The Moment You Realize You’re Not Creating Alone

In this rich returning conversation, artist and former creative director Jason McDonald shares the lived spiritual practices that shape his creative process. From studying Buddhist philosophy and living alongside monks in India and Thailand to completing a three-month silent retreat, Jason describes an ongoing “excavation of self” that continues to deepen his sensitivity as an artist.

We explore how his work is guided by a felt relationship with what he calls the creative field of intelligence — a living energetic presence that can inform artistic decisions beyond planning or technique. Jason speaks about entering a listening state while working, sometimes responding intuitively to subtle energetic impressions, and at other times following precise inner prompts that guide geometric forms and compositional structure. For him, the orientation toward something sacred allows artistic expression to become a conveyance of truth, goodness, and beauty in culture.

Our dialogue also reflects on the idea that the artist’s sensitivity is not simply personal but relational. Through presence, humility, and a willingness to move beyond ego-driven control, creative work can become a partnership with a deeper intelligence. We discuss his evolving concept of “levity energies,” the importance of listening to the field rather than focusing on materials or outcomes, and the role artists can play in transmitting inspiration in a complex world.

The conversation closes with reflections on parables, storytelling, and shared spiritual inquiry — exploring how creative language and symbolic imagery can help people remember an inner connection they may have forgotten. Ultimately, this episode is about meeting one another in sensitivity and discovering how artistic practice can become a reverential exchange with the intelligence that moves through all of life.

Want to learn more about CJ Miller? Check out his Spiritual Artist Retreats, 1:1 Personal Coaching, and Speaking Engagements at www.spiritualartisttoday.com. His retreats are designed to help you reconnect with your Creative Intelligence and express your true artistic voice. You can also find his upcoming schedule there, and his book, The Spiritual Artist, is available on Amazon.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

That there is there is a way that then the greater intelligences of creation can arrive into the artist. And then the artist has an understanding of being potentially a conduit to translate those intelligences, to share them back out into culture, to share them back out into humanity, to share them back out into consciousness, evolution. That is not just then a responsibility, it means that then you start to really see how that dynamic can then work in your work, right? Where you don't get attached to um the production part of it and look at me, I'm a spiritual artist, but you actually get more aligned to wanting to be uh not um choosing to be humble, but you can't not be humble, choosing to be uh in a different type of intimacy with creative intelligence, choosing to be not subservient, but a partner that has a respect for something that's greater than I can bring to it because my intelligence is nowhere near as vast as that intelligence. Welcome to the Spiritual Artist Podcast.

SPEAKER_01 1:10

This is Chris Miller. I invite you to join me as I interview artists from a variety of disciplines. We'll share powerful stories and lessons learned while making their art. I brought back a special guest, and I'll tell you something. Um I don't have a huge listenership, but people that do align with me, they align with me. And they are usually artists that are looking for more meaning in their lives, more meaning in themselves, a connection to their art. And so when I interviewed uh Jason McDonald a couple probably about a year and a half ago, I loved the conversation. And I re-listened to the interview and I want to pick his brain a little bit more. So uh good morning, Jason. How are you today?

SPEAKER_00 2:14

Good morning, good evening. I'm wonderful. And um thanks for the invitation to come back and and explore in conversations some of these beautiful ideas again.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

Yeah, I love it. Um, I went back and I I listened to the first interview, and there were a couple words I want to unpack. But first, one thing that I've been really impressed by is there's not I used to think when I started this journey that the that every artist was spiritual. And I've since learned that's not necessarily true. And but you have a lot of background um i with self-spirituality, with reflection. Um, can you tell us about that a little bit? Because I'd like to know a little bit more about that.

SPEAKER_00 2:55

You know, thank you. Well, yeah, I mean, about 25 years ago, uh I had an e-learning company, and the e-learning company was doing a Buddhism in Korea module. So I went to Korea and I ended up like there as the guy filming and kind of doing the day-to-day of the monks. And I fell into uh the rhythm of the monk life, and they asked me to stay on. So I stayed on for a couple of weeks and I lived with the monks and I practiced with the monks, and so it was a very real and um deep, immediate uh experience with something other than just the day-to-day rhythms of life, and so that really just started a great big deep dive journey into meditation, Buddhism, outside of Buddhism, other forms of consciousness and philosophy and theology. And it's sort of just been a very ongoing excavation of self, curiosity of self, curiosity of humanness, curiosity of how that maps into my artistic tendencies, because I had studied as a graphic designer and then was a creative director. And um, I was really interested in this interface of not just my own self-inquiry and self-spiritual understanding, but what was the interface of that with aesthetic? What was the interface of that with art? And so, yeah, that's led me down a lot of wonderful journeys of exploration and uncoverings and practice, self-practice. So, yeah, I've I've pilgrimed to Tibet, to sacred sites, Nepal, Bhutan. I've spent time in India, a lot of time in India. Um, I've lived in Asian countries like Thailand and sort of got a sense of their um gravitational pull towards these kind of uh non-mind or or non-ego related disciplines. Um I've studied, I've deep dived into all kinds of philosophies, um, and I've practiced. I've sat in retreat, I've sat in three months silent retreat, I've gone away from you know the the impulses of of the more mechanistic life and just sat and looked at my mind and explored my mind and explored the inner terrain of my being somatically and and yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:21

So I okay, we're gonna we're gonna put a little tag right there because you said ego, mind. I want I wanna we're gonna come back to that. Um tell me though, okay, so how when you were what were you born into a different religion? Were you are you were you raised?

SPEAKER_00 5:35

I'm not Christian in a in a Catholic religion, went to a Catholic a Catholic school. Um I was an alter boy, and so early on there was this kind of I suppose a tendency to sort of see the spiritual and and and re respond to the spiritual and even have a what I would now describe as an inner reverence towards the spiritual without the the early childhood understanding of what that really meant. And that reverence is just carried across a lot of different traditions. Um but yes, that was a Christian Catholic upbringing, and um and then a walk away from that because it felt indoctrinated to a large extent, and and and when it hit my leave home years of 18, 19, 20, it's like no, no, I need to explore further and beyond what that was in a small country town.

SPEAKER_01 6:25

So, where were you born?

