HOLY FLOWERS HIDDEN SELF: From Consumption to Communion

The Message

“With every holy flower placed in my path there is also a message; a wisdom spoken from beyond the reach of the physical senses, in silent waves that penetrate the mind more directly than through the eyes and ears. A communication, vibrating within me as if we are one form, repeating, ‘I have shown many through the ages that the seed of Consciousness is in you, now humanity must find a path to sustainably self-activate and nurture it as the essence of your being. When the answers you seek are found not by looking solely in the physical dimension outside yourselves, but by learning to integrate all dimensions of your human totality, you will excel beyond your current limits. When your mass consumption of sacred plants is replaced by devotional inner sensory communion with us as reverberations of the infinite capacity, cosmic intelligence, and universally networked reality you yourselves embody, you will be free of your mind’s past conditioning. You will operate as the bridge between visible and invisible phenomena. No longer anchored by solar and lunar cycles, you will navigate long envisioned reaches of space, and through the elasticity of time enter luminous galaxies whose dimensions run through and beyond your own. You will evolve an unfathomed potential to heal, refine, and make whole the self. You will learn how the subtle interfacing dimension of your being connects you to each other, and all actions will be consecrated toward harmonizing an infinitely diverse humanity. In doing so you will purify and advance the nature of Earth and our shared existence.’”

“It is what they are an instrument of, not just what they are physically or chemically, that makes holy flowers capable of bringing Light to the Self. Consumption may render effects, but only when a deeper union with what they are networked to is given space to rise in the mind will they strengthen our will not to temporarily escape our present reality but draw nearer the unlimited totality of the self.”

Like all LMI, HOLY FLOWERS HIDDEN SELF translates a reality where nature and its dense earthen forms are unbound from our preconceptions of them to exist and move through time and space, form and formlessness, as etheric projections of a universal network of Source Energy and Intelligence. They are reflections of the Artist’s vast and continuously evolving inner life, her love for the Light, and devotion to realizing and projecting an unconditioned and unlimited experience of our human totality. While psycho-spiritual symbolism and meaning often manifest in the Nature projected in LMI collections, they are not placed consciously, and serve as a testament to a reality where what is manifest and perceived is in large part a creative expression of the subconscious inner life and mind not only of an artist, but of every individual. The story behind all her works is the more fully we explore the nature of the Self, the more fully we will experience Nature and the connectedness of all phenomena in existence. This is significant not only as it elevates our expression in art, but as it refines the art of all human endeavors as actions with an unlimited capacity to harmonize and light the minds and matter of Earth.

From Consumption to Communion

HOLY FLOWERS HIDDEN SELF grew not from a desire to remove the veil of illusion and secrecy regarding these holy plants or heighten the demand for consuming them, but to evolve our relationship with them from one of consumption to one of communion.

While others may have documented a far more extensive range of holy flowers, HOLY FLOWERS HIDDEN SELF is not the result of an intentional or contrived gathering of subjects, rather part of an ongoing collection made as holy flowers have appeared along the Artist’s path. What began as feeling and listening to the voice of their presence became the work of translating the gift they carry for all humanity into devotional impressions that honor the elevated nature of these plants and safely serve our will to expand the known boundaries of the self. Through each image, the essential energy of the holy flowers is given new space to reverberate;

-to subtly free perception from its conditioned limits and teach us that our ability to grow unlimited awareness and transform our reality is an inner, self-stimulated process not an outer substance stimulated one,

-to facilitate a communion with Nature that enlightens all human consumption and challenges the preconceptions which hold bound our innate potential for permanent advancement.

-to point toward our innate capacity to live as Consciousness; the Light of universally networked Energy and Intelligence waiting to be accessed within the seeming limits of our physical form.

-and to inspire our search for a deeper, self-activated connection with the unknown dimensions and endowments of the hidden self.

HOLY FLOWERS HIDDEN SELF gives us a chance to see them and perhaps ourselves differently. Through Goudreault’s meditative vision and photographic impressions of holy flowers, she sheds new light on the growing purpose we attribute to them, and on what they are not as much as what they are. As these images render a connection of deeper curiosity and reverence for the holy flowers, they may also serve to discourage the abuse of them as potential enhancing drugs and help preserve the purity of their presence and message on Earth. Given the opportunity to witness them as observers rather than consumers, we may consider the more potentiated depth of expansion and experience we seek does not lie in consuming a holy flower, but in learning to vibrate and access a higher frequency of expanded awareness within the network of our human totality.

