between reality and insanity.

This was on my mind when I saw another post, one about the pressure of social media as an artist versus as a human being.

My response was simple:

I used to approach social media in the same way — letting the noise, the opinions, and the unspoken “rules” decide how and when I would show up. I carried the weight of strangers’ expectations until it felt heavy enough to crush my own reasons for creating.

And then I realized: the ones who made me feel small were not here for the same reasons I was. They were chasing validation, purpose, or attention they didn’t already have. I already had those things. I was meeting my own goals, my own standards. When I stopped caring if they “got it,” the pressure disappeared.

It is the same in life beyond the screen. Too many people are chasing money, status, and recognition, and too few are working from genuine passion or purpose. The work done from love will feed you. The work done to please others will drain you.

That’s why these two posts — one about “not knowing who you are” and one about the pressure of showing up as an artist — are really about the same thing.

The sickness of our time is not that we feel lost or uncertain; it’s that we’ve lost the ability, and in some cases the willingness, to listen to the truth that’s already speaking.

If you can hear it, you don’t need a “support line” from the universe — you’re already, and infinitely, connected to it. If you can’t hear it, no human voice will convince you until you quiet the noise long enough to try.

So for me? I keep showing up as I feel led to, as I hear God guiding me to. I keep sharing my experiences, through my photography, my art, and my voice, softly and quietly in shared expressions meant to be examples, not to convince the unwilling, but for the few who are listening and searching for a different kind of voice.

August 13, 2025
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.

🙏🦋🕊️

August 10, 2025
Wilderness

Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

The wilderness is the oldest, truest friend a human can have, both in body and in spirit.

Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

It teaches in silence.

Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

It speaks without words.

Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

It holds space for your becoming, your undoing, your return.

Lumix GX7, Panasonic Lumix 100-300mm Tele-Lens. Handheld. Lightroom (watermark and contrast).

And it is only “dangerous” when we forget to honor it, or refuse to learn from and respect it.

August 6, 2025
Be Still and Know | The Truth Before the Peace

Get still and be quiet.

Stillness leads to loving thoughts. Loving thoughts lead to loving actions. Loving actions lead to peace.

Stillness and quiet aren’t the goal. Together, they’re a doorway. Stillness creates the space for quiet to arrive. Quiet creates the environment for answers and understanding to materialize. But what shows up first might not feel quiet at all.

What you meet in the quiet depends on what’s been locked inside. If your default state is anxious, chaotic, or angry, then stillness might feel like it’s amplifying that and quiet might sound like it’s yelling at you. But neither is the case. Stillness and quiet are just revealing what is making things chaotic or difficult, and giving you a space to understand those things so that you can genuinely sort them out.

Stillness and quiet give us the opportunity to tame your own beasts, to take control of our own demons. This is what I mean when I reference “shadow work,” and it truly is necessary to experience the best version of yourself.

Stillness and quiet reveal what needs to be healed. Continued stillness and quiet help you begin to heal whatever those things are, as you sit with them through introspection, prayer, and slowly shifting perspectives that lead to deeper understanding.

It takes practice, and effort. Sometimes, weeks or months. Sometimes, years. It took you a lifetime to be conditioned and convinced that you’re who you think you are, most of which is a lie. Why would you expect to understand or overcome that in a single meditation session? Give yourself a break. Give yourself grace. God does…you can, too.

You’re not “doing it” wrong if you find stillness difficult. You’re being given the sacred opportunity to feel what’s true without distraction. It takes time, and practice, to reach the peace beyond the noise. It’s not rainbows and roses. It can be gruesome. It can be literal war within. But it is the journey itself—the journey to that place of self-revelation and understanding—that becomes the goal, the purpose, and the truest solution to your concerns and your suffering.

Rage, frustration, even self-loathing—they don’t mean you’re unspiritual or too broken to help yourself. They mean you’re carrying something too heavy to hold quietly. Stillness teaches you to listen to the noise around, and within, you—without becoming it.

It teaches you to observe rather than to embody…which is the first step in putting down what doesn’t serve you, what isn’t yours to carry, what isn’t in your control, what isn’t your fault. That is surrender—whether you view it as surrendering to God, to peace, to stillness, or to whatever name you need to give it.

Surrender is where we find wholeness. It is strength, not weakness. The greatest strength, I’ve come to understand. It is not giving up—it is giving over, releasing the grip of resistance.

Even if you’re struggling, if you want to master yourself, then continue to try. “Unless, of course,” as my greatest teacher and dearest friend, Ralph, told me many decades ago, “you’d rather require more energy of yourself than stillness and quiet will ever require of you, only to fight the same battles you’ve been losing for however long, that are utterly controlling—and ruining—your life.”

Continue to practice stillness and being quiet. Continue to meet yourself where you are. If you need help, many can help you—a teacher, a spiritual guide, or Source itself. Reach out. Ask for help. Don’t give up because it feels pointless or too difficult. Steadfastness is the key to any true success.

Eventually, with compassion, with repetition, with breath and grace, those heavy, dark, negative, and painful feelings shift. They start to speak softer. And what’s underneath them—the longing to be loved, heard, and understood; the exhaustion; the soul underneath the survival mode—that’s when loving thoughts begin to rise, because you’ve learned to give those things to yourself. You’ve learned to become everything you always felt was missing.

But you can’t skip steps.

Stillness and quiet is not where peace begins. It’s where truth begins. Peace follows the truth, but you have to face and accept the truth, first.

And that…requires stillness and quiet.

Be still and know that I am God…

Psalm 46:10

August 3, 2025
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.

Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH + VSCO (A6 PRO) + Lightroom (watermark only).

Lumix GX-7 + Panasonic-Leica DG Macro Elmarit 45mm f/2.8 ASPH + VSCO (A6 PRO) + Lightroom (watermark only).

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

July 25, 2025
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

July 24, 2025