SPEAKER_00 6:27

I was born in a place called Yarrawonga, um, which is inland Australia. Um, uh lived on a farm, very quiet, sort of solitude life in a way, because we were away from the small town that we were near, and I had a Huck Finn existence. You know, we lived on a river and I had two brothers, and we did a lot of brotherly stuff, fishing, swimming, playing, silliness, and um so but a lot of also quiet time. My brothers were really good footballers, Australian rules footballers, but I didn't really do the sport thing. So I would spend a lot of my weekends while they were off doing their sport, just wandering the farm and creating sculptures and you know, playing around with sort of spaciousness and nature and things like that, which at the time I had no real relationship to what that could have meant. But as I've come to sort of get deeper into these things, it was relating to nature and it was relating to stillness, it was relating to presence. So this is this is great.

SPEAKER_01 7:26

So would you say that you came into this life with um some natural inclinations towards spirituality and beauty?

SPEAKER_00 7:37

Yeah, I would. Um, and and maybe it's taken me a long while to even get to the point of saying that. Like I'm not sure what if there's such a thing as coming in. I'm not really not sure how we language that, but I do believe that we come in with certain tendencies if we do come in in that way. And some of my tendencies are towards beauty, some of my tendencies are definitely towards the aesthetic um and stillness and contemplation and the subtler things, the subtler things in the unseen realms.

SPEAKER_01 8:07

So you mentioned this, and I want to share this because I've always we're very similar, right? So I was raised Catholic, but I was in Pennsylvania of America, and um I was very spiritual when I was young, and I did artwork, and I I remember having that connection even when I was a kid. I can remember this. I remember Christmas, and each one of us kids had our own nativity scene. Every one of us. We didn't have one for the whole family, we each had one, and I remember pulling it out and setting the figures up and um having that connection. And then as I got older, I realized that the story you know it's funny, what moved me out of the story is gonna be very strange. Did you ever see uh Jesus Christ Superstar, the musical?

SPEAKER_00 8:55

Yeah, of course, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:57

It kind of made me look at it the whole storyline a little different, and and you're all and there was a part of me that was like, Well, how how can Judas be evil because if he's not there, the whole story doesn't happen? Right? It's like, well, how does the story work if you don't have Judas?

SPEAKER_00 9:18

Well, I guess in every narrative you need a protagonist and an antagonist, and so Judas needed to exist for the narrative structure, but beyond that, there's a lot of metaphor in Judas too, isn't there?

SPEAKER_01 9:27

Yeah, yeah. So um, did you what did you have any early Buddhist training other than this experience?

SPEAKER_00 9:37

No, that was when I really dived into it. I spent time with the monks and I had really profound experiences living with them, not just their rhythms and getting up at three in the morning and meditating and prostrating and doing all that, but then I saw stuff, like I started seeing blue lights above these monks' heads, and I'm like, what is this? Um, I couldn't make sense of it. And I I I it wasn't a part that my mind couldn't make sense of it. I couldn't make sense of um, in a way, I couldn't really make sense of why I was privileged to be there and to have those experiences. And so that in itself was a whole unpacking and uncovering. But what it did show me, at least through the experience, is there's a lot more than we actually um notice than than we actually see, and that we actually develop intimacy towards. And so these monks, you know, Korean Zen in particular, Korean Buddhist Zen is a very, very streamlined process. They have a thing they call the Hwadu, which is essentially an ongoing inquiry. What is this? What is this? What is this? And you know, there are other other traditions that have similar ways of doing it, but the ongoing inquiry, essentially through the Zen model that they use, breaks the mind's delusion over itself. At some point, there's no um answer to that question. And so it's a very disciplined, it's a very formal um way to, in their mind, uh reach enlightenment or at least r reach a version of nature of mind. And something in me felt very familiar to that. Something in me, outside of the Christian upbringing, the Catholic schoolboy kind of guy that had spiritual inclination, had another version of aha. There is something deeply spiritual about this. It doesn't matter what context actually, whether it's Buddhist or Catholic, there's something else here that I have a familiarity to or a drawing towards or a desire to get to know more of. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

So uh oh, there's so as always, there's so many areas I'd like to go further with. Um, but how do you feel? Do you would you consider yourself a Buddhist now, or do you think you're just uh an individual expression?

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Uh non- non-denominational. I have I I do Buddhist practices. You know, I was in Nepal in in November doing a deep practice, and then after that practice, I went and spent, you know, 10 days in a in a cave, like a literal cave. Um, because that's part of the practice, that's part of retreat, that's part of the stillness, it's part of how I have um consideration towards deepening my own experience in in into these subtler realms. But no, I'm not, I wouldn't call myself Buddhist. I have deep connections. I'm working with a a Buddhist teacher, a Rinpoche, a Tibetan Rinpoche at the moment in a project. Um, but I wouldn't call myself Buddhist, I wouldn't call myself Catholic. Um, I'm studied and versed in esoteric Christianity as much as I am Tibetan, Mahayana, Vajrayana Buddhism, as much as I am in some of the Vedic kind of deeper, even Hindu influences, or um, you know, so there's a there's a lot of range there, and I don't really subscribe to one. I've got Jewish, I've got a really close Jewish mysticism friend, and you know, we have great conversations around these things through his lens. And so I'm just deeply curious in all the ways in which spirituality and spiritual influence can inform human consciousness.

SPEAKER_01 13:00

So yeah, it's just that once more we're so aligned. Um a few guys about two months ago, I think earlier this year actually, I interviewed uh Rabbi Rami Shapiro. I don't know if you've heard that interview, but he's delightful, delightful. And same thing. Uh I consider myself more interfaith, or maybe not just, I don't know, but he's the same looking in all them, being open to all the truths. Um it seems in today's world almost challenging.

SPEAKER_00 13:31

It's not almost challenging, it is challenging. I was really lucky in um February to spend some time in Washington, D.C. at the national prayer breakfast. And by whatever mystery that allowed me to be there, there was a whole interfaith dialogue. There was rabbis, there was imams. Um, I was there with a Tibetan Rinpoche, there was, you know, a lot of um evangelical Christians as well as other Christian types there. So there was this really large infusion um in this interfaith cohort of exploring this idea that you just brought up of like how can we actually sort of stand together even in our differences, or even not even differences, because differences can be a challenging word that creates more separation, but in our similarities, right? Like we're all actually, you know, a lot of the tenets of all the religions are the same, you know, love and kindness and sharing and community. Like these things are actually the things that we want to be gravitating and expanding from and oscillating around, not the things that make a difference and then create more separation and individuation in that separation.

SPEAKER_01 14:34

I I didn't know you went to that. I think that's amazing. I didn't know that. Um, a good friend of mine is a Unitarian minister, and um I'm familiar with that that whole event. Not I didn't go, but um I'm so I you know what I find though, Jason, even I feel like I'm almost outside of the box of outside of the box. Right. Like even when does that make sense? Even when I get together with people that are in an interfaith community, I I'm just like, well, what why you know? I even asked the rabbi, I said, Do you consider yourself a rabbi still? And he was like, Yes. And I'm like, but I don't know, at some point I just consider myself a sp a spiritual being, an individualized expression of spirit. And you know, how what do you think of that? You know?

