https://youtubetranscript.com/?v=wan1SqnB6gY
Welcome everyone to Another Voices with Raveki. I’m here with Gaia O’Ryan and I’m very excited about this because Gaia is a representative of something I’ve been calling for which is more and more from the artistic community to get involved with this whole issue of the meeting crisis and waking up to it and having people be able to respond to it in depth. And so Gaia reached out to me and she said, I think there’s an intersection between your work and mine and I’d like to talk to you. And we met off camera and talked and I said, this is cool. Could you please come on Voices with Raveki and share your work? And she agreed. And so here you are, Gaia. Thank you so much for coming. And here I am. Thanks for inviting me, John. So why don’t you tell us a little bit about yourself and why you reached out to me, why you thought it might be good for you and I to talk? Yeah, it’s been an interesting journey until this point. For me, I’m originally from Paris, France. I’m almost 15 now. When I was 21, I met my husband who is Canadian. So I moved to Canada around 24 years old. And it was a bit of a culture shock, everything shock because I was from a pretty conservative Catholic family in Paris. And I moved with this poet, kind of a lone wolf, nature lover guy in Canada. And we also had, I was just graduating from architecture, moved to Canada and we had three kids in 14 months. Whoa. So yeah. So my friends were like, still like partying in clubs and studying. And I was just like having this, you know, motherhood experience in the middle of nowhere when I was, you know, just left Paris basically at 24. So I loved the guy I married. So that was never an issue. It was really hard on my system. I missed everyone, but there was something in me that knew that I was here to explore like area that I’ve never been into in my life. So my husband was 40 years older. He studied psychology and philosophy and he’s done ton of work on himself. He was nothing religious. So in a way, he just completely shifted my paradigm. And from this point, I just, you know, went into a completely different journey where I started meditation and a whole bunch of different practices like yoga and really changed my diet, then living in nature, quitting our job to just decide to, okay, what kind of life are we going to create, becoming an artist, like all those things that I never had idea in my life that I would go to. But it’s almost like this decision to, I want to make a life worth living and always having kind of like this reflection every night about like, what did we do right? What could we do better? And then just, well, sorry, I got my son who lives in China who is just calling me on Skype. So yeah, everything, even like the fact that I’m an artist today is still kind of like a surprise for me the way the road have taken me. Now, when I started like this journey, especially as an like with my art, at first, it was very solitary, it was just in my home in the forest with my family. And it’s only when I decided to make a living from it, then I was like, where is my tribe? And that was about, let’s say, 16, 20 years ago. And it was really difficult, like it took me a long, long time to understand like, where are my peers? So in the art world is still not that not there. But in the world of like change leaders, I recognize myself there. And I feel so it’s almost like I have this feeling that without any pretension that I’m a little bit ahead of myself, I don’t know why we can discuss that today. I would love to hear your thought about why the art world feels still so stuck in postmodernism. When you would think that historically, the art is what’s pulling society ahead. So that’s been very frustrating to me. And then when I see like people like you, who were you were ahead of your time, like in academia, bringing mindfulness studies, wisdom, studies, consciousness, like all this whole world of studies, who is like kind of infiltrating society everywhere. So I feel like there was a mirror in your experience and my experience. And so and then, you know, I really enjoy like a lot of the talk that I’ve listened to the people who have you as a guest or the people who you have at the guest. So that’s why I reach out like, hey, you know what, I really feel and I know you also come back from a really religious background and you had to like decondition yourself from that. And that’s just a journey in itself. Yes. So this is why I contacted you. That’s where I’m at. So let’s take, you know, some of these topics one at a time. First, what do you so you don’t feel that your art is sort of fitting into the postmodern framework that still dominates the artistic community? How would you describe your art? What is it doing? How like, what do you what’s the intent? How are you making use of materials? Like, what’s the difference? Because you’re you, I accepted that I accepted your head in some way. And so could you articulate, how does that show up in in your art? And how does that and how does it respond to this, your very personal struggle to, you know, come to a spiritual depth outside of the religious framework you were brought up in? So there’s two questions. There is like the question of how I fit in the collective and then my personal struggle on how it makes me fit. Yes. And towards the first question, what is it you what is it you are doing with your art that is not part of the postmodern framework? What is it you’re doing? And I assume it’s not just nostalgia. So what is it you’re doing? I think actually I