Mon, 29 Oct 2007 21:02:08 +0000
Black and white nude, Seattle, 2006, by caroline allen. www.carolineallen.com
My entire life as an artist, as an adult, stems from the moment when I became psychic. Many many people ask how psychicness fits into the role of Artist. I wrote about the sudden opening, my initiation into becoming a channeler in my book, Yes this journey is absolutely necessary.
In 1993, I was a journalist in London when suddenly and without warning I could read everyone’s mind. Even the trees spoke. It was as if lightning had struck the top of my head and turned my insides out. In one 24-hour period, I went from newspaper and magazine journalist covering social issues on such things as the treatment of handicapped children, to someone who could hear the russet color of the bricks of old London buildings as if they were speaking. Angles of rooms and floors and the trajectory of buildings grew from static objects to vibrant, alive beings, and even the sickly city trees lining the busy streets beckoned to me. I walked the streets of London in slack-jawed wonder. What had happened? Why could I read nearly everyone’s mind? Why was I having intense metaphysical dreams? Why did I know things were going to happen before they did? Why was so much despair mixed in with the shocking possibility?
I lost interest in journalism. Overnight. I roamed the newsroom in witless boredom. Current events became not just mind-numbing, but trite. There seemed to me to be so much more depth in the world than what all of the journalists around me found important, like what one politician said to another, or what the NASDAQ was doing that day.
Fourteen years later I am still figuring out what happened. The initial strike was followed by a three year period of confusion, therapy, art, and a complete collapse of the life I had known. I was so tapped into the spiritual realm, I could hardly manage the practical world. I took up a deck of tarot cards. I learned the symbols. I went to see tarot readers and studied with them. As much as other people might dream of being psychic, I did not want to be so. I found it too emotional and complex. Too many people – including many of my former colleagues – found it something to be scoffed at. I wanted the international travel of my journalism career. I had been an editor in a Tokyo newsroom when Emperor Hirohito died, an editor in London when Princess Diana died. It was an epic life and I missed it. I wanted the mad pace, the excitement, and the instant gratification of seeing my name in print. What came to me in a flash in London in that 24 hour period took years for me to properly figure out. To outsiders, I’m sure it seemed my life was going backwards.
What came out of it all in the end was that I became a visual artist and fiction writer; the openness to universal truths feeding deeply into my work. Because so many people ask me HOW psychicness feeds into my writing, I’m including some examples here:
• I channel the pure light of spirit often when I’m painting. I feel energy entering my upper chakra, traveling through me, merging with the essence of who I am, my background, my particular viewpoint on life, etc, coming out my hands, and ending up as paint on a canvas.
• I have felt myself channel great artists of the past, as if they are waiting in another world to guide and help artists in this reality. I’ve actually felt it wasn’t me painting at all. I haven’t felt this as strongly in writing. I don’t know why. I know other writer’s say they do feel it.
• I awoke in the middle of the night, sat bolt upright in bed, and saw a series of four novels: Earth, Air, Fire and Water. The story stretched out in front of me like a bolt of cloth, unrolling rapidly and clearly before my eyes. I saw characters, story progression, plot twists. Everything. My body certainly cannot keep up with that level of connection, so I am very slowly putting that vision onto paper, chapter by chapter.
• I can intuit characters from deep within their skin. How they speak, even the sinews of their flesh. I’ve had moments when I’ve been given a vision of the character’s skeletal structure. It’s been weird, to say the least.
• I use the tarot deck often to ask how to untangle a scene, how to work the plot.
• I’m so psychically open after my morning 4-hour writing session, I often cannot drive a car. As I sit in my Camry, I pick up the feelings and thoughts of everyone in all directions, which makes maneuvering city streets somewhat of a challenge.
I am not saying what a tremendous gift it is to be psychic and an artist. A deeply intuitive person can barely stand the violence in the schools, the smarmy news reports that glorify it, the way all the media attention on stars is ruining our lives and theirs. I can feel planes go down. I can feel the terrible pain of wars on the other side of the world; so please do not envy someone who is deeply psychic. I take what I’ve been given and do the best I can with it.
If you feel you’re psychic, or that your intuition is blooming, know that a very powerful outlet for such universal knowledge is within the Arts. The universe flows its knowledge through you, and this energy picks up the essence of your personality as it flows out of your hands. It’s a moment of powerful alchemy. If you choose to explore your creativity, to deepen your innate intuitive abilities, to apply it to art, expect the unexpected. It’ll shake up your life. You’ll come out the other side a different person. You may just discover your soul’s contract.
I wrote Yes this journey to share my journey. The book explores chapter by chapter the spiritual journey of going from “normal” person to artist. Click here to order.