I am a highly functioning artist, highly motivated by my constant battle against depression. My depression is just as deep as the depths I seek when swimming to the bottom of my mind’s meditative ocean. The deeper my depression, the deeper my meditations. The deeper my mediations, the more my demons poke and prod at my soul, but I swim on, unflinchingly grabbing the ends of spears with bare hands.
Being a warrior on internal battle fields comes with little in the way of memorials. There will be no statues erected in my honor or medals hung around my soul’s scarred and charred neck. Battling depression is a full-time job, where a knife can turn into a scalpel at a moment’s notice. I’m warrior and medic all at the same time; fighting while simultaneously wrapping wounds. Although I will not truly meet my end until the end, I suppose I also play the role of a Father on the front lines; administering first rights rather than last. And the only right I am concerned with is my right to wage war on behalf of myself, within myself.
Somehow, on good days and bad, idea agents make it across enemy lines and fill my imagination with inspiration often sent through the medium of dreams. I dream a lot here in the jungles of Suriname. I assume every dream impacts me, whether consciously or subconsciously, but some of my dreams come with a little voice employing me to bring those visions to life. In the face of my depressive forces, I readily accept those missions as they are doled out.
It’s a mystical cycle of depression, meditation, dreams, and inspiration which fuels my essence. Of course, there was a time in my life where I assisted the chaos raging inside of me by living a chaotic life. I thought I was resting in the palm of God, but, in truth, I was living life on a high wire spanning canyons, hung over hungry, jagged rocks. The wind blew often, and I am very lucky that I didn’t fall any further than I already had.
My influences are many, as are the teachers who assisted in my ascent to more positive peaks. No longer do I assume I am with God. All l know is that I am on a path of seeking. Those influential teachers I spoke of, led me to love’s river and while my ego howled at the moon, I consciously decided to drink. Eventually, I immersed myself.
It used to be about suicidal day dreams precipitated by nights where something invisible paralyzed me until I screamed. Now, thoughts of monasticism have replaced thoughts of suicide. Whether things work out or not, I’m sure I will see my last days from the comfort of a habit, an orange dhoti, or maybe from my seat at the foot of a raging fire, in-between an arrangement of sticks and branches assembling an open-air monastery all my own. There’s never a need to end it before it ends.
In some ways I am already there, living in a tiny apartment silently involved in my creative toils driven only by the will of God. I still have a long way to go within the realm of discipline, but my surroundings are the beginnings of a rainforest Gethsemane. Creating the space to create seems to be essential in all of this, just as set and setting are important to psychedelic journeys. And much like a trip into the forests of the unknown I meet mysterious helpers and guides at every turn.
Do I find them, or do they find me?
All I truly know, is that I am closer to finding myself.
