Rainbow Serpent

I started a painting on the night of the fall equinox. The energy was empowered and strong, fast flowing and imbued with a sense of utter freedom. I loved it, especially since the colors of the rainbow were calling me. I grabbed a tall 20" x 60" gallery wrap canvas and began painting the layers. As I painted, I watched the colors move up from bottom to top. I started with the root chakra color of red, and went up through orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. The painting went into the weekend and I came back to it repeatedly. There were many layers of color and texture, blending the rainbow into a powerful flow. When my son asked me if I "knew" what this was going to be, I said, appears to be a chakra type painting. I was excited about that.  I was also wrong.

If you've noticed a theme to my writing about art, you may have noticed it has a lot to do with surrender. Of course, the path of the shaman regularly requires total surrender. But through my art, surrender takes on a whole new meaning. One thing I can be certain of now is that as soon as my mind becomes fixed on something - like an idea of where the painting is going - everything changes. Not to mention, the type of art I do, the way I do it, and what appears on the canvas. ALL of that shifts the minute I begin to think I am headed in a certain direction.

The medicine in that, which I share with you, is faith in the Divine. When you detach from all control, from all mental goals, and commit your energy to be in service to all of life, Goddess comes in and co-creates with you. It is truly a feeling of pure bliss and flow the moment you let go of ego and allow. But getting to that place of radical faith in the Divine is a whole other story. The willingness to drop the goals of the ego and surrender to the will of the Divine requires total freedom - freedom to be the fullest expression of yourself without judgment, without internal criticism and without the ego dictating goals.

The challenge is that we live in a culture obsessed with goals. Even the word "goals" is one of the most popular hashtags. #Lifegoals, #familygoals, #bodygoals, #moneygoals, #successgoals. People have come to believe that goals are a critical part of their existence. But in truth, the mind never holds your truth.

The truth of who you are and what you came here to do is in your body: both physical and etheric.

The body never lies to you. God/Goddess connects with you through the body. The body tells you in your gut instincts who is good for you and who is not. Your body tells you when your throat chakra is blocked because you are afraid to speak your truth. The body tells you when a sexual relationship is harmful. The body tells you when something is wrong - with yourself, your children, your marriage. The body knows. The mind? It goes to extreme lengths to create stories that contradict the truth told within the body. We have come to mistrust the body. We have come to distrust the mother - our Mother Earth. We have come to distrust both the serpent and her energy (kundalini).

The body holds every bit of energetic coding that you brought here to earth with you, and that you will take when you leave. The body (both physical and etheric) has only one goal: to push you towards your highest path. Your mind has many false goals which all revolve around one concept: you are not already whole. You are not really worthy deep down. Quite simply, you are not enough as you are. So your mind sets out through its conditioning, to direct you to "achieve" things that will be validated, approved of and admired. If you are able to reach those goals, then you already know, there will be more. It's a neverending quest to be valid. Whole. 

But if you awaken to the fact that you are already whole, valid, enlightened and connected to TRUTH, you jump into the Divine stream of life with no mind-goals. You surrender. Fully. In all areas of life. There is no half-time surrender. 

So in my art, surrender happens constantly. As I continued with this piece, I played with many colors and the textures and so many layers. Then I suddenly felt a full energetic rush. It was almost as if I was at the starting line of a triathlon and I had been waiting for the race to begin...and now, it was starting. It was like the colors and the background and the layers and the textures had been preparation, and now was the event itself. I jumped into the proverbial water and began swimming. Liquid, swimming, ocean, flow, waves, power, surrender, and some butterflies in the stomach from the excitement/anticipation/nerves. Lines and colors and movement and flow all appeared onto the canvas. I felt very grounded but at the same time very light and etheric. It is definitely a feeling that is hard to capture with language, but it was not unlike a plant medicine journey.

There was an utter wildness to it, freedom to journey out into the cosmos because the earth mother had me fully grounded and connected into her mystic medicine.

My encounters with the canvas always feel like prayer experiences... mainly because of the direct experience of God moving through me as I paint. It's not that I'm looking for an end goal. As Thich Naht Hanh would say, there is no "way" to happiness, happiness IS the way.

So freedom, joy, love and faith are the key ingredients in my medicine. They are my starting line and finishing line. They are my "way".

As I continued painting, and the lines and movement and patterns began emerging, the name Rainbow Serpent came to me. It was very strong. As soon as I told my son the name of the painting out loud, I immediately thought of Xaviar Rudd's song of the same name. And I turned on my music, selected his album Nanna and played Rainbow Serpent. On repeat. I listened and tuned in. I started to feel the creation power, the connection to water being the source of life. The serpent has been so misaligned by the world's major religions, it has been demonized and claimed to be the reason Adam and Eve had their downfall in the Garden of Eden. According to the story, an angry and punishing "god" told Eve not to eat from the tree of knowledge.

Awareness was a bad thing according to this deity. But the serpent knew better. She attempted to awaken these humans from their illusions. 

The patriarchy has done such a great job of conditioning us through religion, to fear the serpent, and to believe that Jesus himself had a contentious relationship with the serpent. This false god was not the Creator God, who is unconditional Love.  

Love neither harms nor punishes.

The aboriginal people have always been close to the land, close to the Truth. The Rainbow Serpent is part of their medicine. And the Rainbow Serpent is making a reemergence to offer us a glimpse at our light, our connection to the Creator, our Love and our wholeness.

It is time that we connect with the truth that our bodies already know. Our bodies are the beautiful gifts bestowed upon us by Divine Love. We ARE love. We come from love. We will return there.

So, I offer to you the Rainbow Serpent: protector of the land, her people, and the source of life. She is here to regenerate, renew, and revive us from our slumber.