Years ago, I was experiencing some discomfort in my spine and decided to learn about the spine.  I created this painting back in 2016 and as odd as I feel the painting is, I feel gratitude for the wisdom that it has continued to bring me.  I've been practicing a release and receive meditation that was inspired by this painting.  I will share it with you here.  I hope you try it and if you do, please leave in the comments your experience.  Much gratitude!


A Release and Receive Meditation
This meditation may take 20 minutes and more.  A couple days after this meditation, you may or may not experience emotional or physical releases that may or may not manifest in a variety of ways.  Just recognize any experiences as part of the healing process.  No need to worry or assume something is wrong unless your highest guidance leads you otherwise.  I have experienced odd aches and pains which have no explanation, intestinal clearings, emotional mood swings that are not my usual way of feeling, sleepless nights, as well as wonderful sense of joy and bliss, lovely synchronicities, and spontaneous wisdom or clarity in thoughts.  Try not to over think them. Just allow awareness, full feeling, and release to do what they have come forth to do.  
For any biblical folks participating, you might find these parallels interesting.  There are 33 vertebrae in the body.  Jesus lived 33 years.  We have 12 ribs on each side of the 12 Thoracic vertebrae.  Jesus had 12 disciples and there are 12 tribes of Israel. 
The Vagus Nerve length runs from the brain to the heart and gut and calms the body just like Jesus calmed the storm.  Laminin, the protein that holds cells together is in the shape of a cross when seen under a microscope.  
Jesus rose on the 3rd day.  Scientific data reveals after fasting 3 days, the body begins to regenerate. The process is called autophagy where old cells die.  New ones are born, and the body begins to heal.  
One more thought; Tears change chemistry whether depending on the emotion. The hormones present help the body release stress and manage pain. Crying supports the healing process.
The Chakra System corresponds with the spinal column.
The Crown Chakra is located at the crown of the head, at the top of the skull.
The Third Eye Chakra is located on the forehead between and slightly above the eyebrows.
Cervical vertebrae C1-C7, with C4 about the center of The Throat Chakra.
Thoracic vertebrae T8-T19 - the Heart Chakra. 
Lumbar vertebrae L20-L24- the Solar Plexus
Sacral vertebrae S25-S29 fuse together to form the Sacrum which then connect to the hip bones. Here is the Sacral Chakra 
At the Coccyx, vertebrae 30-33 are fused and are known as the tailbone.  This is the Ground Chakra
As more parallels are discovered, I will add them to this list!  For now, let’s move on…
Prepare.   
Sit or lie down upon the ground.
Relax, Breathe deeply.  Calm your mind.
Invite your higher self, guides, angels, and ancestors to surround you with loving energy and assistance as you do this exercise.
If you are willing, allow the energies of your wounds and trauma, unforgiveness, and/or any energy you feel no longer serves you to migrate toward the spine and to enter the spinal fluid to be transported down and out at the ground chakra at the base of the spine.  
In preparation, thank the earth for her love and wisdom.  Ask her to receive any of these energies you have been holding to be transmuted and transformed into energies that can serve the greatest and highest good.  
It is not necessary you remember or acknowledge specific memories for these energies.  They may or may not come to mind.  Our bodies often hold these energies, and this may or may not manifest as aches and pains, or dis-ease.  The body’s wisdom is incredible, and it knows how to release when given permission and allowed.  You may experience any emotion during this process.  Just feel it and then, allow it to release.  Remain centered upon the earth and feel her holding you.
With gratitude, thank these energies for the lessons and experiences they have offered.  Even as they have been interpreted as energies that feel like wounds, really, they have been gifts of opportunity for your soul’s growth.  Feel gratitude for each, if they are revealed to you.  Thank them and release them in love for their journey of transformation.  Mother earth will do the work.  Trust her wisdom. This process is somewhat like denial.  You are denying these energies have any more control over your experience and your healing.  
Begin Part 1.
Begin with a deep, belly breath in through the nose and through the mouth exhale slowly.  Count “One”
Take another deep, belly breath in through the nose and exhale slowly through the mouth. Count “Two”
Again, deep, belly breath in through the nose and exhale slowly through the mouth. “Three”
Repeat these breaths until you reach 33 breaths.
Rest.  Imagine wounded and traumatic energies migrating toward the spinal column, entering the spinal fluid, and beginning their descent toward your ground chakra.
If you were lying down, sit up and continue resting.
Part 2 After the process of release, we receive.  We want to invite into the spaces of our body, mind, and spirit higher love. 
Place your attention at your crown chakra.  Imagine it opening like a lotus flower.  Ask and invite your higher self, angels, guides, and Creator Source energy to flow into you high frequencies of love.  Invite this love energy into the spaces where your wounds and traumas use to be.  It is not necessary you know the details of where these were held.  This process is somewhat like affirmation.  You are affirming health and wholeness in every part of you trusting Divine Guidance knows exactly what, where, and when healing will be complete.
Begin the breath process again.  33 deep, belly breaths in through the nose, 33 long and slow exhales through the mouth counting down after each breath.
Know that higher frequencies of love energy enter your body, mind, and spirit as the wounds and traumas exit through your ground chakra.
Rest
Express gratitude for this healing.  Thank yourself, Source Creator, Angels, Guides, and Ancestors for their guidance and protection during this healing meditation.  And so it is.
 
