I laid in the grass today at the park for nearly 3 hours.  Getting my luxes in and recharging in the sun.  I couldn’t help but notice that the nail art (here’s that a-word again) on my toes mirrored the sky.  White wisps on a bright blue palette. 

I am a metaphorical thinker.  My brain quickly finds interesting correlations that often lead me to profound self-discovery.

It occurred to me that what was below me…my foundation (my feet) perfectly matched what was above me (the sky).  It reminded me of a an esoteric concept and wisdom saying that I’m sure you’ve heard before.  “As above, so below.”

The idea is that what happens on one level of reality also happens on every other level.  The microcosm mirroring the macrocosm.

I immediately thought of where we find ourselves on this day on the planet.  People from all over the planet are uniting and drawing lines in the sand concerning belief systems.  Many are shucking off archaic and barbaric ideals while others are trying to fortify and prop up thought processes and values that no longer serve humanity for its highest good.

If you didn’t know it…the universe has been discovered to be in perpetual expansion.  It is an infinity unto itself.  And, that rate of expansion has been found to be doing so more rapidly. Its speeding up.  Simply put we are evolving.  If that’s the case why does it feel and look like we are devolving?  I mean, there is chaos on a global scale.  It is this chaos that “has” already made way for a new order that is now being revealed.  And, we should all be thankful for that.  We are entering a time where there is no more room for apathy or cognitive dissonance.   This is because the universe (and no this isn’t my substitute word for God) has better things in store for us. 

If you have perception.  If you have discernment.  Spiritual discernment.  Your ear has been to the ground for a while now.  You knew…this…was coming and you probably also understood what it would make way for.  We are in birth pains.  If you’re a Jesus person I hope this reminds you of the scripture, “For we know that the whole of creation has been groaning together with labor pains up until now.” (Romans 8:22) And, “creation is longing for the revealing of who the children of God really are.” (Romans 8:19). 

This day.  This day more than ever before I know that the children of God are not who the fundamental, protestant, western, American church tells us they are.  And, in light of this its really no wonder that the creation groans over the urgency for true revelation.  What should grace the tops of churches in America isn’t steeples but rather a large sign that says, “Ichabod.”  The glory has departed.  The cloud of Presence has moved on.  I don’t know about you…but I am determined to move on and let go of traditions that do not serve humanity as a whole.  Because let’s face it.  Christ came to and still does serve humanity as a whole.  And, any ideal that is not in line with that has no part in my life.  If that flies in the face of traditional doctrine I can only say, “good.”  I’m moving with the cloud.

Ahhhh…these clouds.  So expansive.  So light. Oh, these toes…part of my foundation that just happen to mirror this beautiful sky.

I am thankful to say that for me…on this day lying in the park “as above, so below.”

Namaste,

Cozett

#archetypalenergy #asabovesobelow #esoteric #wisdom #discernment #humanity #renaissancepark #chattanooga #tennessee #chatttown_poet #hear #listen #discern

Got up around 6 am because I have so many photo ideas on my mind. Drove around the city and peered at the various works of art that can be found around #chattanooga. It has occurred to me before that as you behold art you simultaneously behold yourself. The image you look at may have no relation to any context you’ve ever been familiar with. But, it is in the quiet moments as your eyes do their first lighting on what you’re looking at that you yourself are sifted. We all have filters (pun intended) and with every visual we encounter those filters are engaged and begin to create an emotional environment inside us that no one else is privy too. The seen creates the unseen. The tangible creates the intangible. I think its important to pay attention to our visceral responses when we behold visual art. If what you see sparks joy….ask yourself why. If it makes you uncomfortable…ask yourself why.

Our world….is awakening. And, we are all experiencing growing pains as a collective. I’m connected with you…and, I am you. Whether that sparks joy in you or makes you uncomfortable. And, the same applies for me. The MOST powerful realization a human can have is to look at another human and understand that person is…you. When you behold people that way a divine shift occurs in your perception system. You begin to go from 3-dimensional thinking into 4th and 5th dimensional thinking. It’s in those greater dimensions where effective problem-solving is birthed. In the greater dimensions we are already experiencing the cohesive humanity we are longing for and fighting for right now. The trick to get to there from here?
Understand that every person who crosses your path is you.

This kind of understanding takes you beyond the chore of empathy. Because when you see others as yourself there is an innate compassion that that finds its expression in your opinion of who or what you’re beholding. There is no hard work that needs to be employed in order to muster the capacity to hold space for the other person. Its effortless, natural, organic and free flowing. It simply is because you simply are.

If there is one thing I hope to accomplish in my creative pursuits it is to help others conceive within themselves higher levels of understanding, thought, compassion and creativity.

Within the next two months I will be doing photoshoots of families. I am single. I don’t have children. I’m white. Economically, I teeter between lower middle class and…poverty. But, as I prepare I am already recognizing that I am the child playing in the water at the Tennessee Aquarium. I am the young man embarking on his adulthood. I am the proud mama and the proud papa. And, they are me. On the surface this doesn’t seem so. Our contexts and our lived experiences may be worlds apart and completely unrelatable to each other. However, we are all energy. And, thermodynamics teaches us that energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system.