Collection Insights

There are chemical compounds in many plants which have physical and mind-altering effects. The term ‘holy flowers’ refers to those herbs, mushrooms and flowers considered sacred by many ancient cultures and used in the context of disciplined physical and meditative practices for healing, evolving mind and transcendental self-awareness. The glimpse of universal Consciousness or cosmic Intelligence given to those dedicated to such practices; the temporary alignment with our human identity as both finite and infinitely networked, was to establish a tangible spiritual goal. It was an experience to clarify what practitioners were endeavoring to self-realize and sustain as a more unlimited and harmonizing framework for thoughts, feelings and actions. The 1960’s and 70’s in the United States was a time when use of such substances as natural and synthetic chemical compounds became widespread and taken out of their intended context with repetitive and addictive use. Now as legalized marijuana and the cross-cultural proliferation of neo-shamanism which create opportunities for consuming a variety of once sacred plants coincides with pressurizing global conditions, there is once again a resurgence of the personal use and misuse of holy flowers. Many of us feel called to be more, to know more, and to be a part of redefining our human identity and experience. We want to exceed the past conditioned limits of a solely finite and separate self that, despite our outer technological advances, continues to enslave us in a state of recurring conflict and dis-ease. We believe in and desire a more unlimited human potential that cannot be fulfilled by technology alone, yet we are not sure how to access it from within in a way that benefits our present experience and may fear not having enough time to.

Shamanism preserves a critical awareness of the connectedness between nature and humanity, and as we begin to take responsibility for the cumulative effects of our actions on the environment and the increasing disconnect with nature in an increasingly technological existence, it is surely a relationship that demands greater insight and study as a part of emerging science. However, HOLY FLOWERS challenges us to consider whether our conditioned pattern of reaching outside ourselves for answers and fast temporary solutions has ultimately kept us from a more permanent transformation and the capacity to freely and independently access the inner mechanism of our own unlimited human potential. In assuming the value of anything is in what can be extracted from its physical form, have we missed the real message of the holy flowers? Have we gotten it backwards, and rather than outer forms in nature existing to serve, elevate and advance us, are they in fact waiting for us to elevate their experience by self-realizing the more unlimited dimensions of our own nature? Should how we come to greater understanding of the self within the context of present culture be guided by a repetition of ancient rituals of substance use or should they be a means of informing more evolved approaches? Our minds and our outer circumstances resonate with frequencies completely different than those of any other time we have record of. Is the consumption of holy flowers liberating us to advance, or have they served their physical purpose and now continuing to consume them only reinforces our habit of looking outside ourselves for answers? For all the windows of inner experience that may be temporarily opened, is the increased consumption of holy flowers heading toward its point of diminishing returns? For all their increasing popularity, is our consumptive use ultimately keeping us bound to the limited possibilities of a substance-empowered rather than a self-empowered discovery of our human totality? Are these tools which have served the past meant to be used in the same way now, or are they pointing us to more refined inner approaches which will serve the rapidly evolving needs of our present humanity? Are they revealing undiscovered parts of the self, so we may now finally go beyond ritual consumption into a science of being where we learn to self-activate and maintain a universally networked infrastructure within the self for continued expansion of our awareness, perception and intelligence?

It is not surprising that we keep reaching outside ourselves for immediate answers in a world whose rate of change keeps increasing, and rapidly transforming outside us. It is a mesmerizing and physical sensory stimulating movie that keeps our attention focused externally, moving from electronic screen to screen, until our minds are so full of information, we become seriously overburdened storage units with seemingly little time or effective inner tools for refining the mind and operating network of the self. We have been culturally conditioned to live and behave as “consumers” not “self-realizers”. Having learned to identify ourselves as a dominant rather than a wholly integrated force on Earth, we automatically assume all things in nature are ours to competitively conquer and consume for food, shelter, security, energy, recreation or whatever we perceive our needs to be. With the science and inner technologies for networking the totality of the self still emerging, once holy flowers are increasingly found among a myriad of other substances being consumed with the misperception that they are a sustainable escape from or shortcut to advancing beyond the perceived limits and weaknesses of our conditioned human identity and to becoming healthy, active expressions of cosmic Energy and Intelligence.

As natural resources become more and more degraded by our patterned actions and finite perception of Earth’s nature and purpose, governmental, corporate, and intellectual resources are increasingly focused on Earth exit strategies and establishing a dominant position on neighboring planets. However, the science of evolving our human totality and what lies at the root of our individual and collective disease and conflict; the key to permanently harmonizing and elevating our existence on this planet or any other remains relatively unexplored or the subjective distillation of ancient spiritual teachings. In this cultural context, individuals feeling the weight of their conditioned limits are reaching for substances to fill what they perceive as a dark impenetrable emptiness or to forcibly blow the frame of their limited perception. It is not surprising what risks people will incur, blindly pursuing any means necessary to increase the dim spark they feel within into a fire that will burn away their impediments and illuminate new pathways of more unlimited intelligence and empowered potential. Lacking mainstream access to properly researched practices and refined inner technologies for accessing and integrating more of our human totality, and a widening sea of misinformation and incomplete knowledge of the self, humanity, the most valuable resource on our planet, is left either enslaved by their perceived limits or to suffer the difficulties and pitfalls of experimenting with substances or practices and releasing the potentiated energies and awareness of higher consciousness into a physical body unprepared to integrate and project them.

