It begins with the feeling of being invited into another world… Maybe it’s a picture you saw, or a story you read, or a movie, or a song, or a play. And it inspires you to begin exploring your own ‘other world.’ You know, the one alongside this one, but in your head.

I had to reach long and hard for mine. Part of it was mastering my materials of choice—the paints and tools for drawing—which involved lots of trial and error. But then, as I gave credence to my inner workings, I came more alive in the outer world. I experienced more levels, felt my way through more dimensions, now that I was connecting the two, seeing the relationship between.

I started out by wondering, Who Am I? What Am I Feeling? What Am I Seeing? What is my heart telling me?  Art is very much a clearing process.

Works of art “step down” higher states of awareness onto the physical plane.

Art might be considered as the portal into the World of Meaning and Significance.

To create art is to transmute denser matter, lower thought-forms, onto the higher planes of love/wisdom, compassion and understanding.

Through the imagination we move into dimensions of lesser density and lighter fields of awareness where we access the intuitive plane.

In the science of the 7 Rays, the Fourth Ray, Harmony Through Conflict, is known also the ray of artists.

Harmony, by definition, is created out of disharmony. It is also a Ray of emotion, for the experience of Harmony is an emotional response. The process of aligning and creating beauty from chaos is the process overseen by the Fourth Ray. Through life challenges, fourth ray people find inner balance regardless of outer world chaos. They bring harmony to people, often through mediation or artistic endeavors. They must avoid excessive daydreaming and melodrama. They learn to bring their hidden self out into the open.

Whether it’s reality you’re painting, or dreams or visions or mental or emotional states, it’s about creating a different reality.

It’s about seeing, and it’s about the power of seeing, and figuring out exactly what we do see.

The first step is to become a creator. When you re-create the physical space around you, interpreting it, re-interpreting it¸ you are seeing how you see it.

I felt deeply and  profoundly, but I kept it inside, afraid of what others might think. Afraid of being hurt or ridiculed or scorned, I remained in the past emotionally, and didn’t grow.

There is a big difference between being emotional and being able to express emotions in a coherent way.

Author and channeler Patricia Cori calls the 4^th Dimension a “clearing station.” She says the planetary karma will be cleared in 4D. She says it will be like seeing your shadow in front of you instead of behind you. We will have the opportunity as individuals and as part of the planetary karma, to clear our shadows. To bring to light that which we have hidden from ourselves, and clear it as we move further into the light.

Here is a quote from her book – Atlantis Rising:

“There is only one safe harbor… that center of your being, where all is in balance and fear cannot take hold.

Your primary task is to understand the calming of the pendulum; the next is to still your emotional bodies and be there.

That, dear ones, is the true Ark… it is your only guarantee of safe passage into the next dimension.”

And, “You will be most effective when you have gazed into the soul mirrors of another and seen your own existence, your fire, reflected back.”

Detail of original watercolor by Nancy Wait

It struck me as hilarious this morning when I looked at our banner – (see above)

Such a horizontal! But banners are meant to be horizontal, at least on the web. Still, it hardly suggests ‘ascension,’ does it!

Watercolor by Nancy Wait (1995)

Never mind. We know what we mean. And I think we also know how useless it is, seeking ascension without first being grounded in the here and now. The earthly plane. 3D reality and all that.

The cross like a plus sign ( + ) is nothing without its horizontal line, and neither are we!

The image to your left is the original watercolor (12×16) which as you see, suggests an upward movement as well as a movement within. But alas, this would not fit into the horizontal space for a banner!

Now the cover photo on our facebook page seems a good solution, as it incorporates forms from nature that suggest both the vertical and horizontal planes, as well as the arc of light connecting them!

Please Join our FaceBook Group: Art and Ascension

We began the group back in 2009 in conjunction with our blog talk radio show Art and Ascension, which ran for over three years. (Archived Shows available HERE)

(In Numerology A is a 1, R is a 9, T is a 2. 1+9+2=3.)

Three letters, a three vibration, a three-sided triangle.

Art is Life from another angle.

Idea, Perception, Vision. Execution, Realization. Then the Reaction of the viewer or listener, because that always ends up being part of it.

At no time in the history of humankind have there been so many artists of all sorts running about doing their thing. The difference is that materials are fairly easy to come by, (and any and all materials are acceptable!) the technology is there for promotion and sharing so no one has to feel they are working in a vacuum, and of course there is the “leisure time” for exploring one’s individuality, a privilege undreamed of for all but the wealthy until just recently.

And I say there is a reason for this recent flowering of imagination that goes beyond the need for self-realization. For as the energy and consciousness rises on the planet as a whole, we are becoming more aware that we create our reality. And we must become aware of this, for it is our Destiny as a species.

