May Blog

- May 17, 2020

Studio Blog #1

After I finished morning meditation with my husband, we were talking about what came up during the 10 or 15 minutes of sitting in the sun, trying to, or not trying to, quiet our minds, taking deep breaths and letting thoughts float through and not find an anchor. He is working on a book and he had realized the train in one character’s bedroom was a premonition of the abandoned underground Nazi railway the main character would find in the first action sequence.

I said, “Sure! That’s what the creative inner voice does, it knows all the parts and puts them in place before you can consciously see the connections. Your cerebral cortex thinks it’s running the show, but it isn’t. Of course it has important things to do, like planning for resources and setting aside time, but it’s really better if you trust your creative part, your Muse, or higher consciousness, or whatever you want to call it.
He made a rumbly noise and shook his head. I pressed on, “When fans comb through their favorite author’s books looking for hidden messages or connecting threads, the author often says they didn’t purposely put those connections in. But I think some part of them did - just not the thing that you can see and hear.” I touched my forehead and waved my hands in front of my face.

“I don’t think so,” he said. “There is not that great of range of human behaviors and activities to represent something plus the readers always projecting their own personal stories into the stories they read.
“Maybe,” I paused. “In some cases, I agree, but what I am talking about is the part of us we, whatever that is, don’t control from here.” I tapped my forehead again. “Like how our white blood cells roam throughout our bodies chasing down and eating things that don’t belong inside us. You don’t control those, but they are you, part of you. Are all parts you? Is there only one thing that is you?”

Understanding there is a greater force, a higher consciousness is part of an understanding, an awakening, I made over the past 20 years. What stands out is an emphatic statement I made to my good my friend, my psychic friend, June sometime during the ART21 gallery days. She told me my father wanted to paint with me. I was taken aback and was feeling quite greedy about my creative process at the time. I remember a warmth flaring up in my solar plexus. I said, “Absolutely not! If he wants to paint, he can reincarnate and do it himself.” Part of my incensed reaction is that I was still harboring anger at him for disappearing in the middle of the night. I never got to say good-bye and it took decades for me to properly grieve. 

It happened during a hot summer in July when I was 14 years old. I had come home while I was still coming down from a quarter dose of 4-way window pane. I went straight to my room, skipping dinner with my mom and dad. I am not sure what time I fell asleep. Since I took the hit during the early afternoon, I wouldn't have stayed up all night. However, I am exactly sure when I woke up. The yellow wall phone with the 8-foot long curly cord, rang from the kitchen wall at precisely 6am. My mom picked up after just a couple of rings. Walking down the hall, I heard her say thank you, put the phone back in the cradle and heave a dry sob. My dad, my first art teacher, my buddy had died of a cerebral hemorrhage at 4:15am.
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See what I mean? When I started this page, there’s no way I sat down to tell you about my father’s death and I never told anyone before, except my husband, I was tripping on LSD during his last night on earth. That detail alone is a piece of really sour-juicy Secret Guilt I carried in my top pocket for years, and years, and years.
What I am saying is I started the blog with my conscious thoughts but it didn’t take long for my Muse (maybe even my dad?) to bring you back in time with me to my first step out of childhood on that tragic day. 

​- Susan Kraft, spiritual artist