SPEAKER_00 15:29

Well, I agree with the box metaphor because I think for some people the box is helpful. The the box helps develop construct that allows them to develop more um specificity of practice or or orientation and relationship, and they can deep dive into things or they can have a depth of inquiry through a mechanism of a religious structure or other context that allows them to get into really deeper truths. But for some people that's not necessarily relevant, I don't believe. I think it's I think the box doesn't exist at all. It's all it's all kind of a facade in a way, right? And so it's not about being better because you're outside of the box. I just think for for some of us, and myself inclusion sounds like you as well, the box is a bit of a constraint because what it does is it starts to package up too much ideology, and that ideology can actually take us away sometimes from these other subtler truths. That's how I see it.

SPEAKER_01 16:26

Yeah, I I totally agree. You know, once when you get to that space, you you don't think in better than because that you you know, it's not better than that that defeats the whole space, doesn't it? Yeah, you know, so uh how so how was that experience in Washington DC? Did it did it encourage you? Did it uh frighten you a little bit? Uh did it do both?

SPEAKER_00 16:53

No, nothing frightened me. It was more, you know, like I I I observe and I watch, and I'm kind of on the perimeter of the perimeter of that. A lot of people are going there with their hats on, literal and metaphoric, and they're all kind of got alliances and allegiances. And I'm sort of like just watching it and sort of deeply curious about it and and noticing things and noticing the judgment in myself around some of the things that I'm seeing, and then noticing another part, which is, you know, I do believe, I do believe in the human experience and the positivity of human experience. And there's a lot in the world at the moment, in particular, to focus on that would take you towards the negative, and I can fall prey to that. But also, I do believe when I see things like that, when I see people actively coming together in a shared humanity, regardless of the hat that they're wearing, that's deeply positive to me. Like that's deeply inspirational because it says to me that beyond the frameworks that these people inhabit, there is a desire within them to come to understand through a spiritual lens at least, how we can do things more optimistically and better, and not as an against or as an antagonism against what's wrong, just because I can sense these people actually inhabit it in their spiritual lives. And so that's the natural flourishing of those spiritual influences working through them. Okay, at some point they might still keep the rabbi cloak or name, but there is something working through them that's deeply spiritual, that's beyond that, that actually understands humanity needs to work together, that humanity has to transcend these conflicts of um ideology that understands that humanity is in its evolution and its growth, is desiring ways to meet one another in deeper truths. And so, yeah, I came away from that very inspired and um you know fortunate because I what I got, whatever mystery took me there, like you know, I got to see some things, I got to experience some things, and yeah, I'm I'm I'm in the perimeter of the perimeter, and that's okay. But um, you know, everything, and I feel I believe this deeply, every experience that we have, good, bad, otherwise, and depending, sometimes the bad's not even bad, right? Or the good's not even good. We just we just we just frame it as such. But every experience is a way to deepen our spirituality, I believe. And then as an artist and as artists, I think there's a lot of juice. There is a lot of um, let me phrase this carefully, more sensitively, rather. There is a lot that we can take from all our experiences because artists are, in my estimation and and my watchfulness, have a different kind of sensitivity. And their ability to translate through that sensitivity the things that they see, the things that they feel, the things that they pick up on, the things that their curiosity processes, I believe that's a great gift to humanity. And maybe this is where we can kind of dive into the spiritual artist domain a bit more. But I believe that when artists are allowing and affording that sensitivity within themselves, they are gifted more sensitivity. Um, because they're not, and this is where it might might get into an ego conversation. When the ego is not driving that, then the ego becomes a different, clearer vessel that allows the insights from beyond, the insights from the unseen, the insights from uh a divine creative intelligence to arrive more truthfully into their being. So yeah, I that was a lot to say. I loved being in DC. I love all experiences. I know I love being in New York for the five days before that, just vibing with New York in the middle of, you know, one of the coldest winters they've had in a long time. Just experiencing humanity and it's all it's it's myriad of wonderment, you know. And then I spent some time in Austin, near to you, just after it, and then vibing with Austin, you know, like I I go to places and I feel them out because that's part of the artist's job, right? Is to feel things, is to sense things, is to kind of have intimacy with things.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

Well, I want to take something. Oh, once again, yeah, I didn't stop you. Because you you tally up things and I have to catch up. So one of the things that I think is interesting to me, the opening, the door opening uh for an artist is do you remember when you were in very young, if you took an art class and they said, I want to teach you how to see? And I remember the teacher would say, draw a butterfly. And you know, someone would wing out this iconic image of a butterfly. No, you have to see the butterfly. You have to literally see, and you learn, I don't know about you, but you learn to take the pencil and almost trace it spatially and really see what it is. That the imperfect, the perfect, the wholeness of it. So that artist's eye can lead you to have a spiritual eye, you know, where you start looking at things and go, hmm. Do I have to follow these rules to be closer to God or spirit? Right? Do I have to do that like I was, you know, Catholic, right? Kneel, but you know, get up, cross yourself, kneel again, pray, you know, all the systems. And so I think that's a door opening that that an art art does give you. Some. But but Jason, I I am always amazed at how many artists are still hitting up with ego identity. Uh so let me let me tell you something. I I uh have a lot of these videos on YouTube, and just just about an hour ago, someone I have an old video about a Semic drawing. And some guy posts this ugly little comment, like, oh well, I guess anybody can be an artist. And he's coming totally, he's coming totally from ego, right? And it's it's a challenge because my little, I call it little Chris, like little CJ wants to write, well, screw you. And then of course I'm like, Well, Chris, that's coming from your ego. That wicked right, that wicked trap, right? It's like, so are you going to approach him from your all-ness, your oneness, or are you gonna approach him from your little uh individualized CJ? And it's a practice, right?

