We each live a life of wholeness. Everyone receives input from their unconscious when they sleep. We cannot survive without it. Some of us, however, intentionally develop an ongoing rapport with subconscious material, while others live their entire lives without consciously drawing upon these unseen connections. An exclusive focus on material reality obscures our intrinsic wholeness, but it is always there nonetheless. Furthermore, our cultural conditioning tends to encourage fragmentation and outer achievement, while inward success and a felt sense of connectedness may actually be more valuable.

Due to unrecognized trauma, many people are not able to access and live their full potential. Denial and repression serve as useful tools, when coping with situations that are too devastating to handle. Sometimes all of a person’s energy gets consumed with survival. Sometimes just staying alive is accomplishment enough. An innate capacity to find our way home to something larger than ourselves may lie dormant for a long time.

This drawing, titled Graffiti Light, was made on June 14, 2020. It channeled unresolved anger and grief, which had surfaced around my lack of support as a child. I had filled in the lines of my emotional scribbling, as if they were a child’s coloring book. The imagery that emerged out of this raw emotional intensity was so bright and easy, that I wondered if I had cheated. But in retrospect, it feels obvious that the drawing reflects subconscious material. It speaks to me about a juxtaposition of hard work and ease. Inner listening may bring forth an innocent ease. However, I have discovered that in general, effortless flow emerges out of years of initially hard, dedicated work. Behind most mastery, there’s a history of persistence.

A year later, I made a drawing that relates to this first one. It also dealt with unresolved childhood anger and grief; this time from bullying that turned school life into a harsh imprisonment when I was 13. I wasn’t trying to make a sequel, so the similarity between the two pieces astonished me. Although both employed the same colors and bright central imagery, each maintained its own tone and perspective. Some may think that the imagery regressed, but I’ve learned to respect the intelligence of the subconscious and not make those kinds of judgments. Healing frequently moves in ways that are different from what the conscious mind thinks. This second piece feels more viscerally intimate. I’ve learned to pay attention to the body’s felt sense — it’s much more trustworthy than eyesight or a judgmental mind, both of which tend to only see the surface of things.

In his book And There Was Light, Jacques Lusseyran writes about how a deeper more instinctual way of seeing arose after he became blind. “I began to look more closely, not at things but at a world closer to myself, looking from an inner place to one further within, instead of clinging to the movement of sight toward the world outside. Immediately, the substance of the universe drew together, redefined and peopled itself anew. I was aware of a radiance emanating from a place I knew nothing about, a place which might as well have been outside me as within. But radiance was there, or, to put it more precisely, light. It was a fact, for light was there. I felt indescribable relief, and happiness so great it almost made me laugh. Confidence and gratitude came as if a prayer had been answered.”

My first glimpse of subconscious vision occurred in my late teens, when hallucinogenic drug experimentation cracked open a window. Over the years, I gradually became more dedicated to living in collaboration with a subconscious perspective. Now, every night’s sleep offers a bit of clarity and insight on issues or projects that I am grappling with. It’s not even necessary to remember dreams; input and subtle corrections arise each morning when I first awake. It’s a humble life of listening and learning. One must view subconscious art (or anything else for that matter) openly, to receive its nonverbal communication and layered meaning. Then one must feel one’s way into living what one sees. It’s a challenging but deeply satisfying life. I’d mistakenly thought that once I’d healed enough trauma, my life would settle into one of comfort and ease. But recovering an ability to love and support yourself, enables even more risk taking! So living becomes a perpetual act of venturing out onto a new edge of fear, from an expanding but fragile comfort zone.

Days before Covid-19 shut things down, I dreamed of walking out onto narrow weathered boards, on top of rising black water. As I turn back in fear, men are pulling the boards up from under me as fast as I can walk. The pure black vast water is rising and subsuming everything. But then, instead of terror, I unexpectedly wake up in a profound state of stillness and peace. Now, 15 months later, I realize that my life is meant to be lived on the edge of that terrifyingly vast, watery unknown. For the willingness to ongoingly wrestle with that which one deeply fears, may unexpectedly illuminate an inner radiant peace.

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