came this week, this kind of like a bit I had this aha moment that I find in my art, like I appreciate art when it has a intemporal feeling. Mm hmm. When it speaks about the time on when it was created, yes, that’s inevitable, because you grow in a context. But it speaks of something that transcend time, culture, periods, right? So I think I fit in that. And in the contemporary art world, I think it started maybe with Marcel Luchon. When the art became like you have like this history of art where artists and with the quest for wisdom was like linked together, like from the antiquity. And then something happened where, and I think that’s part of this postmodernism and the scientific revolution where we just completely like erased anything spiritual, God, right? With them, etc. And then. Like as artists, we left with a kind of art that is a very absurd, devoid of beauty, of meaning, of this transcendental mission. Everything like in the contemporary artists who are making it and everything is just like has to be giant. So in France, for example, they have like warehouses with public art that they bought. They don’t even know what to do with that stuff because it’s literally crap and they don’t have room in the museum. And it’s kind of like the state of our contemporary art is perfectly on schedule because it’s representing the absurdity and everything that we’ve arrived to as a society. Like we’ve come to a point where we literally destroying our environment, which is like a supportive, like we cannot eat dollar bill and the way it’s going with climate change, like we won’t even be able to grow food. Like what kind of mind like create that? So in a way, I feel like the art, the way it is now, like the context that I’m, what I’m seeing is, yeah, it makes sense. It’s representative of this whole like consumption capitalism, very superficial world that we live in. So in there, there was like a whole new movement that is coming and it’s a bit of, there was a bit of the green washing. I don’t know if we can say like the mindfulness washing also, but at least like we’re trying and think there’s something that is responding to this, respond to the suffering that we’re feeling like, you know, like in our personal life, like when you just see the rate of suicide and depression, like you just need to look at that as an indicator of the states of our humanity. So that’s very powerful. So in some ways, the modern art is exemplifying the meaning crisis, but that’s not the same thing as responding to it. And I take it that you think the art shouldn’t only be imminent, it should also might be transcendent in some way. What does that mean for you in your art? How does it, because what I see in a lot of current, post-modern inspired art is that the vacuum of the transcendent is all often filled with sort of a political statement of some kind. So politics is trying to control of religion and of course, politics is directed towards the imminent and not the transcendent, at least our current understanding of politics. And so it can’t actually take that function. So what, like how do you try to convey that relationship between the imminent and the transcendent in your work? So I don’t think I try, like I don’t try anything. It just emerges. And that’s what’s really beautiful. I mean, if you think about anyone who writes, for example, poetry or music, they will tell you, you know, they woke up and the song where their mind, or Yes, yes, yes, yes. It just, it descends like that’s, that’s what we call there is a muse. It’s like someone who’s Excellent. Intermediary between like the God realm. And like, I’m just this channel for this thing that has come through. Like, I really feel that I really feel that in my process. Okay, that’s fantastic. So you got excellent. And that was a fantastic correction. So you actually feel that you’re participating in this relationship between the imminent and the transcendent and you give like you give voice to it or whatever. So let me change my question then, because I think that correction is is brilliant. Thank you for how does the transcendent show up in your art? Well, I think like I would get to go back and then ask like, how does a transcendent show up in my life? Ah, excellent. Please. This is excellent. This is excellent. Yeah, because that’s been my experience. And that’s where I also differ from my art community because a lot of artists will say, Oh, I knew I was an artist as soon as I could hold the paintbrush, like if they felt the feel like they were born with that. I didn’t come with that at all. I liked drawing, but I wasn’t the artist that was like really good in art class at school or that kind of thing in architecture. I didn’t stand out for my skills, my artistic skills for like drawing a building and people around it with trees and so on. So for me, the art came from nourish creating like a foundation that is just like daily discipline and dedication to my well-being. Right. And not just my well-being, like my well-being, like in relationship with the people who I live with, my place in the world. So this takes is kind of like a daily work. And then from that, it’s the art that showed up. I started to do little sketches that became paintings. And then that had messages for me. It’s like the art was ahead of time. And then once I showed it to the world, I realized that it had a place in, it took me a while to understand like actually what I’ve been working in my little hermit life in the forest, actually I’ve been massaged by what’s happening out around the globe. And then I’m