Hello, bloggers!

A couple weeks ago I had another dream where the people I call The Educators appeared and said to me, “All right now, here’s what we want you to do...”

And they took a synthesis of the Dip, rearranged it, and said, “You always talk about giving power to the material and the spirit.  So you do this...  and then just leave it alone and leave it to us.  And the manifestation of the message will be clear without you going and defining it.  Those are your instructions.”

I couldn’t wait to get up and go to the studio.

I worked for a week on many different canvases, putting together all the various things I do, and the order I do them in, and the variations.

I followed to a T everything I was told, then stood back and, as I was told to, let them rest for a couple days.  I had fans drying them out.

There was water and turpentine and linseed oil and all kinds of colors, all on top of canvases I worked on months before that, so they had subliminal colors and all kinds of things embedded in them.  It was layer upon layer upon layer of generations.

Then I looked in amazement at what they were and was blown away by the imagery.  It was almost like looking at a Polaroid picture come alive.

I thought:  Isn’t this great?

And within me I heard a voice say, “Wait a minute—now do this to them!”

I said, “Okay!”

So I changed the whole thing around, did something else, left it for two days, came back, and said, Well, isn’t this something?

They said, “No, you’re not through.  Do this now!”

So I did that.

And I left for the night, came back the next day, and they said, “All right, now you go around and decide if you’re going to make more lines.”

I thought to myself:  I thought you Educators were giving me the instructions, telling me exactly what to do, and now you’re telling me to decide whether to make more lines?

All of a sudden I learned the lesson of the whole thing.  It was a kick in the ass that said:

“Listen, you little twit, you think it’s that easy?  We are not going to plan and do everything in your life.  No matter what we say or suggest or prescribe, you are still in charge of your life.  You are still in charge of reaching inside yourself and bringing out that unknown place.  This was a test to see if you had learned the lesson of self, of possibility, of listening to the spirit..  and then, because of your power within yourself, to be able to say ‘Okay, I’m going to make a final statement on this one, and you’re going to make a final statement on that one, and the next three we’ll do together, and the next one, we’ll leave it as it is.’”

So I learned another lesson about humility:  that you may think things are going to be easy, but they’re not.

You’re responsible for what you do, even though you think somebody else is more experienced, more powerful, more spiritual, more in charge than you are.  There’s no excuse for you not to take the initiative when you think you should.

That lesson can be translated into everyday life.  If you work for an airline and see somebody stealing something out of a piece of luggage, it’s your responsibility to tell somebody about it.  What about Bernie Madoff?  How many people knew what he was doing and kept their mouths shut?

When do we speak and when do we stay quiet?

That’s what was taught to me by being in this world and painting about another.

It was not a lesson in art, it was a lesson in this life.

Matt