Aurora

Fetus and Dragon Sunrise,  Palawan 2012

Spiritual growth is so much the artist’s journey. Our inner world is soul art, our lives its heartfelt canvas. Like true artists, we have to find that delicatebalance between willfulness and surrender—whento act, when to still. We have to allow our form tochange as intuition demands. Home is where the art is. Chaotic Magnificence… - Jeff Brown

It's 3 am. I just came out from a bad flu.  My eyes are a bit bruised but I'm wide awake from all the sleeping for the last 3 days to recover. I shouldn't keep my eyes open yet something from the tradition of storytellers that document the stories of humanity urged me to write.

When I was in gradeschool, I used to wake up to a dawn procession called the Aurora which my Lola (grandmother) would join in from her living room. She would light a candle and open her windows. I would stay still in my bed or join her and curl up with her on her rocking chair often in awe at this dawn time ritual with people carrying a statue of Mary with candles, rosary beads, and flowers.

This Aurora ritual has never left me.

In my university days, I would be able to study for my exams with a clear head at this time of dawn after an early evening's rest. Years on, I would find that the best time to work on my paintings is at this beautiful time.

At about 3 am is also the time when I would wake up with deep epiphanies, my own conversations with God. I haven't talked to God lately. I have broken up with him many times over the last two years as I did my inner work. But this early morning, I found myself just like in my early 20s waking up at this time feeling the embrace of the universe. I cried like I never cried before but also just cried like I did before. However this one is new. I was finally releasing deep anger at God.

I once asked elders who God was when I was young and I was warned not to question God's identity as it will be considered blasphemous. Having followed different yoga, tantra, and mystical paths since I was 17, I thought I had some kind of idea who this being was.

Who is God is a clear voice within me now ungraspable but graspable. But that's just who s/he is as s/he has always been. Sometimes this is a love-hate relationship. I hate the silence. I loved the signs. I hate the new direct messages. I love the affirmations. I hate the dark night of the soul. I loved the epiphanic break throughs like this one. Just like this - heart opening, tear-jerking release. It's a dance of call and answer.

Maybe its the chaotic magnificence as Jeff Brown says. Maybe its kundalini rising as my friend and inner dance teacher Pi would say. All I know is that its all part of my own shifting. I have to thank myself for the huge leaps I've done over the last two years. Saturn return: your orbiting journey is almost done.

I haven't been awake at this time with a good rest behind me. Most often lately its the time that I would catch some sleep. It's really a nice feeling to be in this peaceful zone. While studying an introduction to the I-Ching and oriental cosmology, I learned that this time is the spring time where wood energy prevails, a time that monks find best to wake up and meditate. The day actually begins here.

Maybe this is a trailmarker for a new day. 3 days of flu broken at 3 am on the 3rd day.
Not bad for a mini resurrection.

But then again, everyday, we die and get reborn again. It's a matter of how much one pays attention to this process. It may not be related but it's interesting how the recent shootings in Aurora, Colorado showed the Dark Knight movie. Maybe its saying that the dark night comes in tandem with the breaking of dawn.

Many say we are entering a time of great change and this change involves all these inner shiftings and lots and lots of dark nights. It is in these dark times when we are meant to shine our light for ourselves and for everybody.

Taking it one rebirth at a time.

“Death is not extinguishing the light; it is putting out the lamp because the dawn has come.” - Rabindranath Tagore

This large angel cloud appeared above Sunday's prayer vigil in Aurora, Colorado. Photo by Crystal Fuller as shared by
Angel Intuitive Doreen Virtue

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Now as Jack Kornfield says "After Ecstacy, the Laundry" : What to do with 3 days of backlog to wrap up an aid report, prepare for an international conference, and finish a mural for a streetchildren shelter?

Bathala Na. Bathalanawa.

Seeds of Dreams

I was going through my Father's stash of photos today while celebrating his birthday at his new house. Found these 3 photos that I've been looking for memorable snapshots of.