If you’re a Jesus person hopefully this first law of thermodynamics rings familiar. Jesus said in John 14:20- On that day [when that time comes] you will know for yourselves that I am in My Father, and you are in Me, and I am in you.”

I believe this…is that day. This time of knowing has come. And, if you don’t recognize and embrace and understand that I am in you and you are in me then you will miss out on a large part of your purpose for being on this planet at this time.

My art. My beholding of the art of others. It teaches me by circumventing words. It teaches me through instinct. It sharpens my intuition and perception of realities greater than 3D. This is where art takes me. And, I hope its where my art will take you.

See ya on the flip side.

Love,
Cozett

The stars were flung
The chords were strung
The moon was hung

And day turned into night turned into day turned into night
And the timing wasn’t right

The birds have sung
I climbed a rung
And filled a lung
With the breath of you
And the other I filled with dew

And these days have rolled on in to night
And the years have passed by
And here I am caught in between
Looking into the gray
As I release a sigh…sigh.

I wonder why.
Why after all these years it’s always the same.
Pain upon pane upon pain upon the panes of my life.
I wish they were stained glass or chartreuse or something.

The stars were flung
The chords were strung
The moon was hung
And I am stung

By your silence
By your apathetic violence

All of these words came to me today in my meditation.  If you are an empathic person you understand that the ability to “feel with” those around you can be very draining.  And, after a while that draining can be damaging.  The climate of America 2019  is one of hurry and busyness and the work that really counts…rarely gets done.  Here’s what I mean.  In the hustle and bustle of life we often find ourselves exchanging our energy, our emotion, our focus and our time for things that do not sow back into our lives in  meaningful ways.  Sure our bills may (or may not) get paid due to our busyness but our sense of peace, our health and relationships suffer.  Now that is just in speaking about busy lives.  But, what about busy lives that are filled with trauma, toxic people, unfulfilling work environments and the like?  It’s doubly hard to put your hand to the plow of each new day knowing that on top of the pressure to produce you also have to appear to be “fine.”  If this is a prolonged state of being it leads to “toxic shock.”  I think you probably gather at this point I’m not talking about a bacteria that needs to be treated with medication.  But, it is something just as sinister.  And, it does require treatment.  Follow me?  When we go through prolonged periods of stress our nervous systems can develop inflammatory patterns and lose it’s seamless ability to flow and heal us the way it once could.  Restoration is needed and in this hurried society that is hard to find.  And, that is why I’m thinking on the verbiage of “toxic shock.”  It’s a place where our nervous systems, our mental and emotional health and physical health all become affected. In short we go into shock and end up living in survival mode.  We do just the necessary things to survive because to do more means more energy expenditure.  Think about when someone shocks a pool.  This is what I’m getting at.  The level of chlorine becomes so high that it kills off all things organic.  In the same way, stress if left unchecked can rise to levels that kill things within us.

When I think about empathic people I get the visual image of dark, rich, healthy soil.  A medium in which you can grow just about anything and know that whatever is produced will be hardy and abundant because of the material in which it was cultivated.  Have you ever wondered why you attract people who feel so draining to you?  It’s because replete attracts deplete.  And, I am convinced that once someone who is depleted learns how to focus the energy of their empathy towards themselves true healing and replenishment take place.  It is in that place that we are most effective and equipped to help the depleted people in our lives.

The practice of grounding has been popping up in my daily grind.  I hear people mention it.  I’ll see an article on social media about it.  My mother will suggest that I do it and so on.  My mother was the first person I’d heard about this from.  We have ended many of our conversations with her saying, “Zett, you need to go out and get you some cool mountain air and walk around barefoot and let your feet feel the earth.  It’ll be good for you.”  Albeit I didn’t understand at the time what she meant and I paid little attention to it because I used to think some of her free spirit ways were hokey at best. But, here I am at forty and I’m desperate to ground.

We understand that all things are made of energy.  ALL.  Rocks, water, human beings, the cells that comprise us, the sun, the moon, the shops in your city, and the skyscrapers in New York.  Big to small all things are energy.  Just as a tree sends down it’s roots into the earth so that it’s energy mingles with the energies of rocks and soil we can also benefit from planting our bare feet onto the earth and allowing pent up energies to flow through us and discharge.  Empathic people are like lightning rods.  But, if we do not have a ground then all the negative energies that hit us end up stuck in us.  Like a lightning rod is grounded to render an explosive charge harmless, so in grounding we are able to disperse the emotional turmoil of life as it enters our system.

But, what if it’s too cold or there are no good opportunities to get my bare feet onto the earth?  Grounding doesn’t have to be just finding some grass to walk around in.  It’s any practice that brings you back to your center.  It’s any practice where you can feel the scattered and fretful parts of you coming back together in harmony.  This can be in prayer, breath work, or anything that helps you find your center.