SPEAKER_00 23:24

It's a practice, yeah. I mean, the way I look at the ego, and you know, this sort of frames in against the Buddhist lens because the the Buddhists essentially try to dissolve the ego and the ego structure, but I don't align with that so directly. I see it as the small eye and the big eye, and you know, whether it's little Chris or Big Chris or little Jason, big Jason, even that it's probably at some point the Jason drops out, and the the the the egoic the egoic lens becomes something that's uh for me feels like it's an orientation to wanting to cleanse and whether it's transmute or transform, I'm not sure even those words work with it, but for me, it feels like there's something there of development, of a spiritual infusement into that particular structure of identity or or or spiritual inhabitation that can then afford a different offering out the other side. And what I mean by that is if you if your identity and small eye is compressed back down through the traumas, the fears, the expectations, the all these things that make us more reactive and um unaligned with, say, spiritual ethos or spiritual philosophy, you know, you're just gonna spin down in those realms. You're just gonna spin and and develop stronger capacity because that's all you know. But when you start to work with the spiritual domains, in my experience, and then you start to develop an orientation to other. And for me, one of the great ways to get there is through reverence, because then reverence sits outside, and then we can defer to something other. That's there's we can get into that, but there's a there is a doorway through that. And then when you go into the other, and then the the ego identity starts to cleanse and clear and in a way loosen some of its hold over how we interact with life, then what I have felt in my own experience and what I believe to sort of be a version of a truth, because I don't know what real truth is, I don't know how we any of us can. Um, but that there is there is a way that then the greater intelligences of creation can arrive into the artist. And then the artist has an understanding of being potentially a conduit to translate those intelligences, to share them back out into culture, to share them back out into humanity, to share them back out into consciousness, evolution. That is not just then a responsibility, it means that then you start to really see how that dynamic can then work in your work, right? Where you don't get attached to um the production part of it, and look at me, I'm a spiritual artist, but you actually get more aligned to wanting to be uh not um choosing to be humble, but you can't not be humble, choosing to be uh in a different type of intimacy with creative intelligence, choosing to be not subservient, but a partner that has a respect for something that's greater than I can bring to it because my intelligence is nowhere near as vast as that intelligence. And so there's this repositioning of the ego, and then what I feel happens is the ego, you know, and it's all it's a constant interplay, but the ego then has an opportunity to um architect creative endeavor and to be honest, just even human endeavor in a far more refined way, because the ego serves as the translation layer in order to interact and operate with life with greater fidelity, would be how I would say it.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Hmm. I was fine on you until that translation layer.

SPEAKER_00 27:05

Um, think of it like this if you've got a if you've got like a version of consciousness that sits down here and another version that sits up there, just to kind of frame it very simply, that higher consciousness is higher dimensional realms of consciousness. You know, there's a lot of energy there, there's a lot of, I don't know, we we could say higher frequency there, whatever, like these words can trip people up. But there is a lot more of greater, vaster intelligence in that domain. And most people tend to get caught in these lower domains and they don't have access to that. If that is the intermediatory, the ego, the identity, the eye, and I'm drawing an eye, as I say it to those that are just listening, not seeing, and that's obscured, as in it's fogged up or it's it's kind of, you know, all marked or got scratches and everything like that, then it is unable to perceive some of those brighter intelligences that sit above. And then when you do work on that and you start to create the clarity there or clean it away, wipe it away, and it starts to become glass, right? It starts to become a version of something that's more transparent, those higher creative intelligences or stream of what I call levity energies, and that can be a whole conversation itself.

SPEAKER_01 28:16

It is. We're gonna go to that word. You're gonna talk about levity, Jason. But anyway, go ahead.

SPEAKER_00 28:20

Right. And so that then can start to stream back down into the lower parts of our consciousness and inform it and provide insight, illumination, inspiration. Um, you know, and we can get into a whole structure, what is what is intuition versus imagination versus inspiration, all these different things. But um, when that starts to clear out and that eye starts to see that rather than just bounce around because it's hitting the ceiling of its cloudiness, oh, actually that can start to drift through. The higher creative intelligence can start to inform us. To me, that's where we can do a great sacred act in our own spiritual development by practicing cleaning that eye, getting rid of the obscurations in the eye layer.

SPEAKER_01 29:03

So one of the things I've been working with, um, because I'm always working with something is I've really fallen in love with this concept of a field. And so I call it the creative field of intelligence. And I like to think of it instead of because I was doing that for so I was doing a uh people, if you're not watching, a stack from above to below, and I boy, that just didn't rest well with me because one is not better than the other, it's equal. And so I started imagining this field, right? There's a field right now, there's your field that's within you, then there's the field of all that space all the way here to Dallas, Texas, between us, and then there's a field in me, and there's this field that just envelops everything. And so the clarity for me is to if I can set the ego down, I I like to think set it down, that and I open up my heart space, then I'm accessing that field, I'm aligning to the vibration, the consciousness, the love of that field, and I divine inspiration, intuition, all those things that just happen. Just happen. So it's the same thing. I just for so many years I kept coming from my ego. And I decided, wait a minute, what if I come from my I call it my heart or my body? What if I come from the an intelligence that's deeper than my intelligence? You know, like like my mental intelligence. I'm not talking, I'm talking about an intelligence of your space, your beingness.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

So how does that be like what we're saying here is the same thing, right? Like in a way, in a way, people treat the inspiration as luck, as a visitation. And I don't see it as that. I see it as capacity. I see it as developing the receptive infrastructure. When you do that, it's not about channeling, it's not about bringing the pipeline down, it just becomes an orientation of inhabitation that means that the artistic process or even just the spiritual human process has the capacity to receive, um, and it's not greater or better, but they just have the creak the capacity to see receive from these other places of resource. And those other places of resource can actually expand our spiritual development. They're there to do so, is how I kind of take it in. And so um, when the ego is involved and it's trying to force something, when it's trying to manipulate something, then it's gonna sever that. It's gonna take that out of the frame and take that out of the equation. Um, and so yes, I do receive get visions in my and for my work, but it's they're not visions that I call channeling, they're just me developing the conduit um and and and and learning to work with one of them is the ego as part of my identity structure, but then also learning to develop what you were kind of pointing to before is that inner fieldic domain, that inner resonance chamber within, which which you can develop capacity and attunement around, such that the refinement and your relationship to these levity energies or the unseen intelligences or the creative field of intelligence that operates around everything, you know, go and sit in nature, Chris. I mean, we both do it right. And if you put the phone down long enough to actually go into enough presence with nature, it'll tell you things, it'll share things with you. There will be a generative boredom that some people will get deep inspiration or illumination, or something will arrive because of that. Culture's getting further and further away from that, to be honest. I mean, that's a whole nother strand of conversation as well. But, you know, we're all addicted to our phones and these other things to fill the boredom. But there is a thing called generative boredom that comes from presence, that comes from attunement. And artists, I believe, you know, getting back to that idea of coming in with things, I think a lot of artists have that sensitivity. What happens is it gets, in my opinion, it gets co-opted by the mechanistic art world and the and the galleries and the things like that that want to commercialize things and commodify people, and then the ego then lands more deeply into itself around, well, I am an artist and I this and that, and it believes the the hype that's that's kind of in unhelpfully being surfaced around them because of these mechanistic materialistic processes, and therefore the conduit starts to get dirty again. Um, not a judgment. I'm I'm trying not to be very judgmental in how I position this, but I believe artists are deeply sensitive, and I believe artists carry beautiful, beautiful insights that that afford not just insight to self but insight to culture. And yeah, go, you got a question, I can see it.