It was only when I got home that I realized the significance of these 3 images. I'd love to believe that the seeds of dreams have been planted more than 2 decades ago shaping the path leading me to a life work of art within the earth and heart :-)

Heart Angel for Flores de Mayo (1985), Earth worker harvesting beans at my mother's farm (1985), Little Artist  on my first  painting workshop (1988)

My Feet as Compass

When we walk like (we are running), we print anxiety and sorrow on the earth. We have to walk in a way that we only print peace and serenity on the earth... Be aware of the contact between your feet and the earth. Walk as if you are kissing the earth with your feet. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh ~

Two weeks ago, I joined the 3rd Kapwa Conference. It was an international gathering and symposium for Schools of Living Traditions and an academic conference on indigenous knowledge, systems, and practices. This was held at Baguio City, Philippines from June 25-July 2. 

The view from my apartment facing the Alpine Glaciers from last year's summer program (L)
The beautiful Baguio horizon, pine trees, plus freezing hands and feet (uncaptured) (R) 

Upon arriving, I immediately got the cosmic joke - I was in a parallel dimension! There are important reasons behind why I was in a gathering of indigenous elders, wisdom and culture bearers, artists, and healers and not in my Graduate School's campus on the Alpine mountains for the 2nd year of my Masters summer program. I am in the process of outlining them out for formal purposes (updating my donors and supporters for one) but the pine trees and the freezing mountain weather were enough to remind me about my true intentions for being where I was and not somewhere else. Knitted mittens, layered clothing; pine trees; and staying at a European styled apartelle were enough to tell me there is no difference: both places taught about transformation inside the earth, heart, and art school - only that its taught by ancient wisdom bearers 6 hours ahead and probably hundreds of feet lower in altitude. 

On the last day of the conference, a gathering of organizers, volunteers, and guests took place at the house of one of the conference co-founders- the amazingly inspiring Katrin de Guia. An inspiring speaker and advocate of indigenous knowledge applied in expressive arts therapy Mila Anugluan- Coger led a circle of dreamweaving as we shared our reflections together. Looking back, it was healing for me to participate in this circle and interact with her as she is taking her Ph.D in Expressive Arts Therapy at Lesley University where most of my professors at the European Graduate School teach too. So it also felt that I was still in the same classroom up in Switzerland despite that I was really thousands of miles away. 

Together as a circle, we did some toning and came up with a beautiful spirit song which I recorded for us to remember by. 






Escaping to a garden outside the house, I spent some time to put into words what I experienced. I ended up finding a perfectly shaped circle blister on my left foot and drew a red simple mandalic flower sun design around it. Perhaps it was truly what "embodied knowing," an indigenous wisdom in practice, truly meant. The sacred most often speaks in symbols first then it is our human gifts that shape them into language, culture, and meaning. I honor the sacred wisdom the unspoken is "trying to say." Maybe I'll let my feet do the talking :-)

To this day, I am still listening on how to put my reflections and learnings to share together. This is starting to become more of a normal process for me after a deeply moving experience. It's not about being with more than 30 tribes from all over my country and around the world that dumbfounded me but its about how our shared humanity and shared divinity reflected through the universal yet uniquely expressed symbols, myths, metaphor and  wisdom continue to reveal themselves in my thoughts and interactions with nature, conversations, places up to now. In short, its speaking to me in so many levels particularly about how and where my life-work will take shape. Maybe that's what the message of the circular blister on my left foot is about. I'm still boggled as to why my right foot doesn't have one as I was wearing a matched pair of hiking sandals the whole time. Interestingly, my left foot bears my  only birthmark: some brown freckled speckles sprinkled across my foot. Perhaps this is a mythological Achilles heel story that I have yet to discover.

Time is also a factor for the sharing while I balance my commitments with packing (or rather unpacking as I'm letting go of so many things and attachments (materially and metaphorically) for Maia Earth Village. I have to finish a temp job for a bilateral aid program to support me financially. Most urgently, I am preparing for a presentation and an interactive art installation on art and peacebuilding for an upcoming 11th ASEFUAN Annual Academic Conference and General Meeting on Conflict Transformation and Peaceful Settlement of Disputes in Asia and Europe in August.