Questions I hope you’ll ask yourself and that I am asking myself is:

1.  Am I remembering that I myself am earth and that I reside in an energetic container?
2. In what ways am I feeling led to ground myself?
3. What are some ways to ground myself?
4. Have I been experiencing toxic shock but putting the acknowledgement of it out of my mind because I’d rather address seemingly more pressing things?
5. At what point will I begin honoring my own emotions as opposed to juggling the emotions of others?

Here’s to grounding.  Here’s to just being.  Here’s to being successfully and healthily empathic.

After a long running series of crises I realized that I needed to take control of my feelings as an empathetic person.  I understand that feeling the feelings of others has been very toxic and defeating for me.  But, I’ve never thought deeply enough about having options when I am bombarded by other people’s emotional traumas.  Can you relate?

Empathy is a gift.  Not everyone has it.  And for many who do they’d rather not have it.  Empathy when used appropriately is meant to be very life giving and refreshing.  It is like a life line that can be thrown from one human to another to help give clarity in the midst of struggle.  But, sometimes as empathic people we find ourselves caught in a vicious cycle of throwing life lines to people who don’t want them.  You read that right.  Some people want to drown.  It’s part of our brokenness.  And, when we are constantly tossing life lines our arms get tired.  See where I’m going with this?  At some point we will run out of life lines if we toss all we have.  And, then what’s left for us?  What’s left for the people in our lives who would readily grab a hold of the line we throw them?  At some point as an empathic person we are faced with the decision of helping at the cost of our own sanity or closing ourselves off in an effort to preserve ourselves.  We find ourselves exhausted, disillusioned, disappointed, and not helping anyone.

I’ve been describing to my friends the situation I have found myself in as an inundation of unrelenting crises.  I’ve felt out of touch with reality due to a deep sense of despair because the life lines I’ve thrown have been despised.  And so as a business person, a friend, an aunt, a daughter, and all the other roles that make up my life I’ve had to cover over the trauma I’m experiencing in order to not be seen as out of control and sad as I really have been.  Have you experienced this pressure?  There are consequences for weakness am I right?  If I’m too tired or unwell to work I lose business.  If I’m too tired or unwell my relationships become strained.  Then comes the pressure from the loss of business and strained relationships and so there is a cruel momentum that builds.  And, at the root of all of this is this seeming libelous nature we have of feeling deeply.  It’s time to take back our power.  It’s time to protect our gift.  If we are to thrive and use our gift of empathy to make the world a better place we have to stop ignoring and glossing over our conscience that is screaming at us because we are prioritizing everyone but ourselves.  I am worth my own priority.  You are worth your own priority.

On the element of fire.  As a metaphor and in a lot of proverbial talk fire is often used to describe crisis and devastation.  You might hear someone say they are, “going through the fire.”  As I read about this foundational element I understood the principal that fire essentially brings back to the beginning all material matter to it’s basic element.  Can you remember who you were before the fire?  Do you remember having a particular vibrance or degree of focus that you simply do not have now?  Can you attribute the loss of vibrance and focus to the pressures that surround you?  If fire brings back to the beginning all material matter to it’s basic element then that means it has the power to return us to our core.  It can serve to bring us back to who we were before the crises.  I don’t know about you but I liked myself better before I became divvied out to people who didn’t value me or my offer of help.

It has occurred to me that with everything burned down to the ground around me it is then that I can begin to discover that which is waiting to be created.  It is when the soil is blackened by seeming destruction that it finds the nourishment and clarity for new life to spring forth from it.  Out of blackened soil and ashes sprouts of green renewal come.  There is a poignant contrast that death serves and life serves death which ultimately serves life.  Feel free to read that again.  Fire is the energetic fuel that burns the way for new growth and new expressions of life to happen.

The questions I’ve asked myself this morning and that I hope you will ask yourself particularly if you are an empathic mess is this?  Do I believe in my passions or am I sabotaging myself by spending all my best energy on rescuing others because I do not value myself the way I should?  What passions when fueled properly in me burn the brightest?  What is the fuel or passion that burns the cleanest in me?  Remember our bodies can function on junk food and health food.  When we are burning dirty fuel we may be going but we won’t be going far or feeling well while we are journeying.  What passion causes me to burn cleaner and longer?

For me that passion is self-expression.  It is in expressing myself that I feel a sense of freedom, confidence and a restoration of what has been stolen from me by fear.  Today I am meditating on fire and as I survey the blackened earth around me I look eagerly for the green and tender shoots of a potential life I may not have gotten to experience had it not been for the fire.  The soil of my life is at peak perfection because of the burn.  With all things lost and the ground cleared I can with great expectation imagine what lies beneath that has been waiting to be created.

Tusks and bone

Release of the moan

Dry and weary and looking like leather

Eyeballing the sky for the curious weather

Its liable to roll on through or blast on by. Either way, she’s likely to cry.

June bugs, May flies, Whippoorwill schmooze.

Dancing in the woods in chalkboard shoes.

She doesn’t miss a detail.

Picture taken on Signal Mtn in Tennessee