Take a look at this article that came to my inbox just yesterday from Inelia Benz, at ascension101.com titled: The 5th Dimension is not a location, it’s a Creation.

Here is an excerpt:

We create our own reality. This is something that has been taught for thousands of years, and kept a secret in Western society for as many years.  It is also the one biggest piece of information that the “powers that were” are trying to stop from reaching the sleeping masses. The reason that this knowledge is being kept secret is that when a person is asleep (spiritually unawakened), they can be lead to create someone else’s reality by the use of fear, persuasion, and created illusions of reality that are sold so hard, it’s hard to think they are not real.

But when we think about the 5th Dimension, or any other higher dimension, we often forget that the same applies.

In more subtle dimensions, core material is there as a more subtle physicality, but what happens there, what we experience, or even entering that less dense reality, is our own creation. In order to enter a more subtle and pliable dimension, we need the awareness and capacity to allow ourselves to be and create that less dense reality.  We do that by becoming less “dense” ourselves (no pun intended).

We create the 5th Dimension.

Yes, all physical reality is multidimensional and an illusion, but we create them to have an experience of singular individuality.  They exist in the same “location”, which is infinite. But at the same time, we choose to be aware of only a tiny little spectrum of that all encompassing “reality”.  That tiny spectrum dictates what we experience as “real”.

The difference between the 3rd, 4th and 5th dimensions are ones of empowerment, subtlety of solid matter, and capacity to do.

Therefore, what we experience in the subtler dimensions is what we choose to experience there. They don’t “exist” until we create and move our awareness into that space.

There are no dimensions in Oneness, because there is no singular construct of individuality with “other”, whether “other person” or “environment.

From a standpoint of Oneness, the difference between the 3rd and the 5th dimensions are infinitely small and insignificant.  But from our standpoint, and awareness, there could not be two more different experiences of physical existence.

And, the most important point, these are not dimensions we move into, but actively create moment by moment by our raising of our personal vibration, raising the vibration of the planet, and being fully aware of our intention and energy behind all our communications with other and self. It’s a personal process of creation.

How do we get to that point of conscious creation? 

To read more please click HERE.

My cartoon appeared alongside this wonderful article by Suzi Gablik. I have copied a few paragraphs here:

What Is Art For?

by Suzi Gablik

Ever since modernism, the question “What is art for?” is one we don’t like asking. Modernism taught us, perhaps all too well, that art has no purpose beyond the purely aesthetic, that it cannot thrive constrained by moral and social demands. “The artist is not responsible to anyone,” claims Georg Baselitz, the German neo-expressionist painter. “His social role is asocial… There is no communication with any public whatsoever. The artist can ask no question, and he makes no statement he offers no information, message, or opinion. He gives no help to anyone, and his work cannot be used.”

This attitude began to take hold in the U.S. during the 1950s in the community of artists out of which Abstract Expressionism emerged. It was then that the totally self-possessed, self-reliant individual became the model for the typical artist in modern times. The gesture of putting paint on canvas became the ultimate gesture of liberation, not only from political and social norms, but from previous art history as well. History (which implies a responsibility to the past and a dependence on the achievements of others) was the obstacle to be transcended. A new art was necessary, and according to Barnett Newman, “[W]e actually began… from scratch, as if painting were not only dead but had never existed.” At that point, modernism so embraced the notions of freedom and autonomy that we now have whole generations of artists who doubt that art was ever meant to be integrated with society’s needs or purposes in the first place.

Certainly, much time has been spent during recent decades denying that art has anything to do with either spiritual or ethical values… As material and rationalist values have gained pre-eminence, spiritual values have declined in direct proportion… A mode of perception which incorporates the spiritual dimension—what Theodore Roszak has called “the Old Gnosis,” a visionary style of knowledge, as distinct from a theological or factual one, that is able to see the divine in the human, the infinite in the finite, the spiritual in the material.

This very conception has largely been lost to artist in the late twentieth century…Modern Western society seems to be unique in regarding its art as a commodity to be sold in exchange for money, prestige and power.

This, I have come to believe, is the true function of art: to become the instrument of transformation. Within each of us lies the potentiality for change. This is creativity in the deepest sense of the term. We are being asked not only to be experiencers and observers of change, but its architects. We are being asked to challenge the erroneous beliefs and assumptions which are now promoting annihilation, and to make new patterns, new paradigms. Any artist who can see this and is capable of knowing that he or she is one of those magical figures who can command spirits, who can make contact with the source of meaning and power as our ancestors did, has already taken the first step toward transformation.

Excerpts from an article in Lightworks (Milenko Matavovic, ed., Lorian Press, 1985)

Suzi Gablik is an art critic, author, teacher and former artist based in Virginia.