SPEAKER_01 34:05

Okay, but they have to they do have insight, but they they have to be willing to let go of their ego attachments to rules like oil painting is more significant than acrylic. Or, you know, if I paint on natural fibers, it's more important than if I paint on a piece of cardboard.

unknown 34:23

Right.

SPEAKER_00 34:24

And it's not. It's like painting on a piece of cardboard connected to the creative intelligence is vastly, vastly, vastly more alive. And those of us that are sensitive will feel it. It's not about the substrate. Although that can help, if you choose it intentionally, fine. And if you're dialed in that way, it's not about that. Because the other way, the other, the other problem that we have is that um when it gets, you know, art materials are not cheap. Everyone in the audience knows that, right? But you know, I I I wrote I wrote an essay recently that deliberately spoke to the indigenous culture and indigenous population here in Australia that has been creating things on cave walls or in the sand or on bark because it's not about the substrate, it's about the connection to the intelligence that wants to move through and communicate. It really doesn't matter how it does that, it's about being open to allowing it to happen in a more truthful way, is how I see it.

SPEAKER_01 35:17

So, on that note, let's pull this because I did listen to our old interview and then I was like, levity? What where did this word come from? Is this a JSON word? You know, and then I'm gonna tell you something, Jason. I actually went to AI and I said, Where what does he mean by levity here? And AI said, Well, it's not a traditional Buddhist term. And it might be something that you've adopted sort of in your own language. Um, what do you think? What is this levity? Tell me about this.

SPEAKER_00 35:46

I mean, there is a classical way to relate it, and and then there is my own sort of ongoing investigation where I pretty much have taken taken liberty with levity. So there is that there is this sort of classical idea um of the transcendentals called um goodness, beauty, and truth. And we don't need to get into the bigger teaching around that, but like Plato brought it through, and Aristotle had a refinement of it. And then when it got sort of medieval, Thomas Aquinas came in and added more layering around it. But essentially, um, they were talking about you know, truth, goodness, and beauty as being certain domains of how it how how you could categorize some of these intelligences that we're talking about. But then Goethe came along and he was he was sort of playing with this idea of gravity and levity quite deliberately as a polarity in in some of his investigations. Gravity that sort of um pulls towards center into density, into mineral, into the material. And then levity works from the periphery inward into expansion, life, light. Okay. I mean, this is a real kind of distillation of the idea.

SPEAKER_01 36:56

So are you saying gravity compress levity outward, maybe?

SPEAKER_00 37:00

Um levity be the periphery inward, so it's levity coming from beyond that informs the inward um uh relationship through the vessel, through the inner resonance chamber, would be my interpretation of that. Um and then Steiner, Rudolf Steiner, took it further and he saw levity as being um like a life force energy and and interacted with what he called the etheric field. And the etheric field has a whole lot of its own different layers of intelligence around that. But that life force energy as I experience it and as I've come to work with it, particularly in my artistic practice, they are energies that stream in from the higher dimensional realms into the soul, into my my soulful being that I develop and you know, maybe it's a Buddhist practice or another presence practice or just a meditation practice, but then they can come and arrive through as subtle currents of energy, and I can work with them. They don't just carry the the inspirational insights and things like this. It's like my being becomes a resonant chamber that can have dialogue and intimacy with these subtler things that that is not just um energies carrying information, it's it's my ability to work more sensitively through this field that you're talking about, and how this field is moving through all of us, both independently and interdependently. And so for me, the levity energies, and again, getting back to that ego idea, when that ego starts to clear up, and then the eye realizes it's it's actually in service to something greater than self, it's in service to humanity, it wants to help people, it wants to serve um and sponsor those that are uh less fortunate or those that are struggling. You know, that these are some of the things that that natural um clearing of the lower eye into the the greater eye will do, but also that greater eye can then start to understand the the capacity for for say in this context artists to share some of the divine inspiration into culture. And at this, this is my current thesis, at this particular point of time, we need as much inspiration from beyond as possible that is non-denominational and carries some of these, and we can get it back into the transcendentals of goodness, beauty, and truth that people have an innate relationship to. Most people can have an experience with a sunset and they can feel beauty, they can feel glory, they can feel or they might not be able to land it with vocabulary, but something in them resonates, right? Something in them has enough of its own in innate intimacy or relationship that's gonna catch it, it's gonna feel it. And so artists have this wonderful, wonderful gift through their own sensitivity, and when they develop it even more to share some of that back out into culture to help inspire and awaken and remember, remind culture, remember those that have sort of lost lost access to the greater creative intelligence that it does exist.

SPEAKER_01 40:17

Well, okay, so I I got all that. So um let's talk about this though. When you say truth, beauty, and justice, that's truth, beauty, and goodness. Goodness, isn't that in conflict with Buddhism?

SPEAKER_00 40:31

I mean, is it aren't they more about there is no good or bad, there's no there's no true beauty, there's no true ugly, there's just is one of the things that happens, Chris, is that when we start to offset these ideas against one another, they then start to compartmentalize as theology or ideology, which means that you can't actually have a conversation about where they interact. Because the Buddhist, um the goodist, the Buddhist uh interpretation of a bodhisattva, of someone who reincarnates time and time again and will never, never kind of like not come back until everyone is awakened because of their deep, compassionate nature, completely maps to some of the ideology in goodness, beauty, and truth. And so if we want to get into all that's that and that's that, then yes, we can create more compartmentalization and separation. But what's the essence? What's the essence of what Buddhism is talking about? Of course, it's talking about certain truths through their context, it's talking about goodness that's deeply, deeply um compassionate. Does it align? Does it fulfill? Does it serve? Um and then I suppose their version of beauty, well, particularly the Tibetan version of beauty, is like an aesthetic beauty that that maps into gods and goddesses. And yes, that they can have wrathful beauty too, by the way. Like they do have wrathful deities that are actually profoundly profoundly beautiful because they very sacredly hold the Dharma, for example. Um, but so there is, if you wanted to get into a real deep excavation of how they don't align, you would have academic theologian scholars completely be an antithesis of one another, or you can actually just tune into what maps, what actually energetically maps in the field between that version of a religion or you know, some of the Kabbalistic teachings around um transcendence, or um, you know, there's all these different versions of things, right? But the real essence is we can find it in ourselves just through our own inner sensitivity and how we relate to it. Yes, we can have constructs with teaching and philosophy that can help guide us and position us, but where's where are we actually doing our own investigation? That's why I have taken the term levity energies and probably appropriated them to my own investigation and potentially academically incorrectly. But for me, what I sense through the levity energies is that they are alive as a currency in my interaction with life. And I use them, I work with them, I trust them. Um, I feel resourced by them, I feel nourished by them, I feel inspired by them, and also feel sometimes like you know, um what's the word? Schooled by them. They're like uh-uh, because they have that lower identity structure might come in and they come in as a bit of a no, don't, don't do that. They can course correct as well. Um so yes, there is a massive philosophical philosophical framework that I've reappropriated to self, and I'm okay with that actually, because that's part of just my curiosity of trying to work these things out.