ready to come out and it’s like, it has a voice that has a reason to be. So it’s really like a work of letting go of who I think I am and constantly deconstructing this identity that I’ve received from birth, pre-Eudero. And the more I do that, the more it just expresses this most magnificent, like I’m not saying like, oh, I’m magnificent. I’m saying the process is magnificent. And what it brings in my personal life and around, like just having this discussion with you today. I think this is just like a highlight. The people that I work with that buy my painting, that ask me to create a painting for them. People that are touched by what the painting is saying, all of that is just like the richness of the relationships and how it creates discussions. The art is always like a conversation starter for the most amazing discussion that if I wasn’t that artist, maybe I would meet random people, maybe twice a year I would have a really cool conversation with someone like that. That’s where the transcendental appear and we just feel like this connection and we just, there is this kind of exaltation in this energy. This happens to me all the time because of the work, like where I am today. So it’s magnificent in itself. This is fascinating. So I mean, the art emerged for you and this for me is not a negative term, this is a positive term. It’s like a ritual. It’s a practice that you do. It’s part of your whole process of self-transformation and the art is just integral to that. But the art isn’t just that. The art is all the all the deologos that emerges around it. That’s exactly, I mean you’ve articulated this way better than I could have. But so that what you’ve said and the credit is yours, but that was incoherent in my mind that that’s the function that art should, it should be emerging out of ritual practice and it should be affording deologos around it. And like that is a beautiful way of articulating that, Gaia. That is really, really good. Thank you for that. Now the art, because I have this spiritual practices, you know, I don’t like I do a lot of meditation. And then for me, like I love your term ecology of practices, because meditation alone like does nothing. Yes, that’s right. You know, it has to have all the pieces and that’s why I like like Ken Wilbur and his integral theory, because he’s trying to like, how do we look at the best of that exists today because we have access to all the different practices like worldwide. Yes, yes. The whole history, how do we grab the best of each of them and compile them and use them for our flourishing in the most intelligent and balanced way. And that’s just like, you know, the work never stops. But my art is kind of a mirror of that process. Yes. So what I see too is like the paintings I did 20 years ago, maybe it was taking me 10 years before I could really get them. Like I would, you know, where the message of that woman that I drew was like, oh my gosh, like I was just like tears coming down my face. Just like I can’t believe I drew that. Like she was just like way ahead of me, you know, like where I was going. Yes, yes, yes. But now that I’ve matured and understand my artistic process and understand my inner processes better from putting all that time and energy in just observing and being with it and working with it and having all those practices and discipline in my life, I feel like now it’s much more closer. Like the painting I’m doing is like what is happening now. Right, right. With a little bit of, you know, I think it’s always a little bit of headers again because it’s smarter than I am. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know what you mean. Yeah, yeah. I wonder, did you bring any art to talk about or to show any of your art in any way or? If I, well I have my flourishing woman behind. Oh excellent. She’s, well that’s beautiful. She encapsulates a lot of everything that I am and I like to share. Like she has those deep roots, she’s grounded, the energy rises through her whole body and then it just kind of explodes in this beautiful rainbow tree which is like how do we reach down in our roots, let it arise, like emerge like in a natural way and then express itself. So it can be applied for like, you know, what is your talent and, but there is also like she’s really like firmly rooted, strong, empowered. So for me like when I did this painting she invited me to, like for a long time I was kind of like, you know, I was insecure and shy and being the artist you have to put yourself forward and you have to speak about yourself and I was still like not doing it 100%. I was kind of like yeah, no I’m good at that but you know I’m just lucky and I was just like, I was just like not 100% so she helped me to be like, I just, I can do it. When you look at people who inspire me like Martin Luther King, like have you ever seen him speak? Like his eyes, his whole being is just so passionate. He is like 150% and so that’s what that woman, I think she’s helping me transmit that. But another side of the coin with her messages is also how, because after I had this aha moment, I was like oh yes and I was like doing this solo show in Paris and she really helped me just like be this, like do my art, like be the artist and be confident with it. Be confident with what I had to share and what I, the quality of what I was doing and all of that, my role in the world. But then a few years later I was having another exhibition here near Toronto and I was in a completely different state of mind. I was just like emotionally, I’ve been going through so much, I was just