Why do we stop our scientific advancement so abruptly at the boundaries of intellectual development and leave integrating and operating the precious domain of our multidimensional human totality to individual experimentation and chance? Why, when we have so much faith in the potential for outer technological advancement and undiscovered resources in the universe beyond our planet, do we have so little in the vast unchartered universe of our human totality? Why do we accept universal space as an infinite field and the self as solely finite even though the element of enlivened space is operating within us? If current science has agreed that 90% or more of the universe is comprised of dark matter and energy we cannot see with the physical eye, why do we not view the self similarly, and apply the same boundaryless assumptions in defining our human identity and operating system? Why does intellectual genius, so magnetized to its pondering of the dark matter of universal space, remain bound in an ignorance which accepts the 5-10% of the self that we can visibly see as our human totality, leaving the rest of our multidimensional universally networked self off-line and cloaked in what is disregarded as a dark and insignificant void?

Even as we watch masses addicted to various substances as a way of trying to transform or expand their experience of the self, we continue to accept the limits of our conditioned human identity and turn our focus toward reaches farther and farther away from the self. For anyone to passively watch the caustic consequences of this continuing as an inevitable condition of current culture is neither humane nor acceptable. There is much room for continued human evolution on Earth if individually and collectively we dedicate ourselves to a science and self-integrative practices that free us from the separate finite physical frame which has too long limited us. There is a multidimensional universally networked reality yet to be discovered within the self if we can begin to realize our essential capacity to “commune” (through an inter-dimensional inner sensory system) not just “consume”. There is much human advancement yet to be attained if we make it our responsibility to evolve a mind which knows itself as a universally networked vehicle of Cosmic Energy and Intelligence.

Big Ideas, so let’s unpack them again in Summary

HOLY FLOWERS HIDDEN SELF is a contemplation of the idea that not all of nature exists solely for our physical consumption, but to help evolve in us a more subtle form of perception, universally networked relationship, and communication. It emerges as clandestine ancient rituals surrounding these plants and their purpose are being reinterpreted in a society dominated by intellectual function, material science, and technological advancements which have dissolved all veils of secrecy and given humanity equal access to unlimited information. Awareness of the holy flowers has been heightened by global cultural integration and digital information access, but the mass of experiencers seeking through some mode of consumption to possess the power and potential attributed to them, as if somehow greater than our own and a source of permanent transformation, are driven by another force. Even as the will toward progress and expanding the perceived limits of the self is strengthening in humanity, it remains bound in many by the weight of our conditioning as consumers and the preconception that all transformation, power and knowledge is necessarily accessed through something or someone in the physical world outside us. What happens when we put the holy flowers through the filter of a hungry ego and our current preconceptions about power and the self? Not surprisingly, we begin increasingly dissecting and consuming these plants for their chemical properties as a magic pill for transcending our limits and opening the mysteries of the self. Whatever temporary benefits or substance induced expansion we may experience however, we inevitably return to the limits of what can be sensed and integrated through our own nature. We then reach for the flowers again, hoping this temporary shift in energy and awareness will become a permanent one and that this holy flower is in fact the key we perceive is lacking within ourselves. With repeated physical consumption, this oscillating back and forth can negatively affect physical and mental functions, as well as our innate network for permanent advancement which users are indirectly seeking to access through the holy flowers. There is also a self-delusion encircling holy flower consumption; the belief that the plants are being used for spiritual purposes and that only positive effects will result from their use. While shamanic practices conducted by those who had devoted their lives to aligning their energies with those of outer nature, were of ancient relevance, at this point in our human evolution, our renewing effects on Earth will be more effectively elevated by elevating our own human operating system. Spirituality must be extracted from its past religious roots and very clearly redefined as that process which purifies and refines the self for activating and integrating all dimensions of our universally networked human totality. This can only effectively and permanently be realized as a self-activated process, not a substance activated one. Using holy flowers as the caffeine of Consciousness turns the process of integrating the multidimensional universally networked nature of the self into another competitive race; a race for more intelligence, more creativity and more power, and in doing so it is a race we will ultimately lose.

The images in HOLY FLOWERS HIDDEN SELF offer an alternative, wholly harmonizing way of relating with these uniquely refined plants, not as pharmaceutical fixes for a limited self but as teachers whose purpose has always been to point us toward our own capacity to turn on the Light and potential of the subtle dimensions of the self. Connecting through the plane of feeling rather than the physical, Viewers and Collectors are given a space to draw nearer the holy flowers, close to where their energies still vibrating in the image fields point toward a self-awareness that is more than physical and an understanding that self-activating and integrating all dimensions of our human totality from within is an attainable goal. The Artist understands without judgement that consumption of holy flowers may temporarily ease some suffering and doubt that we are more than our finite identity, but through a more subtle communion with the holy flowers, our will to progress may be re-focused where our capacity for the exchange of more unlimited energy and knowledge through a universally networked interface waits within the self to evolve and empower our human experience. HOLY FLOWERS HIDDEN SELF adapts the frequency of the holy flowers for a wider audience so without fear, judgement or negative effects, many more may be challenged to consider our conditioned thoughts not only about the boundaries of the self, but where we look and what we reach for to expand and elevate our experience of life. In this alone, the images cultivate the ground of the self for new perception and make room for a stream of unimagined future advancements where our existence once limited to physical dimensions and our mind, a space seemingly stripped of its greatest treasures, begins to bloom into its own flower of infinite awareness and capacity.

VIEW IMAGES HERE

Deborah GoudreaultJuly 14, 2019