Visualizing the Invisible

Back in February, I promised to detail how I personally experience and perceive psychic energy. I realize that if I continue waiting until I produce some digital masterpieces before sharing them... Well, then it might never happen. I've decided to smother Perfection with a pillow, and humbly proceed.

A Self-Portrait

Below is my homespun graphic depiction of my energy, viewed from above -- a simplification of what I see at the bottom of the circular window I described in an earlier article about how I conduct Distance Readings. The "map" below shows the physical position of a few of my guardians, in relationship/connection with my body.

Check out this simplified detail of the location of my closest guides:

• You're looking down at the top of my head -- my aura, for lack of a better word, is the bubble in the center
• The compass-like, light-blue graphic represents a clock face, for standard navigation purposes -- 12:00, the top of the image, straight in front of me; 6:00, the bottom of the image, right behind me
• The line connecting my energy to the bubble in the 6:00 position is my silver cord -- my direct connection to source -- monitored by an angelic I call DJ
• The bubble at 7:00 is Big Jane, my "primary" guide
• The little orb close to my right-hand side, at approximately 2:30, is my familiar Cera of fifteen years, now deceased, still attending me

These are by no means the only entities that I can map in this fashion -- I've chosen to list a few for illustrative purposes, just to give you a general idea. Your spirit guides and guardian angels do not float about, physically independent of your aura. They can "travel" instantly, much the same as any consciousness or thought, but they occupy general positions in your energy.

I'll discuss the variety of structure, formations, and positions in another post.

Balloons There is an elasticity to their movements -- they can stretch beyond comfortable boundaries from time to time, given the situation -- but I would liken their motion to helium-filled balloons tied to the wrist of a child.

They drift, spin, follow, float above -- but their energy is somewhat anchored to your location. Imagine if you attached mylar balloons to your chakras with rubber strings. That should give you some sense of how your guides behave.

You might also consider the behavior of soap bubbles or beach foam -- the size, number, and configuration of individual bubbles, clustered together.

What's with all the bubbles? I've been fascinated with photographing the behavior of water droplets for years -- the deciding factor in my first digital camera purchase was a killer macro lens, for close-up microphotography. I've snapped THOUSANDS like the background of the first image in this post. While my near obsessive-compulsive voyeurism of dewdrops on glass at sunrise could be seen as an exercise in abstraction, the motivation is actually quite literal:

I seek to contemplate super-common everyday examples of super-natural concepts -- the magic in the mundane. I prefer to embellish my articles with photorealistic imagery -- even when choosing pure abstraction. The premise for the imagery on this site was to avoid ooey-gooey New Age airbrush cartoons, employ the abundance of kick-ass user-contributed imagery available on the web -- much of the work lightyears ahead of my abilities -- and to generally avoid as much of my time-stealing design addiction as possible -- to focus on what I can accomplish with words.

But I am not only a writer, and I will never be totally satisfied with one medium -- here I am twenty years later, and I still can't choose a major! One of the goals of rebuilding my blogs, and moving everything under my name, was to bring back a more controlled expression of all the minutiae that make me who I am -- that make my Vision unique. And this certainly can't be accomplished by suppressing or censoring. I've waited a lifetime for the multimedia potential of the web -- I hope to put even more of myself into these projects -- in as many dimensions as possible.

Expect to see a lot bubbles around here -- like those on my front page. For me, bubbles, spheres, and orbs are the modern equivalent of all those centuries of halos in religious art history. I just can't find anything that more accurately portrays how I see energy -- the dynamic interconnections of souls, spirits -- as constellations of blogs on the web, or foot-traffic through the cafe from where I often write to you, or cars on the roads, ants on the ground...

If you wonder what I see -- yes, clairvoyantly -- contemplate what those bubbles, the crowds of foam, the elemental intersection of Water and Air, represent:

• the bubbles could be the Shift Your Spirits readers -- your attention converging around my screen -- this blog as mirror and filter
• the orbs could be the spiritual bloggers who comment and link here -- the constellation in web space I described in Stars of the Apocalypse
• these spheres could be YOU and the spiritual entities that surround you -- you're that big one at the bottom, with your god posse frothing around you, drifting either to or from light, or gravity...

Spirit Guide and Guardian Angel Portraits If you've engaged me for Readings, then you've given me permission and invitation to look for humanoid features in the bubbles that hover around you. I alter images of statuary to produce portraits of what the various members of my god posse "look" like -- where else can you find more vivid models for angels and gods? This is not an original idea -- I'm going along with some serious tradition regarding idols and icons.

If you've read about my primary guide, who I call Jane Throne, then you've already seen a rendering of what Jane looks like to me. Also featured in an article on this site was a transit guide -- meaning, she worked with me for a few months last summer and then moved on -- Angela. Angela assisted me with the launch and promotion of this web site, which revolved around conducting Spirit Guide Readings for each and every new subscriber.

I don't create these portraits just to amuse myself or to illustrate my stories about them -- both good enough reasons, certainly -- I render visual representations of my guides as a way to more fully develop my relationship with them. If you've delved into manifesting techniques and tools, then you're probably familiar with the concept of Image Boards; I not only use the portraits themselves, but more importantly, the PROCESS of creating the god posse portraits, to connect with their voices and stories.

Illustration often serves me as a meditative entry point to the clairaudient messages I receive -- like those medieval ladies that fall into trances spinning thread... For distance readings on strangers, I cast a graphic natal chart to use as the entry point.

Keep in mind that the Jury is out on whether the facial features and characteristics I describe are plucked from my mind or yours -- borrowed from versus projected by the entities themselves - but I am confident that what WE see -- the collective consciousnes -- is the hope chest full of drag that spirits pull from, when presenting us with physical form.

Do spirits already have preferences for forms? Do they assume their appearance, or do you? Is it your need that dictates -- requires -- them to appear?

I can see now that I have opened up yet another Pandora's box of potential posts -- your response to this discussion will be the best indication of whether or not I should prioritize these types of details and continue struggling through Visualizations of the Invisible. (This is damned difficult to pin down and translate!) My intention, for the next few months remaining in Year One of Shift Your Spirits, leans toward delivering on my promises of gory details and diary-of-a-mystic blow-by-blows.

See, as soon as I started writing publicly about my life-long clairaudience, somebody turned up the volume on my clairvoyance -- or, er... turned on the highbeam lights... or something like that. My writing is always running behind a speeding train of experience...

I realize this is exTREMEly self-indulgent -- but you know what? I love Jeff Lilly's narrative meditations, and many of you have written me excited about Vera Nadine's transparent accounts of her mediumship. Wait for me! The best I have to offer the campfire are my own "One Time..." tales.

Soap Opera fans refer to their favorite shows as their "stories" and their "bubbles" -- the metaphor of this slang is not lost on me. My Rich Inner World is a private drama of which I am the star, with a colorful cast of supporting spiritual characters.

I ususally labor to present my spiritual experience in terms that you can apply to your own life; but I wonder if I might not be missing an opportunity to simply set an example by sharing more magical detail from my own... Would you like for me to introduce the members of my God Posse to you?

Seek Wisdom -- Practice Love