SPEAKER_01 43:42

Well, you should know, Jason. You should definitely know with me that there are no rules. So that's okay by me. I I'm kind of creating my own as I go and and all that. So let's let's talk about this though, um on a on a layman's terms like because I noticed I want to share with the listeners that you do um that I'm I'm I'll share with you listeners that I am doing a a a coloring book of my that goes with my book called Spiritual Parable and I reached out to some artists that I really like and I like their work to do to volunteer and do art to match the stories and Jason has done art for three of them which is really wonderful and so when you did that and I'll show I'm gonna show it here when I I'm gonna show one if you don't mind um did you did you there's a story folks there's like a two-page parable and I'm asking Jason did you read it and then just kind of let it sit in presence and then talk to me about that. How how did that happen? How did the creativity happen in there for you?

SPEAKER_00 44:56

The parable carries energy so the the parable can have an intellectual cognitive processing but beyond that parable is actually you know it's like a Zen Cohen. It carries information it carries deeper deeper wisdoms right that's the that's the point of the parable and so you can get lost in the mind trying to discern that pick it apart understand it that can be an approach that serves you really really well but one of the things that I do is I just feel it. Like I don't even necessarily need to read the parable you just point me towards where the parable is although I did read this particular parable I processed it and I don't have to sit with it that long it's got a frequency it's got a tone it's got an energy that's my language right I'm just feeling the energetics of it and the energetics of it to me can be translated in a visual medium. I use that tone and my sensitivity to what I'm sensing in an energetic realm, not a cognitive realm that needs to be landed through an articulation of language but through an articulation of form or rhythm or forms and rhythm together in an image that will convey some of the sensitivity and the energetics of the parable. So then it's just like okay well I'll sketch it out and then you sketch it out and then yeah and then hand it across um well actually digitize it because it's going into the colouring book. But then that's how I that's how a lot of my work arrives is I'll go and do red a a deeper retreat or a meditation and um I I I tune in to forms and the forms carry intelligence. They encar they carry meaning I I'm not here to transcribe the meaning to the mind. I'm here to allow the form and the aesthetic to awaken other sensitivities in people so that they don't need the mind. And I think that's actually really really important because we defer to the mind far too quickly and far too often I I totally agree.

SPEAKER_01 46:50

Um I I our first podcast was about a year and a half ago and it's been a rough it was a very rough year and a half for me um not because of our podcast but but but I um I had some physical issues and I started recalibrate I literally have I feel like I've recalibrated myself um and I feel like I was so mind driven and I realized that it was my body was not happy my body was not happy that I wasn't listening to it and I was just listening to my mind and so I've recalibrated to listen to my body to the feeling space to it's not intellectual I can't explain it. I can't it's it's a it's a feeling and so I do that when I paint you know I I sit in front of the easel and I just feel something and I don't plan it out I don't sketch it I don't you know sit there and go well there's going to be a pink cube in the upper left no I just feel it so other than this book of course which you did as a great favor to me and I love I love your panels and they're so everybody's are so unique in the book but when you go to paint for yourself do you paint for yourself?

SPEAKER_00 48:03

Do you just paint uh what you're feeling a transmission of uh of yeah there's many there's many layers to that to that in terms of my own artistic practice so I have a I have a a a version of my artistic practice that is very intentionally discerning towards bringing through things that are going to um carry these other streams of intelligences of the unseen. And so that's a formal practice that I I will formally go and sit and I'll I will see things in my mind and not just see the visual forms. I will have an awareness in my gnosis in my knowing that is not something that I can describe that understands that they're doing something. Okay. And then there is a formal practice to articulate that and to paint that and to bring that forward. That is a a large part of my artistic practice that I have been developing and I offer as not just art as an aesthetic that has energy but art as a as a medium in which people can communicate with and their consciousness. And I teach people how to use art to journey into the art to explore their own consciousness and then bring that back out and then activate the art turn the turn the painting into another energetic transmission that isn't just its natural thing that you walk past and feel you can actually program the art. That's one thing that I do with it as an artistic practice. Another thing I do for myself when I'm doing that is I actually develop um my own stillness and my own capacity to listen. So there are the sketches that I formalize and then bring in to the forms that I paint but then there is the consciousness space that I inhabit when I'm in the act of that um developing that painting or finalizing that painting. At the end of it I also sit and meditate with it and I talk to it and I breathe it and I turn it on and I do all these other weird things that I've kind of learned to do with here we go again Mr. Woo-woo but like bring out the crystals or whatever else, right? Like to activate the painting beyond even just the stasis of information that I've brought to it before that point. Then I have my other artistic practice which is me being in deep curiosity where I'll go into empty space I'll use Sumi ink on wet um rice paper and I will um inhabit a space of just exploration and flow. And I and we can talk about flow state in a different way to how most people talk about it because I do think it's largely misunderstood in some ways. But I go into those spaces as a way of developing my ability to listen. And so then like what you're talking about is oh that that just feels like it needs to be in that corner and it feels like that colour needs to offset that colour. When I work black and white and fluid like that in the Sumi Inam Rice paper, there's no colour involved it's more just about feeling the energies and because I'm feeling the field and I'm feeling the tonations and the symphony of the field and the overlapping things all moving and talking and working with one another I try and transcribe that just through my my sensitivity to the field in those those works. And then another part of my practice is just okay let's do some geometric things for example and then I hear a number that's 20 centimeters you're doing a radius oh go 20 centimeters up and put a point and then you know do a a 23 degree angle and so I'm just like listening and drawing it that way based on hearing information right like hearing something coming from beyond and then somehow a picture and merge and then it's like how did the center of that line up to that and then if I do this other great big giant gigantic radius that turns out to be exactly a quarter of a dimensional space over here. So it's like hang on I could not have I could not have planned that even if I was working in a sacred geometry framework. Something is moving through in another form of intelligence for me and there's other things I do as well but for me the idea is to just stretch and and develop the sensitivity to hear these things to feel these things to practice these things as both the artist the artist that is communicating things and sharing them and then it is the artist that's developing their their deeper reciprocity and sensitivity to these domains of intelligence of the creative intelligence such that they can move through us with more elegance did you have any background in in um geometries or or mathematics is that just I no I'm like when it comes to mathematics and I don't actually call them sacred geometry I think there is certainly a class of art yeah um that that speaks to the energetic substrate of the world that is entirely mathematical I do believe that exists. My stuff feels different to that it feels like it's in a different tone and a different register. But I don't know and that's part of it okay I don't need to know because part of that to me is expression and and practice. Some of the other things that I get visions around the forms I do know. I do know what they're doing. I do know that that image that I created for the parable for your book or one of them has a certain meaning and a certain um offering in it that's going to potentially hit on some people's consciousness and and and and I I don't know the exact receiving that they're going to get but I can feel that there's something in it that's going to message to them and turn something on in them. And so I don't need to get into it more than that. I just can feel that there's a conduit at play there's an information transfer at play there.

