When I began the follow-up book to my first memoir, though I knew where I was taking it, I wasn’t really sure what the story was.

But how can that be, you ask. It’s your story! It’s what you lived – it’s a memoir!

Sure, I lived it. I even took notes. I can tell you what happened when. And sometimes I can tell you the whys. But that’s not the same as knowing what the story is. What it means on the inside.

Oh, I knew it was about how I got into art and why it became my life’s passion. I saw how it changed me, and how it changed the way I saw the world and saw myself. And I knew that it led me to a particular mind-bending, mind-altering awakening that took years to fully understand.

But what actually happened???

Well, I told myself to keep writing. Just keep going with it and see what came out. Because I knew that Surrender happened, in larger and larger ways. This surrender was the opposite of giving up. The kind I’m talking about brought me deeper inside. It was more like allowing myself to be guided by an inner voice that took me beyond the ego. It was like I had to find myself first—through painting—and then I had to let go of that dearly won Self—in order to find my Soul.

That’s sort of it in a nutshell. But it was the story behind the story that I needed to understand and find a way to communicate.

I knew the process had to do with ascension. I spent a number of years writing blogs and doing a radio show called Art and Ascension. I think I was hoping I would come to a deeper understanding of what the two had to do with each other. Art was my life when I transcended my life, (if that makes sense) so naturally I thought that art had done it for me. But now that I’m writing the story, I see that art was just the particular medium that I was working with in those days.

What I am seeing now, is that the bridge I had to cross, the gap I had to leap across, was none other than my very own neck. Those five inches or so between my head and my torso—or my head and the place where my heart was located. What was in the way was the passage through my neck.

Or shall we say, the fifth chakra. The throat. The Voice.

As long as I was drawing or painting I could bypass the throat, bypass speaking, because visual art is a silent medium. It all happens inside.

I’ve told the story of why I was mute in my

first memoir. Now I’m writing about what had to happen in order to find that connection between heart and mind. A connection that led to bridging the gap between body and soul.

It’s interesting how every day brings us new stories as well as the continuation of the ones we are already familiar with. But there is always only the one story that matters, the one that stands out, the one that we came here to live. For me it started with bridging the gap between heart and mind.

Tuesday, March 27, 2012 BRIDGING WORLDS WITH POETRY

LINK to SHOW –