Fall Stream © 2010 West Hardin

Was experimenting with some different watercolor techniques. This evolved into something unexpected that what I started with. I really like how it turned out.

Fall Stream

Mixed media on paper, 6″ x 9″,

Original for sale $60.00

resting tiggers

It seems to have been a fast and furious few weeks now. As quickly as it happened, its now ending and I find myself in a weird place. I’m looking back over the past month or so and seeing everything that unfolded and how it impacted my life. Things aren’t the same, they never will be, and that is an opportunity.

The most amazing thing I see is how my life is moved by spirit. Thankfully, I listen and that alone has created an abundance of healing and understanding of the changes happening in my life.

The big question in my head these days is, Who am I? Who am I, when I’m not in a relationship? Who am I, with my mother gone? Spirit of course echos back, Who do you want to be? The responsibility, as always, rest with me.

As I settle into my new life in Columbus, these are things I think about when I cook, clean, love on the cats, draw, paint, take some pictures, play video games and do shamanic work. And I realize, that is who I am, it’s that simple. Some points of reference in my life have changed, but the core of who I am, an artist and shaman has only deepened.

It’s with those eyes that I look to my future now. In a few short weeks I will be in  week long workshop with artists Robert Venosa and Martina Hoffmann. Both Visionary artists with an understanding of shamanism. I’m excited to say the least for the opportunity to learn from them. I’ve been holding off on painting, until I’ve gleamed what I can about the techniques they use to create their works. So I’ve been drawing mostly, thinking about how I can refine my vision more, to say and express what I need to. I’ve also been rereading Alex Grey’s book The Mission of Art and I think after that I’m going to reread Drinking Lightning by Philip Rubinov Jacobson.

Looking back at my shamanic healing a few weeks ago and the timing of my own shamanic experiences, events and dreams that followed, I’m amazed at the deep interconnection of it all. It tells me how guided all of this is. I’m also amazed and over joyed that I’ve develop the sense of trust I have with Spirit. My shamanic lifestyle has given me the tools to have a direct experience with Spirit and the Unseen World. It’s a very magical and rich life I have and for that I’m extreme grateful.

Mom and Paul

My mom, passed away at home early Tuesday morning. She had been fighting leukemia, which was the result of her chemotherapy from having breast cancer in the 80s. My aunt called me to let me know that mom wasn’t doing well. I left work and drove up to Michigan, a lot of the family was already there.

On the 6 hour drive up, I had a lot to think about and talk with spirit about and talk with mom about. The week before I had talked with my mom and she had told me she had been dreaming about me a lot. I do a lot of dream work, but this was not anything I could say I was conscious of doing with her, probably for the better. During my drive, the strongest thing I felt was the spirit of Owl come to me. Owl is my mom spirit animal, my mom had always loved Owls. I had made a few paintings of Owls for her. Anyways, Owl wanted me to bring it’s spirit to my mom to help her with this transition.

My two nieces, Kasie and Jayme, and I stayed the night so my brother Tom and aunt could get some rest and we would watch over mom. The three of us set up a card table at the foot of my mom’s bed and started playing Rummy a card game that my mom had taught all of us to play. After a few hands, I felt that we needed to move out of the room and turn the lights out for mom. So we quietly moved the chairs and table out and then one by one went in and kissed her good night and then turned out the lights. After about 20 min Kasie heard a noise, so we got up and all went in to my mom. We could tell she was close to going. We sat around her and told her it was ok to go and she was loved and will be missed. She squeezed Kasie hand, I felt a “door” open behind me and light slightly radiating from over my shoulder, there was a sudden flash of violet light from the crown of my mom’s head and she was gone. I am blessed and honored to have been able to be there and witness my mom’s passing over in such a way, a very beautiful and sad moment.

My mom was a very tough woman and endured more than most people could tolerate. Raising 4 boys and having a alcoholic husband, various illness through out her life and tragedies. She would talk about her misfortunes and laugh about them. She was a Taurus and bullheaded and hot tempered. Well most of us in the family are hot tempered. My brothers, aunt and I sat around shared stories about those moments when mom “snapped,” my aunt blamed it on the French in the family line. There was a time Tom was beating on me in the kitchen over something and all I remember was my mom looming behind him and then BANG, hit him in the head with a pot sending him to the floor. There was another time Paul and I were with mom getting groceries we came back out to the car and someone had parked their car right up close to ours so she couldn’t get in the door. She had us load the groceries in the car while she took out her lipstick and wrote all over his car windows “Asshole!” We had lots of stories to share.