SPEAKER_01 53:24

There is an intelligence moving through the art there so when you talk about this curiosity um would you say it's a a willingness to to to listen let it go to let it happen to to be curious to what goes or what what how would you unpack that?

SPEAKER_00 53:43

All of that all of that like I'm developing a workshop at the moment that sort of helps artists to step towards ways in which they can develop these skills within them. And one of them is it doesn't matter in some ways early days it doesn't matter like we're so constricted by the minds and then the the self-assessment and the critique of what this should or shouldn't do if we can drop some of that early on then we can afford space for the the mystery to move through it that we don't need to know that we don't need to be the person that's trying to fully understand it. A we can't but also B, we then start to get in the way of it through that that that assessment through that critique through that trying to catch it and land it into the mind no play with it literally just go out and play with it. And I know you do this in your workshops part of it is to allow people the freedom and the um it's not even just freedom it's the reprogramming of their minds that have been taught to do things in a very specific way because there's a linear way to achieve we're trying to break that by allowing just creative freedom to move through and then just like if it's somatically or um post the post the experience to some kind of like integration that just wants to kind of like feel it out. What was going on there? I noticed something in me was different or in the moment you're feeling your heart expand for some reason or whatever. It doesn't actually matter like they're good things to catch.

SPEAKER_01 55:17

What really matters is to try and unprogram the part of us that are trying to do things too formally too linearly and without affording space for the greater mystery and the greater creative and the greater creative intelligence to move through things yeah you know um I do that the way I do that is I've stepped back from the mind and given them like you said somatic somatic exercises and I and I'm I'm very excited I have a retreat coming up in April and I'm slowly putting together an entire framework of moving people through uh that ability but not just ability not that just the ability to listen because I'm also doing a layer of self-awareness to to see who you really are and and and and when I say that that doesn't mean that you have to stay that just to to see it right it's just to to let down the illusion and go oh yeah little CJ has a tendency to get mad when people write negative things you know on YouTube channel or whatever and and and laugh at it right and say oh do I have to get mad or can I just let it sit there? Can I let that comment just sit there? Yes of course I can I don't it's not mine to fix. So um it's it's it's you know there's so much once again we're running out of time and and I'm still like oh my god like there's so much we could talk about and still unpack. I I wanted to go back to when you talked about doing that cave thing where you were you in silence?

SPEAKER_00 56:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 56:52

How long?

SPEAKER_00 56:53

Yeah well there was other people around me and I was at a particular um cave that a lot of great Buddhist masters have practiced in for thousands of years and there are some other people there that would come and go during the day as pilgrims but the night time um you're essentially either in there by yourself or occasionally another monk will come and sit with you. And this the cave is really really really vibratory strong and there's a like you don't actually have to do practice there. You it just practices on you you just fall into this very vast profound not just stillness and silence but like um the tonal quality of it is actually I've been to a lot of sacred places and felt a lot of things and it's one of those places that's very very rarefied. And so really you are in stillness and then you know you come and you might sit for three hours in there in the middle of the night and you'll go and lie in your bed and you're in a different kind of stillness you you're sort of processing it. You're feeling it you're allowing yourself and some patterns to sort of be seen and some uncomfortabilities to be seen as well it's all working it's all working on you. And I often go into those rare rarefied spaces with an intention to allow my consciousness to receive artwork. But in this instance it was like ah artwork doesn't even exist because it's even more I'm going beyond anything that needs to be transcribed I just hang out in the quiet in the stillness in the subtlety and then develop more subtlety because of it. So I do find I do find it a very beneficial way to develop our capacities when we do want to bring intentionality to them that we have at least an a a an experiential relationship to what it means to be still truly still and I still don't know what truly still is I've had experiences that are profoundly still like you know there is nothing there is no movement the mind's basically not even there but then you know you've got to come back out and do life and and the mind pretty quickly jumps into into the story too. But for three months after that Chris I will tell you there was a part of me that was still in the cave even when I was walking around out here in life doing the interface of family life the work life all these different things you know some of those tensions that can happen in in in real world there's a part of me that was able to walk through those tensions very very calmly and evenly because for three months it felt like there was an energetic carryover part of me was by locating I was still in the stillness of the cave and it wasn't that it didn't matter it's just that I had the resource of that stillness infused into how I met you know some of the the the sharpenings that happen in day-to-day life of human experience wow that's wonderful it sounds wonderful I years ago when I went on I started going on retreats to paint by myself and and I I encourage my followers to do that it's really hard to be by yourself and in Santa Fe it's very quiet and still and you're in a studio all by yourself your cell phone doesn't work there's no TV you're just and you really do um it's wonderful though it's magical the creative expression and divine creative expression in my estimation and in my experience will fundamentally more arrive in those stiller moments than it will I mean it can come in through through all the different ways but you know it's no coincidence that most writers go for walks um to process things or scientists and stuff. These are ha things these these brightnesses and these levity energies as I'm calling them will arrive through these other moments of whether it's generative boredom or contemplative kind of softness um they'll fall in they fall in and I think culture's getting further and further away from allowing the spaces for them to fall in and we have to be careful about that and as artists and as artists that are developing spiritual um uh resonances with art we also want to try and promote and and and uh you know enable other people's orientation back towards that I think it's very helpful I agree I agree and you know I see this book cover levity Jason McDonald it's you know make it yours my friend perhaps perhaps I'm exploring at the moment I have been writing a bit of stuff in some of my essays and then even just yesterday I was asked to potentially publish on a very highbrow kind of platform and I'm like I never saw myself as a writer but hey you know let's just see where things go.