like a complete mess and I arrived at the show opening and I was like, oh my gosh I’m supposed to feel like that, oh no I can’t. So I go to give my speech at the show opening and she was, like a version of her was on the poster so she’s part of the message. But I realized at that moment actually she’s also completely, her arms are open, she’s completely vulnerable. So this is also what we call for, like yeah I’m empowered. But it’s just like this is very vulnerable and being an artist is like, please tell me if there is other profession that asks you to be more vulnerable than that. Right, right. You know so there, there I’ll talk to you a little bit about my art. No, no that’s, so I like this. I mean there’s an analogy for me, like you keep going back to your art and you keep seeing more that’s in it. This for me is like, you know for me the works of Plato are like that. I read them, they transform me, I go out into the world, I change, I come back and I see something in them that I hadn’t seen before and like I get this constant reciprocal opening and this is a perpetual fount of new sense making, new intelligibility for me. And isn’t it amazing when it’s like, especially when it comes from an image as simple as this. Yes. Like you know like a tree, like a woman with roots, like a million people have drawn that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And even recently this year I’ve been working with this meditation teachers who teach it like yogic practices. So I’ve been working with the energies which are like completely wild in my being at this moment. So now I see in her like how I have those colors that were just rising. It’s like oh my gosh, like yeah this is all, everything’s in there. Yeah the the riding reminds me a bit of some like Kundalini paintings I’ve seen. So what does that, I mean what does that feel like? I’ll speak using your poetry but I think it’s really good poetry. What does it feel like when the muse is in you? If I could put it that way. I know that’s a tricky question and but you know that I’m very open and I want to understand, I want to hear. I like, what is it like when yeah and you and you said for a long time the muse was even ahead of you and you even say, he used to still smarter than you and I, I, I think that’s a good point. I completely understand all of them but I would like you to, I’d like to give you a chance to articulate it more like what’s it like? What’s the, what’s the phenomenology like? What’s it like in your mind? What’s it like in your body when that, when the muse has come upon you? There’s a few things that come in my mind so I’m trying to organize my thoughts. Take your time, be in silence for a bit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thank you. All right, this is good. I love those questions. So I’ll answer like how I would answer it before and then I’ll answer like how your question just like lit up something in me. Okay, great. So how I would answer before had the muse come. I found that it came in like about three different ways. Very rarely but it happens. It’s in a dream like I have a dream and the dream is a painting. Right, right, right, right, right. It would also happen like as a flash just like you know the tarot card of the tower with the lightning. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The lightning, yeah, it’s like a lightning strike and the drawing like I have to do the drawing like right now because I got it. Like I remember once I was actually even driving on highway 400 and I was like, holy cow, I got to draw this. I’m just sketching it quickly because I don’t want, you know, it’s like if you have like this idea of those series of words and you have to write them down. Now if you don’t get up and write them down they’ll be gone in the morning. That kind of thing. But then there is other paintings who actually take a really long process. So it’s more like a feeling and I see something and it’s like oh sometimes it’s a painting from another artist. I’m like I love this. I wish I drew that. I wish I did that painting but you know it’s I could not do that because that’s him so I will hurt. So anyway something in that painting just really caught my attention and then something in my life I want to put into a painting and I so I have all those little elements and I collect like bits. I have this giant folder which I call art in the womb and it has all my little like sketches, ideas, sometimes cutting of newspapers or flyers or things I find and then one day it’s just ready and I take the pencil and I draw and then actually maybe that would be interesting. Every artist is different how they work. I don’t work with like blank canvas and I’m going to start and then the painting unfold. When I do a sketch like when I have the sketch I know this is it. I got it. And the final painting is like this hardly any changes from the original sketch I was just downloaded. You know except I add the color and then the mastery of the technique and my style and all of that but the the line drawing like the the structure of the painting is exactly like it is when it comes down. One thing that I started to do this past year I never used to do that before I now have a sketchbook beside my bed and at night I don’t do it every night but I try to and I’ve never done that in my life but it’s kind of a new practice I brought in. I sketch stuff so most of the pages is total crap and then once in a while there is like really amazing stuff that would never existed if I didn’t introduce that practice. Before I was just like oh