One of the things I am most grateful for is that my mom allowed me to be me. Whatever my interests were, she would indulge me, most times. I had a whole closet full of books, and all kinds of art supplies. I was always interested in the mysterious and spiritual and my mom who spent a short time in spiritualism, mormonism, and a few other isms, allowed me to search out my own spiritual path. She had many people come and tell her I was going to go to hell because of the things I was studying and she would stand up for me and tell them to never mind what I was doing, that I would be ok. She didn’t understand art but she let me create and pursue my hearts desire. In a lot of ways she didn’t know how to understand me, she did her best by just letting me be and have my space.

I remember coming out to my mom. I had met Richard and fallen in love and wanted to move to NJ to be with him. So not only did I have to tell my mom I was gay and in love with another man but I had to tell her I was moving away from her. My mom hated for her children to be away from her for any period of time. She needed us to be around her. Thankfully it was an easy conversation, for the most part. I think she had always known I was gay. Her only protest was that he was 11 years older than me, I laughed, she laughed and then we both uncomfortably squirmed and she said, “Is it getting warm in here?” That’s how that conversation ended, once again she let me do what I felt I needed to do and didn’t argue with me over it. She would never say anything to me again about being gay, she just let it be.

This past Sunday night, I jumped into bed and practiced a nightly ritual of randomly grabbing a book out of one of my bookcases and randomly opened it up and read to the end of the chapter from where ever I open to. The book was on Tantra, I open the book right to the start of a chapter on Hindu goddess Kali. That night I had a dream of me sitting and sobbing in a chair and a woman stood next to me holding me, this wasn’t a brief moment it was a long dream of sitting and crying and being held. I woke from the dream laying in bed feeling a bit more whole.

Yesterday morning, after my mom’s passing, I received an email from a woman who had bought one of paintings and she had it framed and wanted to show it to me. It turned out wonderful. Of course it was an Owl I had painted, already a sign that mom is right here with me, and everything is guided by spirit.

As I return to my life and get things moving, I realize so much in my life is changing right now. I take the time to ground and be with myself. The shamanic healing work I had a couple weeks ago seems to much more integrated now. I had 3 soul parts retrieved for me and 2 of them were connected with an experience with my mom. I feel more whole and expansive. Spirit has always conspired around me, getting me to do this or that. The healing work was well timed and has help me a great deal with all the changes happening in my life. I’m very grateful for all I have.

This morning has been a really great day. Actually, at the beginning of the week I changed my diet back to what I used to eat before moving. I also cut back on a few things and as always I do things in moderation. All this week I cook all but 2 of my meals and they have been mainly vegetables. This morning I had eggs with onion, tomato and mushrooms and a small side of fermented vegetables,

After breakfast I drove out to the Slate Run Wetland Park. It was still very quiet and early morning and the Goldfinch to the left was just waiting for me. I had a nice little walk listening to the Bull Frogs in the surrounding pools. The walk really help me ground more of what has happened in the past couple weeks.

I then headed up to North Market, being Saturday the farmers market was in full swing early and lots of people out already enjoying the day. I found a small bottle of local honey and a few veges for the week and mushrooms. The ladies at North Market remembered me and asked where did go and welcome back. Not that I don’t think people remember me but it is nice to here.

A few errands and then the gym, lunch and a quick post.  and it’s only 1:15. Still a full day to work with and I think I’m going out tonight. Ok, cleaning up the kitchen then some drawing.

Other side © J. West Hardin

I’m moved back to Columbus, OH. All in all it wasn’t that bad, not exactly as I had hoped but it’s done. This has been a learning experience to say the least. At least now I’m closer to work and not spending so much time traveling everyday. I have about half of my stuff unpacked and in it new place. Some things are going to be a bit more difficult to find a home for. But I do like the new space, I think the cats wish there was more and more sunlight for them, or more windows to seek entertainment from. But I’ll work on that.

The space is living/studio space all rolled into one. I have my drawing table and easel set up, computer table and a working table. It’s not ideal but it gives me something to work in and thankfully its all movable to suit my needs.

I have a new piece I want to start sketching out. It’s a dream from a few years ago, it was so detailed and so remarkable I still remember it today. The characters in the dream are the most remarkable. I need to dig through my dream journals and find this dream again.Of course there are always other things to be finishing up. I now have 4 hours a day of my life back that I was spending commuting, I’m sure I can put that to use.