SPEAKER_01 1:01:26

Enter enter it with curiosity right just let's see what see what enters so um this has been great and and I I I I I love it I love talking with you and we really are speaking the same language and and uh very similar you know um I I I feel like I've created my own um relationship to life I guess I'm just gonna make it that loose it should be loose right it should be loose yes because then it can it can encompass it can and it can embrace all of all of it you know so is there anything else you want to share with our listeners as we wind this down something that you want to make note of or look I did touch on it before and I think I'd like to speak to it a little bit more and that is the idea of reverence.

SPEAKER_00 1:02:13

So we spoke about levity energies and then we kind of talked a little bit about this inner resonance developing the like the tuning of the instrument and the way I kind of feel as it relates to reverence it's the thing that underpins it all it's kind of it's kind of the orientation that allows some of the fidelity of these other things to land into the system. And so for me reverence is not just the prerequisite for these things to arrive it's actually a a way in which we can inhabit experience beyond ourselves that that even just intentionally will start to work on that ego identity structure. When you have relationship and intimacy to something beyond when you call it creative intelligence you can call it God you can call it whatever it needs to be called and whatever works for you. It doesn't matter the point is when you actually don't defer to but you have sympathetic intimate relationship to towards something beyond yourself something occurs in the field and in your um spiritual development I believe that starts to allow that intimacy to be a different type of resource it's not just a cognitive thought it's actually a real thing that artists can use not just to can keep them humble but to um generate different types of art from so do you feel like um I just want to repeat this back to you do you feel like reverence is a way of aligning with that um energy consciousness? Yeah it's totally a way of aligning with it and and and to realize that actually what happens is it's not what we were saying before, it's not the the egoic artist going, this is mine, look how cool I am look what I get to create or the version is that I am just the conduit it's not me mine, which I sometimes do fall prey to as well it's actually the interface of both those things where you get to have a deep intimacy that allows for the encounter with the creative intelligence through Chris or through Jason to be the interface where the magic can occur where the creative intelligence can operate through the individual sacred individuality and through that lens to manifest in the creative expression. And to me that is something that feels received rather than shaped right exactly I love it.

SPEAKER_01 1:04:42

I I tend to gravitate more towards the word ah than reverence but I think it's very It's the same thing.

SPEAKER_00 1:04:48

It's the same thing and it's not deference the deference beyond too like there's still a part of you that's in that conversation that's in that intimacy because in all great intimacies there are different things working together together so it's not like oh I'm just that and I'll do whatever it says that there is a part of you that's still evolving and working it's clunky and it's going to have little edges and all these sorts of things and it is all it is wonder and it but to me it's the orientation towards something sacred and to me that's then when you do that that's when you know we talked about goodness beauty and truth I was this is where it rounds out that's this is where real this is where real beauty starts to arrive for me. Like the beauty um and the truth are like enveloped into the energetic of the conveyance of the artistic expression that way.

SPEAKER_01 1:05:44

Yeah exactly I agree I agree that's wonderful that's really wonderful. I'll have to tell you sometime uh not for this conversation but I am working on another book and uh anyway. We'll just put that little pin there. So um because it you'll love it. I bet. I bet. Anyway, I want to thank you for being with first, I want to thank you for doing those uh those images for my book because I love them. And it is a central theme to the book. I told you there's a s there's these are all 40, 40 random parables, but three of them are all the same characters. And so your illustrations go with all three. And and it they're very key lessons for me, key messages for me. Um so I'm I love it. I love that you did that.

SPEAKER_00 1:06:27

And um well, I love that you guys want to interject. I love that you're making that because I do think parables are beautiful for this day and age. I do think they're a way for people to uh access into the field, access into the creative intelligence, using the mind as the conduit to get there, and then maybe you can drop the mind and then the art can come forward. But I think it's a beautiful device to sort of stimulate that in others and to remind others of things they already know that may have forgotten about and kind of take them on that journey through that particular context. So, yeah, thank you for putting that together. I think it's a great project.

SPEAKER_01 1:06:59

Oh, you're welcome. You know, the there's a parable gets around the mind because it tells a story that you can relate to, and you're not, and I very purposely did not put any dogma, any any names in there to keep it very loose. We'll see, right?

SPEAKER_00 1:07:14

You no, but it works. It works, it it it's they're designed to work, and that's part of the realm that we're operating in. Where they are very subtle and they are very refined. Koans, parables, you know, some of the Sufi teachings and the poems and things like this, they transmit, they trans, they transfer a different type of intelligence. And I do believe culture's yearning, yearning to receive from those intelligences. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 1:07:40

Well, thanks again for being on the show. Um, I love it. Yeah, this has been great. And um, I I'll probably reach out to you again because it just there's like I said, there's I have there's people that I just like connect with, right? And it's just so juicy, right? To unpack this and and well, I like reverence, I like awe, but you know, but it's all it's all just stuff, right? Words, right? Pointing at the moon, all that. It's not it's just uh stuff. So it's the feeling.

SPEAKER_00 1:08:08

Yeah, and it's it's beautiful to share both in sympathy, even with the subtle differences, because it's it it shows that um sensitivity is not just real, but sensitivity is is important because we get to see one another in sensitivity, and that's a different kind of intimacy. The creative intelligence is alive in you as it is alive in me, and to have a conversation that somehow allows those two creative intelligences um produced through the individuals is actually in its own kind of awe, right? It's its own kind of reverential, sacred thing. So, yeah, thank you.

SPEAKER_01 1:08:42

It is, thank you. So, listeners, thanks for listening to the Spiritual Artist Podcast. If you want, go to Amazon. You can buy a copy of my book, Spiritual Parable as a daily practice, and probably near uh near the end of the year in the fall, I'll have my coloring book out. I'm working on laying it out right now, um, that will go with that book. And uh check out Jason's work at his site also. It yeah, I'll put it in the description here. Um, great work, great discussion, and thank you for being a spiritual artist. Thanks again for listening to the Spiritual Artist Podcast. Whether you're watching this show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play, or iHeartRadio, make sure you choose the subscribe button so that you will receive updates when new segments are released. Most importantly, be still listen and know that you are a spiritual artist.