 

​.Flower Shower
Standing on the ground of the earth, eyes closed, imagine it’s raining flowers on and all around.  
As the flowers flow down, I invite you to…
Release to the flower flow any thoughts or beliefs that you feel no longer serve you in your life.
Release any fearful energy you are experiencing, whatever they are about.
Release any difficulties you might be having with others or yourself.
Imagine them flowing down and into the earth just like rain from a spring shower.   Thank them for the lessons in life and love they contained.  Send them love as they move into Gaia.
Thank you, Mother Earth for receiving these things I have released.  I ask you to transmute them for highest good.
Continue standing and imagine another flower shower raining down on you.  Visualize the sun shining golden, sparkling rays upon your body and flowers bathing you, planting seeds of higher love and greater joy.  You are invited to nurture and tend this new garden of possibilities and abundance for your body, soul, and spirit.
Stand a little longer feeling this potential increase with all its possibilities.  Feel healed. Feel whole.  Feel loved, loving, lovable.  Feel abundance in every good way.  Affirm it with everything in you!
Feel grateful for this experience.  
Give thanks to Source.  Give thanks to Gaia.  Give thanks to yourself.  Give thanks to all those who assist you every day in your experience h

​Does anyone else pick-up bird feathers when out walking about?  I like to think feathers find their way on my path to let me know I am being guided and protected as I move about in my day.  Anyway, I bring them home to use as tools in making marks in my paintings.  I had collected a lot!
 
I googled the spiritual meaning of feathers, and this is what astrofame.com said: “Feathers are carriers of energy, and depending on their colors, they symbolize hope, love, balance, energy, etc.  A feather is a symbol of the protection and benevolence of an angel.  Finding a feather on the ground means you are sharing a privileged moment with the higher power who watches over you and guides you. 
 
What do you know?  I was kind of correct in my thinking!  
 
Sitting on my balcony in the quiet of the morning, I saw in the distant pine tree several birds sitting up on the high branches, singing a morning song.  I am sure it was for me!  An idea for a way to use all those feathers I had collected entered my mind, and this is the art that came forth.  
 
Feathers made the tree!

When deciding on a name for this painting, I thought of HunterGirl's song "Red Bird." I love this song.  I borrowed the title for this painting.  I hope HunterGirl doesn't mind!

HunterGirl - Red Bird (BTS Visualizer) - YouTube
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Noah's Ark Metaphysical Thoughts:
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​Definitions are from The Metaphysical Bible Dictionary.  
https://www.truthunity.net/bible
It has a hyperlinked ASV Bible.  I love reading bible stories for their metaphysical interpretations rather than their literal meanings.  I can put myself in any story and learn something about myself and my consciousness when I read the stories metaphysically.  
 
Noah’s Ark symbolizes the spiritual part of oneself, built in the midst of the flood of error.  One builds one’s ark on the scientific understanding of the wisdom, presence, and power of God.  The ark is built upon the affirmations of what one is in Spirit.
 
Noah typifies the consciousness at rest in God.  The 3 sons of Noah represent states of mind.  Shem typifies the spiritual.  Ham typifies the physical, and Japheth typifies the intellect or reason.  
 
Noah took his wife, their sons and their wives, and of every living thing of all flesh, two of every sort “male and female” the positive and negative activities of life in the organism.  One affirms Spirit as in all, as primal essence.
 
Flood- Man, having free choice to open his mind to divine intelligence and KNOW the creative law, or he can work out his character through blind experimentation or reliance on his own understanding.  When we choose the later, we are sure to create error, and we can transgress the divine law to the last limit and a great reaction sets in.  This is “the flood.”  
 
 A spiritual assessment of living through a flood could be judged from our humanity as awful and undesired.  And it can also be seen as an opportunity to inquire and learn claiming “all things work together for good.”  Without the flood, we might not look deeply at those things in our consciousness that are in error.
We have a choice!  There is no judgement either way.  We grow our souls in all experiences. 
 
Gratitude for the jewels I used in these two paintings, donated by Jon Erb.  

