What's your 8.8 message? (& a story I didn't realize I'd be sharing)
Learn about the Emergence Deck's connection with 8.8 & receive a soul-to-soul message! 🦁
OK, so technically it’s August 9, but just for fun, take a deep breath, relax your jaw, and take a screen shot of the video below to receive a personal message. 📸
«View full screen with sound on for max wonder 👀»
What's your felt sense of what this art is mirroring back? 🪞
Share in the comments if you're inspired, or if it's helpful in any way---
Save your screen grab and use it as a Lock Screen if it speaks to you! 🎨
Share this post with a friend!
(You have a 4% chance of drawing a lion, btw 🦁🦁🦁)
Preface
The story unfolding below is the most honest articulation of what this deck, and the art within it, has represented on a personal level- yet even still, there is more to reveal.
With so much unknown, the one thing I do know is that sharing with others who hold a genuine interest in connecting with these creations, allows for a kind of distillation that supports my own psychotherapeutic integration in a way I can’t access within the confines of my journal.
I also recently discovered that this form and format of sharing currently serves as a way to meet my own need for deep relational intimacy (which, I recently discovered, was at the root of the relational limerence pattern I’d been struggling with for decades.)
And so, I share for my own liberation and for that of others, and I share as a way to honor the Universal Creativity that guides each individual in their creative unfoldment, collectively co-weaving a more beautiful, just, and harmonious world.
I hope that something within this article inspires you to dare to tend your own creative fire today.
May it be of benefit!
The Backstory
Even though I’d travelled thousands of miles, and invested thousands of dollars over the years, in a search for language to describe the essence the Emergence Oracle Deck, I had no plans to reveal such a story this weekend.
I thought I’d be sharing about the Sumerian Goddess Inanna, and how her archetypal energy has been supporting the healing and empowerment of my sacral chakra in recent years- she was who I thought I’d been preparing for. And I am so damn grateful to feel her and so many other archetypes of the Divine Feminine animated within me as I write.
Something about the thrill of the discovery process in figuring out how to embed an animated gif into a video file that could be reshared as the MP4 file above (I know, lots of tech jargon - a nod to my Aquarius Sun) paired with the realization the what was spilling out of me as I went to share the video with my peers in the Dharma Artist Collective was becoming FAR longer than I’d expected, seemed to open and guide the channel in ways I never could have anticipated:
The Emergence Deck’s connection with 8.8
Five years ago on 8.8, love blasted me into a psychedelic experience of Cosmic Oneness, catalyzed through a heart-shattering breakup.
Yes, it really was that dramatic.
No, I wouldn't have believed an experience like this was possible- until it happened.
In the years that followed, I searched to retrieve the pieces, and to become the kind of person who could truly love.
Art was a way of anchoring myself more deeply in my intentions, and steadying myself within the periods of turbulence and despair that followed.
Many of the art forms in this deck were created for healing or purification purposes- others were created as symbols of who I aspired to be and become, but didn't yet have a map for- beginning with the Lioness. 🦁
She sold the day I chose to end a cycle of power struggle with the masculine. I dropped the rope, gave him the benefit of the doubt, and wished him well as I walked away.
This deck is full of stories like hers.
The deck itself was created as a way of exploring how these art forms related with one another, as well as giving myself an immersive experience of embodying a thriving, harmonious inner relationship (or at least, this was what I aspired towards--and still do, to this day!!)
It was such a deep internal process for me, I could barely bring myself to believe that something so personal could contribute to the lives of others, let alone be worthy of sharing publicly.
Yet, with such a strong pattern of losing myself in others, had I placed my gaze on the external world, I may have missed the medicine that was most alive and needing my attention.
During this 9.5 month creation cycle, I often felt like a snake whose vision had been clouded over as she was shedding skin after skin: all I could do was trust, and keep moving.
But so many times, I couldn't see a damn thing, and it felt maddening.
Getting my body down on the ground, admitting how little I knew, and asking for help from the One that did know, and letting myself breathe with her and feel held by her- helped me more than anything else.
“Bringing to Light” 4’x6’ Charcoal on Arches, 2007
This full-body prostration was the same way the Rainbow Dragon painting emerged when a client commissioned something I had no previous experience exploring (or so I thought.)
It's the same way the 108 Butterfly Mandala emerged as a 27-day Rx plan for my shocked nervous system, when the guy I'd recently started dating suddenly left the country, cutting off all communication.
And it's the same way the Sri Yantra painting emerged when previously, I was having trouble discerning whether the connection with him was healthy or harmful. Through my body, I asked for an obvious but gentle indicator, and through this art form, it served as a 3-day, 30+ hour prayer of surrendering the outcome of the connection and anchoring a sense of trust in the unknown:
The art form was helping me rest in the beauty of knowing that regardless of the outcome, our dance was being woven by a greater hand, and this weaving was in the highest and best interest of all.
He left the day after the art was completed and gifted to him.
Sharing this deck publicly was one of the scariest things I've ever done: it felt like a fractalling psychotherapeutic endeavor on display for the world.
It took three months post-publication before I could muster the courage to open the guidebook and read it for the first time- and when I did, I rented time at a recording studio, drove to downtown Providence, and read the entire book into a microphone from 3-5pm on a Friday afternoon, embodying- to the best of my ability, the voice of someone who believed that this was work worth sharing with the world, even though inside, I was trembling and flushed with heat.
The idea to do this came to me shortly after teaching a 1pm yoga class that day and sharing about Kali Maa and her Mudra as a vehicle for helping to purify and cut away that which no longer serves, in support of self-liberation and empowerment. I felt her fiercely powerful Shakti pulsating through me in the six days of video creation that followed.
That very first read now lives on YouTube.
Up until this past 8.8, I hadn't been able to fully articulate any of this- the fear, the deeper meaning behind the work, or the Creative Wisdom that has guiding and inspiring this healing and growth within and through my art, and life.
How marvelous it is to live in a world where Universal Creativity flows freely, available in abundance for all willing to look and listen, expressing itself in ways unique to each individual- and how amazing it is to participate in the collective co-weaving of a more beautiful, just, and harmonious world, together in these highly transformational times- despite the fear, pain, and injustices we are witnessing.
Through my experience, I’ve come to believe creativity is a powerful form of alchemy that can help us shift the trajectory of our personal lives and come into a more coherent and wise relationship with ourselves.
If this is true on a personal level, it seems this could also be true on a collective level.
Perhaps one of the greatest opportunities available to us lies in belonging our individual relationship with creativity and its potential to influence and create positive impact, more wholly with the rest of the world.
In other words, to paraphrase Jane Austin, what we do makes a difference, and we need to decide what kind of difference we want to make.
Art heals. Creativity matters. Your art is for the world.
If you read all the way to the end, thank you so much for reading!
I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments, and I imagine other readers would love to hear from you as well!
How do you relate with what was shared- personally, interpersonally, or collectively?