I’ll just wait when the mues talk to me and now I’m like I guess inviting her more to just and it’s part of the work I’ve been doing with this teacher who is also an artist himself so he really encourages me and the student to work with creativity and draw and for me it’s just like the most powerful thing I’ve ever done in my life to put down my inner processes you know the exam the examination like what’s happened in my meditation and then put it down and in painting I’ve been creating this whole series what I call study sketches so I do little sketches and then when I when I one is really good then I put it on I just do like a small little watercolor so I can do it in a few hours it’s also like a price that is accessible for people and it allows me to just produce more ideas because those paintings like I paint in big and they take me sometimes two months to to finish or more so you know there’s like for a long time I was really frustrated with that process because my work is very meticulous and I probably don’t have to be that meticulous but I don’t why I work with like zero zero paint brushes and the line has to be perfect and so it’s been very freeing to have this extra practice so this is how the muse happened in my life but now I’m going to answer it too like yeah right yeah you just lit me up you’re just waiting for that no no I liked hearing all that too you know how I said how the art was like way ahead of me yes yes and I was getting closer um like it brings you to the question of like what is the muse yes and what is it that I’m getting closer to yes yes and um that is making me feel very emotional actually at this moment don’t suppress your emotion no yeah I’m not at all I feel comfortable with it um it’s like um like really beautiful so yeah it’s like I just wrote on the paper and I’m not I you will understand what I mean but I just said like I’m getting closer like when the id came I had to write it down else I would have gotten but I wrote I’m getting closer to me and then I wrote I am God ah right so like we are I’m getting more to understand how like really understand it and I just know it because I’ve read it from a million times right that we are an expression of the mind of God like this human experience and the more we like let ourselves just be embraced and in the flow of that human experience then more like extraordinary and alive this experience becomes like at every small mundane level so I think there is something there which makes my art I think different than my postmodern colleague and many other artists that I see around me but I do see other artists that work that way where the art is actually like a process of awakening right it’s like a tool it’s a tool to embody that knowledge it’s like a mirror it teaches me it takes me somewhere and it comes from from the ocean of life like you know it’s not like one point right when you understand how that works Thank you that that was cool. Is it is part of it something like you’re as you participate and really flow into that creativity you’re participating in the creativity at the heart of being itself is it something like that that you feel like like you’re you made an identity claim like you’re you made an identity claim but you’re not being a narcissist you’re not saying I’m God and that like you’re you’re participating you’re conforming like there’s something in you and there’s something within you and something without you and they’re interpenetrating in some way that’s am I hearing you correctly am I getting it right like I’m trying to like what it like there’s something like you’re obviously you I mean you’re doing lots of stuff that’s from a cognitive scientific point of view you’re generating insight and the flow state and right and you’re moving in participatory knowing in a profound way and and and so that really drives you know creativity and the and you’re in the being mode rather than the having mode and then yeah and then that gives you some sense of the sacred the divine the god and and and so I’m trying and I know it’s maybe something that you might not want to do but I’m trying to put some words on it for right to give people access to your experience yeah is any of this landing what I’m talking about or is any of it sounding right um yeah I almost want to say instead of using the divine god and sacred which are fine but I think it all comes down to feeling alive alive live yeah yeah so there you don’t just mean biologically alive you mean something more than that but yeah but also like I like when you know spirituality the sacred the divine is not so much of something that feels the more you’re in touch with it the more you realize it’s something very simple yeah so alive is just being alive in your senses you’re not like your your mind is alert and you’re feeling what’s happening and you’re present and it’s like something that happens spontaneously it’s not like you know when you try to meditate focusing something much more um organic and um joyful I mean it sounds very much like aspects that I know from Daoist practice where you are like within and without and it’s yeah it’s simultaneously like marvelous and beautiful but also the most simple um yes that that exactly yeah um yeah now but you have referred to your muse as a she a couple times so okay so uh that’s because I’m French and en français we say la muse so then I would go she right but okay but that’s that’s fair enough fair enough but it allows at least affords me to ask the question do you experience the muse as something like a personality um that that