First of all I’d like to say welcome to all the new subscribers who’ve hopped on board while I’ve been off divesting myself of stuff, burning old paintings, packing, moving, looking for a new home on a new island and generally turning my life on its pointy little head.

It’s been a time of change and transition, one that I was ready for and looking forward to. It’s offered lots of opportunity for spiritual practice but a lot less time (and space) for making art. But thats okay. Sometimes it’s good for one of the streams of our life to go underground and percolate in the depths, re-emerging renewed and refreshed.

And with all the changes it’s not surprising to find my spiritual practice shifting and transforming too, from a Buddhist centred practice to a more eclectic one. I have always believed in the evolving nature of spiritual practice. As we grow and change it seems natural for one of the most important aspects of our lives to do the same.

For a number of years I’ve been dipping into quantum consciousness teachings and find myself now pulled more in this direction. I don’t see them as that different from Buddhist teachings.  The Buddha said “with our minds we create our world.” Buddhism sees everything as connected and interdependent and tells us that “something greater is at work” than all our mundane thoughts and tasks and understanding of the world. Ditto quantum consciousness practice.

I have returned to study and practice with the old qi gong master that I studied with before I moved to Salt Spring and find myself re-immersed in energy work.  Everything exists first as energy before it makes it’s way into the material world. That just makes so much sense to me. Again another principle of quantum thought.  These days I feel myself reaching out into that quantum energy field in many new and different ways.

I could talk for hours about these ideas and the many practices that they revolve around but instead I will invite you to come join me and a little band of spiritual explorers as we form community and explore these ideas in our private facebook group led by the wise and always entertaining Ainslie Greig. 

The group is hilariously named #More Than A Meatsuit to describe what we, all in fact are. It’s a great time to jump in as the group is new. There are guided meditations, a variety of other practices, journal prompts, a livestream q & a once a month, with a new topic each month and lots of ongoing conversations. This month’s topic is “raise your vibration” and there have been lots of aha moments for a number of us (or splodey emoji moments as Ainslie calls them).  I realized by letting people and situations “get me down” I am in fact giving my power away. Someone noticed that being bothered by someone else’s negative attitude was in fact a form of resistance.  And the best part is we get to share our discoveries and challenges and offer support to each other.

Here’s a link to join the group (which has a small monthly subscription fee to support all the amazing teachings.)

Here’s a link to the new small works on paper that I have created in my new digs.

Here’s a video of me burning some paintings before I moved 🙂

Here’s the answer to the question posed in the title:  community & spirituality (in my humble opinion 🙂  I’d love to hear what you think ?  Share your thoughts in the comments.