So for now, I'm sharing photos of my beautiful experience through this Facebook Album: Kapwa Dreamweaving and this beautiful video of Maria Oyog Todi, a T'boli elder and culture bearer guiding me and a Japanese guest on how to dance their dance. The T'bolis were one of the first indigenous groups that inspired me about the sacred process of artmaking. Weavers wait for a dream to guide them on a design to be woven on their Tinalak cloth. Thus, they are called "Dreamweavers." 

Maybe the feet's message was made for dancing first! More deep reflections to come. 

Dreamweaving Part 1

This originally started as a post to update my Dream Projects page and it ended up as another river of words about life and art.


I love dreaming out loud. After months of not updating the Dream Section section of my blog, I finally had time and inspiration to declare my dreams again. My first instinct was to dive into a long, long list of what I want to do. I had to stop myself and take long walks before I got to the moment of writing these down. 

For years I usually manifest things this way: I make lists. I do some mapping. I day dream. Sometimes I self sabotage then I retrieve the dream again in a heroine's dramatic mode. Afraid of losing my chances, I jump on every opportunity that comes my way.

It must be growing older and having faced a lot of that inspired me to slow down and to transform the way I embody the role of being an artist. What is clear right now is working on  Creativity and Dreaming. 

On Creativity

As my art evolves, I am more and more focused on the word CREATIVITY and the process of CREATION and CO-CREATION. The word "art" now becomes a piece of creativity manifested. But if you ask me, I would rather use the word CREATION. 

In my local language (Tagalog), we refer to art as "sining" and it is used in a broad context to embody a practice that involves visual arts, music, dance, and literature; unlike the popular use of the word in English to exclusively refer to the visual art forms compartmentalized from music, literature, etc.  

In tagalog, there is no verb in reference to artmaking. We use the word creation to describe an active form of artmaking through the word "paglikha." This comes from root word "likha" or creation. A creative person is called "malikhain." Creativity is "pagkamalikhain." We refer to God as "Manlilikha" or Creator. Unless referred to the medium one does "painter - pintor, music - musikero, etc.," the general term for artist is also called "manlilikha." Artmaking therefore is a sacred process, a shared Divine experience. There is no word for co-creation implying that it is integrated in any creative endeavor. One beautiful word I love using when designing or conducting a workshop is the Tagalog version of Facilittor which is "Taga-pagpadaloy." It literally means - "one who flows."

Tagalog means Taga-Ilog: One who is from the River, who lives by the river

On Dreaming

I love this word. Dreaming is a creative process considering its two beautiful ways of usage : a real life movie from the subconscious as we sleep and an active process of visioning what is to come. 

Sacred texts and mythological stories across cultures involve turning points with dreams. For many of my country's indigenous weavers like the T'bolis, dreams are considered as bearers of images or messages for an upcoming weaving design. Life is guided by Dream Time. 


For many inventors, innovators, evolutionaries, light workers, and agents of transformation - the vision goes hand in hand with dreaming. Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said those beautiful powerful lines four decades ago which we can now thread towards Barrack Obama, the first African American President of the United States of America. Imagination is held by dreams that help transform or manifest from what has passed and what is currently present.

So where doe these two words bring me now?

Where I am as an artist and light and life worker is about expanding into the how creative elements: medium, process, and message come into integration. 

I have always been a dreamer and I am still learning how to align with my birth vision to manifest my intentions to reality. This is all part of the co-creative process we are beautifully gifted with as human yet divine beings. I believe that the manifestation starts with a dream that has the potential to flow through our bodies and with the right people, places, and circumstances around us. 

The dream makes itself known with a seed, a big bang, a light bulb, an awakening moment... Eureka! Now I know yet I don't know. Wisdom speaks in paradox yet speaks clearly only with simple elementary words. Maybe I should stop philosophizing on how to end this post. For now, it just is. The dreaming continues beyond this sentence's period.