you can almost enter into dialogue with or what I mean what I mean not at all okay okay so how do you yeah how do you experience oh geez yeah because in antiquity like a lot of the old paintings the muse is always represented by this you know beautiful isn’t she yeah so that’s where the she would come in too right um um I think it’s almost like a same question as asking like oh is god is a man with a white beard don’t you think so like we start to go in there like we personify those um maybe is it a state um because I’m also trying to get at you had a strong sense for quite a while and that’s what brought emotion to you there used to be a distance between you and the muse and now they’re closer and so I’m trying to get at like yeah what is it you know what is it what’s the nature of the relationship between you and the muse such that it can at one time be far and she can be ahead of you and now is sort of more the cutting edge of you um that’s what I’m trying to get at that’s what I’m trying to get at I hope this is not intrusive but I really want to know I love it I can really love it I’m really always excited with talking to you because I can have a conversation like that with someone that can you know um encourage those thoughts that I have a lot by myself right um so well I’m gonna look at myself how I was when I felt like the muse was really far and she would just intervene by chance only once in a while and I would hardly get what she’s talking about and I would I think I was in a state of mind that had much more like drama confusion right I didn’t know um like I cleared out a lot of my conditioning right right right you know I don’t think you’re ever done but I can really sense you know about the quality of my thoughts and my mind and my living that I’ve walked like a journey to be where I am and so when you have less of this conditioning which is like outside like something that is like pattern that are so that are put on you by you know karma family society religion so when you kind of peel that away what are you left with are we asking that question I am I’d like to yeah and I’m not expecting you to give the final answer yeah I just want to hear how you participate in the question and then I want to get I want to get uh it feels like almost aspirational your relationship between you and the muse you you you just said like she you you have to try and figure out what she’s communicating to you but you also feel like the that you and her I know this is tricky language yeah it’s all right we’re okay are somehow becoming more at one with each other um but like it I’m trying to get well let’s try the reverse is the muse always with you now or do you sometimes right all right it’s just feel like dissociation when you talk about it in that manner and in a way it bothers it uh kind of like bothers me it just doesn’t feel true so okay yeah yeah so then so I think it’s dissociation was like part of myself like I think I wasn’t oh I had a lot of dissociation in my being so I could not be in contact with that as much I’m able to be in contact with that you know like in the sense of I am that right right right I get it I get it I get it so I get it you don’t like the language because the language is dissociational and that’s exactly what’s sort of being overcome in the process of describing do I understand you correctly yeah that was really well put yeah okay okay that’s that’s good that’s helpful and so can I ask you this then and I don’t think this is dissociational do you think that this I that this relationship um of of of wholeness is also conducive to you living more wisely um yeah of course because well if you know I’m sure you’ve defined wisdom with a lot of people in different talk and I don’t think we’re going to be doing this today but for me I guess wisdom would be to be more in like when I was talking about being in the flow yes and kind of like you also put yourself and when I say yourself it’s like your constructed identity yeah you kind of put that out of the way and that takes a certain practice is any work and right or all agree on that it’s not like you can just like all right on the side um and and then um life becomes more of a sort of um all right I’m really inspired by nature in my work I live in nature and um I’ve learned a lot from being in nature to love is that what you said I didn’t quite hear you to love I said like I said like nature as a theme is very like present in my painting in my life yeah and um so I’m think that there is a wisdom I would put that as a state of harmony like harmonious like with like the greater intelligence of nature right I see and somehow humans humans like this is like the original sin sin um story somehow I don’t know what fucked up in our construction like in our pieces but something is really we’re the only species in the universe as far as I know it who can destroy this environment and be so yeah not in harmony does that harmony does it does it also spill out into uh you know uh that greater intelligence in harmonious relationship with other people does is it translate yeah because um people um you know I really like um took me years to really understand it like Krishna Murthy speaks a lot about the mirror of relationships yes yes and uh yes like you’re you when you’re more at peace with yourself and all those parts of yourself then inevitably it’s going to translate it in more in a more harmonious way when you’re right talking with people even you know I’m not like um I had a difficult situation this year with someone um it was unpleasant but I never