For the past several months I haven’t been feeling my best. Not anything wrong going on, but just exhausted and feeling run down. My eating habits changed a great deal to accommodate the commute and living in two cities. I gained 40 pounds, mainly from eating on the run all the time and I stopped working out on a regular basis, because there just wasn’t time. In the past week to 10 days I have already lost 10 pounds, mainly from loss of appetite, I’m sure the move helped too. Being in my own space I can cook good food again and make the time for getting to the gym again.

I did have some shamanic healing work done on me a couple of Sundays ago and it was rather powerful, I’m still integrating the experience and energies, I’ll write more on this later, but I will say it was a great experience and I feel changed. It was also perfect timing for the healing.

The past several weeks I have been doing some inner work on myself. This resulted in lots of dreams and shamanic journeying. During this time Spirit told me I need to be worked on by another shaman. So I did some hunting around and found a pair that I’ll be seeing this weekend.

Some of the stuff that has come up has been around a past relationship. For some reason I can’t get anywhere with it. To top it all off my boy friend broke up with me last night, no explanation, just it’s not working, and apparently I know this as well, (his words). After promising to do whatever he needs to make it work, to support me in what I was doing. Sigh, whatever happened, I don’t really know, it was never communicated to me. I could go off on a rant, but I’m not going to do that here, I’m a bit more creative than that. Unfortunately, I have a couple unfinished paintings, that might remain unfinished. They depict moments of deep energetic and emotional connection I had with Joe. Not that that wasn’t real, it was, but apparently things changed. It will be hard to connect with that experience again to finish the paintings, but at some point, I’ll manage.

I have to move soon, the sooner the better I think. I don’t understand this and I need my space now. All in all, I see this as a blessing in disguise.

So until I get moved and such, it might be quiet on the blog. So much to do, and I’m going to do it all right now, lol. Because I’m bullheaded that way. That and I don’t want to stay some place, I’m no longer wanted. I’m hoping the cats are ready for another adventure. See you in Columbus, very soon!

Fire Spirit © J West Hardin

One of the big things that I am working on in my art is refining my imagery and vision of what I’d like to create. I have a couple different types of art I create, Visionary/psychedelic art and abstracts.

My abstracts are a more pure expression of my experiences with spirit, while my visionary/psychedelic images are more of an illustration of experiencing the experience.

Above: Fire Spirit by J West Hardin, 5″ x 8″, mixed media on paper, Available $25.00.

Trance Dance © J West Hardin

Over the past couple weeks I’ve had several lucid dreams and several dreams with significant imagery for myself. I’m starting to find the triggers to step into a lucid dream. Before falling asleep, I have mentally asked one of my spirit allies to come into my dreams and then told myself when I see him that that will be the trigger my awareness of being in a dream.

That night in one of my dreams, I was leaving the house and was stepping out the door and there was Sasquatch, I panicked for a moment and then realized I was dreaming. I then looked at the Sasquatch and he was clearer in appearance than I ever remember seeing before. He then told me something and disappeared. He actually spoke to me and I saw his mouth move. I’m used to just hearing his voice in my head. So this was all new in connecting with him. Unfortunately, I still need to work around my reaction to when I see him, because the emotional state woke me up at that point. I’ll have to write more about working through this fear in another post.

One of the other triggers I have found in my dream is seeing someone I’m really sexually attracted too in my dream. I had two dreams this week that started out this way. After becoming very sexually aroused I realized I was dreaming and started to direct the dream and wander in the dream looking to see what was in my environment. To be honest once I realized I was dreaming there wasn’t much there in the dream. The landscape was pretty empty and just a couple “characters” to interact with.

Nothing like fear and lust to shift ones awareness in a dream state. But at least I know what I can do to signal “hey it’s a dream.”

The Above Drawing: Trance Dance (1993) by West Hardin, 7″ x 11″, ink on paper

I have taken my Reiki Hand Position Chart and made it into a 3 page, 8.5″ x 11″ format. I designed it with enough margins on the sides so it can be 3-hole punch and put into a binder.

Reiki Hand Position Sheets

I've taken the poster and redesigned it to fit on 3 pages (8.5" x 11"). This is a pdf document showing the Reiki Hand Placements that I was taught. A very useful tool for teachers and students. You will be able to download this document after payment through PayPal. Teachers, please do not reproduce this product, these materials are copy right protected and the $5.00 purchase is for one person use. Please direct your students to this site to purchase their own copy. Thank you.