went into like confused rants and you know it was just very clear I knew what to say it was uncomfortable it was a nice other person but it had to be said and and we had to parts and it was too bad but this is just how it goes that kind of thing right in the past like you give me that situation even four years ago oh my gosh it would have been a drama for two years I’m not saying like oh my life is perfect I get it all no no ask my husband and he’ll tell you but it’s much better it gets more harmonious more yeah more in touch and more just like this I think there’s more wisdom in the interactions and in the way you lead your life too yes like this morning I felt like crap when I woke up I didn’t sleep well um and I love having a really strong coffee in the morning but I know it’s not like the most wholesome practice in my life but it has come like those past few years I’m going through menopause and it brought coffee wine and little things like that that I it was good for me because kind of away I was just like so like oh it’s such a good girl all the time and I need to just like oh but this morning I decided like I’m going to do something really wholesome with you and I didn’t want to take a coffee I just had a good smoothie and took some good water it sounds really completely like ridiculous maybe to mention that but for me it means a lot coffee is really addictive I only have one in the morning but I love my coffee moment it’s like that’s like a sacred moment you know like I love my really strong black coffee so to let go of that is just too um I know it sounds ridiculous and funny no but it was kind of like how I want to honor my being and my body and what I want to exchange with you like I don’t want to just grab my coffee because I’m feeling tired I’m just going to be like present with exactly who I am without like putting a stimulant in my body does that make sense totally and I didn’t find it ridiculous at all that made great sense to me so Gaia like like you’ve come like I get a sense of this right you’ve become more of an integrated whole and capable of seeing an integrated whole and also affording an integrated whole I think that’s very powerful and for me that’s like Plato’s notion of anagoga just writ large so and I’m asking a question of you that I still ask myself what is the like how what when you look back on your conservative catholic religious you like what do you like what how do you see it now and what’s your relationship to um that religion do you think about it you ignore it do you dislike it um into some kind of reconciliation with it um because there’s a lot of people in this corner of the internet that are post-religious in some really important way and frequently many of them are still wrestling with that question and I wondered what your reflections are upon it um I’m more at peace with it but I feel like even when you mention it to be completely honest I still have like a huge aversion right yeah and I know it’s a piece I have to work on and when I’ve been like talk about it right now I can feel like this swell of right right emotion and stuff because it’s just like with such a really nasty imprint and you know and of course it gave me you know I was very mystical and I loved going to church and at 20 years old I was still telling my friends to come to catechism and I was getting them to do it right because I found this cool priest who had great conversation so I was like 100% into it right right right but then when I started to like see oh it had such um um it was painful yes the fear the guilt the shame the jeez it was nasty and it took me years and years and years just to like not be and even like about what I just said about being the good girl and the fear of the devil and oh jeez it’s just like oh okay so now you got it I just like telling you how I’m feeling right right right right yeah I try like to see the goodness in it because I know really good people who are very good very religious but still I don’t care how good they are I think yeah there is um like why even like people who like move post-religion because I’m my art like really appeal to women who are like into sacred feminism and that kind of thing and they love like reading books about Mary Magdalene she was actually the life of Jesus the wife of Jesus and so they like giving trying to rewrite the story so that it’s a better story that it was actually a good story but then the men and pre-beginning of Christianity you know yeah yeah yeah the press a woman that’s like for me it’s just like oh just like drop it like who fucking cares about Jesus and the Bible it’s a bad book anyway like there’s so much more other like good um literature that you can read to be inspired I don’t know I get I get frustrated with it still so I got a piece of work I don’t want any answer other than an honest answer that was not only honest it was heartfelt and believe me I can identify with what you’re saying I’ve been through that and uh you know I did therapy for it and you know and and and it I can still have those moments like you’re uh like you talking about I get what you’re talking about um and it’s hard to convey to people who are still within a religious framework how well how genuinely terrible that trauma can be um now so I have found you know committed Christians who listen very deeply and of course they are yeah yeah uh but um and of course this is not limited to Christianity I have same discussions with people coming out of Islam coming out of Judaism even coming out of Buddhism right they like this um so I I completely get where you’re coming from so this point you’re at that you and I share this is like the pivot point of the meeting crisis we we we we many of us we don’t want to we’re not able to go into you know the legacy religions but as your art shows there’s still this quest to oligio bind the imminent and the transcendent together in a way that makes lives more wise and more alive right the abundant life that Jesus promised even right and so that to me that’s what I’m really interested in how people are negotiating that and you see like I I I’m not trying to put you on the spot I don’t want to I’m just really I’m really interested in that like you know no I can’t go back but that doesn’t mean I’m just going to live a sort of secular meaningless materialistic kind of life no no I want to bind the imminent to the transcendent I want to feel more alive I want to help other people to feel more alive I want to I want to realize the whole and all which is very you know and you’ve used the term spiritual and I think uh I don’t like that term but we don’t have a better term I know that’s what yeah we have a question well that’s why I think this this time is so interesting because we like that’s how we move forward like we create new dialogue new vocabulary new community new way of being and new practices like uh let’s take Jesus since he was in the conversation you know like there was no Christianity for thousands of years before it existed yes yeah so now we’re in 21st century with AI technology and so many things that are coming on board and that are stripping our humanity yes we’re in a danger of losing a lot of our humanity in the way this technology is taking over so what kind of practice what do we create yes yes remedies us to help us be better humans I think that’s beautifully said I think that’s like that’s a good place to draw things to a close but I’d like to give my first of all I want to thank you as you can see I’m leaning in this is so fascinating I know I love it when you do that yeah it’s so rich and powerful right and like and you’re articulate and and and it was genuine back and forth I really enjoyed that but I’d like to give my guess the final word it doesn’t have to be a summation it’s just the final word however you see it whatever feels appropriate to you what would you like to say well there was one thing we haven’t talked about so I’ll just put that as a final word because I you know I lead workshops like not that often because I try to really focus on my career and that’s just so much work in itself but I love leading workshops because I give the opportunity for anyone especially for people who think that they don’t know how to draw I can only draw a sick man I’m terrified of drawing and it’s beautiful because they’re saying like I’m vulnerable I don’t know what I’m doing and I love that and what I’m saying is that this process that I’ve learned to be very intimate and familiar with the process of create the creative process through the medium of painting and drawing is very easy it’s just a beautiful thing to to transmit and for anyone to experience and it blows my mind how the way we create all of us mirrors the way we live and there is so much learning to do when we do such a simple practice so much learning to to gain when we do a simple practice just as simple as just doing a little doodle on a piece of paper and then taking time to decode the symbol that was drawn on the paper that’s my invitation well please send me if you have any information about any workshops you’re planning and I can put that in the description you can send it to me at a future date I can always put it in but I’d love to afford you connecting to people who might want to take your workshops because I could you definitely have something to do that’s very so why don’t we do why don’t we I don’t know when you’re going to be releasing that video but I could offer a two-hour workshop just like do it I never plan on doing it but I’m just saying since the video is coming out why don’t we do that we put a date for an invitation to experience that sure so what I could do is I could email you a couple weeks before I release the video there’s you’re in a queue unfortunately I’ve like I’ve got about that’s great that’s wonderful right and then and then and then we’ll set up we’ll make sure that that time is right and then I’ll put it into the notes for this video so every everybody who’s watching this the video is out and that means be in by that so that’s how I think it would be great because then like the talk is great but then it will also translate in the practice and something that will be like a value for the you know the listener something that they can really like it can become lived experience oh totally the talk should always be in service of the practices and that’s that’s what John that’s what I love about you I was never I mean I like philosophy but a lot of it feels a little bit like intellectual masturbation to me when I listen to it yeah but what I like about you is that um you really like look at how do we transmit this transfer this knowledge and the discursive into how do we lead our lives and into practices and like that’s what like really got me like it really like stole my heart when I saw that you were doing that well thank you so much you and so I let’s make that happen for this video let’s find a way of turning this talk into a way to you can lead people in practice I really want to make that happen awesome I love this I’m so happy really good with it exactly an hour it is so good thank you so much guy