I cannot express enough, my gratitude and thrill at being able to travel and make art where I go.  Hawaii is one of the places on this earth that inspires me beyond explanation.  www.abbierabinowitz.com/tropical-art-nature-retreat/   
I learned this trip how much inspiration comes to me as I walk, sit, observe, and absorb the landscape's emotion.  But, I don't want to paint there on site, en Plein Air... I want to feel it fully and take the feeling with me back to the studio. There, I let it express in a new way.  My first retreat connected me to the grounding energy of Kilauea, which was active and flowing only months before...and still is!  See "Creative Destruction" blog posted on 3/9/2020.  This retreat awakened sacral energy in me and from there, I could hardly contain my creativity!  I extended my trip so I could paint more! 
Messages from my inner art critic often scream, "my paintings are too busy."  But, quiet walks on the lava field out to meet the ocean to sit and observe, earth, sea, and sky reveal that it is because there is so much to say, to express...and that is why my paintings are so busy.  I went with this!  I received it as permission to let the art just be what came forth!  Back home, I realize I want more of that experience in my life...in all ways, not just in making art...just go with it and let it be what it wants to be!  I am grateful for that lesson.  That I can learn from what comes forth in everything I do!  The experience of authentic flow and expression yields a sense of joy that cannot be explained.  That sense of joy connects me to a deep inner peace that resides within me no matter where I am, at home or in travel.  And, I love it!

​I started this painting the second week of February right as the Covid-19 began to call us all to stay at home. For me, it has been a time of settling into a time of quieting my mind and listening to the deeper truth of who I am, and who we are as human beings. So, deep within me I feel the laying down of a firm foundation, grounded in and directed by love for all. Now, upon this firm foundation, I recognize that I can begin to rebuild a future where I see all people as equal and empowered, where opportunity in co-creating a better world for all abounds, where I care for Mother Earth, and where I practice love for my Creator by loving others as myself. It’s going to take work. I have to knock down some walls of prejudice, habits of judging, and using thoughts and words to make others wrong so I can feel right, if only in my own mind!  I am willing and ready to do the work. Here I go!

This past February, I sat on the banks of New Black Sand Beach, land barely 30 years old.  The Kilauea volcano's eruption back in 1990 destroyed the towns of Kalapana and Kaimu and also the beloved black sand beach there at Kaimu Beach Park.  11 miles down The Red Road, Isaac Hale Park experienced a bit of creative destruction from the most recent eruption in 2018.  Some of the park remains.  There, I stood on new land, not even 2 years old.  I was on the Big Island of Hawaii for a tropical art retreat www.abbierabinowitz.com/tropical-art-nature-retreat/  I was drawn to stand upon the new black lava rock.  It was a mysterious and awesome feeling for me.  The event of a volcanic eruption, lava flowing downward toward the ocean destroying all in its path, and then creating new land now ready for exploration was felt in the core of me.  Whenever the group on the retreat went out to plein air paint, I found I wanted/needed to stand upon the lava rock.  I am an abstract painter and am guided intuitively to paint what I feel.  This retreat was a first time for me to experience plein air as an abstract artist.  Above is "Creative Destruction."  It is acrylic on 14" x 10" water color paper.  
This idea of creative destruction seems to be expressing in many facets of life these days.  The original term came about to describe an economic circumstance, but I think it applies to nature and, well, everything.  The force of the earth's power destroys and creates.  The force of humanity has the potential to do the same thing.  The force of my own desire for personal growth experiences this.  Some things in my life are being destroyed, less intensely than a volcanic eruption though.  However, if I can practice gratitude for its presence in my life, then release and let go, I experience a peace about it and am more aware to the "new" being offered.  If I resist, well...I can create so much unnecessary challenge and struggle it's almost silly when I look back after some time passes.  So, with this fresh perspective on life, I witness the new and unknown being created in my life.  It's a mysterious, and awesome feeling for me!

This February, I spent a wonderful week painting in Hawaii* while standing on some of the youngest land in the world.  The 2018 Kilauea volcano eruption created a brand new black sand beach along the coastline near Isaac Hale Park on the Big Island.  When I returned home and began researching Ireland to prompt inspiration for a painting for the "Luck of the Irish" event** at The Grange** in Broomfield, I learned Ireland was also formed by volcanic activity, yet this land is over 60 million years old!  The Giant's Causeway*** was created by lava and the rock formations are beautiful and so unique.  What might less than 2 year old land and 60 million year old land teach me?  What might their inhabitants teach me? 
"Luck of the Irish" celebrates a characteristic of Irish people.  Although it implies they are a lucky people, my research reveals it is more that they have a quality of remaining positive in times of difficulty.  They stand up to discouraging circumstances using their sense of humor.  And, they persist as long as needed in order to manifest their unique goals and dreams.  When the Irish arrived in America, they worked hard and had a right attitude in mind.  These qualities created their success.  It only "looked" like luck to others.
While walking along the new black sand beaches formed by the Kilauea volcanic lava flows, I saw coconut, palm, tropical grasses, mango, and even a banyan tree planted in the cracks of the hard, black lava rock.  The Hawaiian people know it will take many, many years for the tropical forest to be established and so, they help it along by planting seedlings of native plants.  They are connected to their land.  They are ONE with it.  The Hawaiians understand the lava rock need plants to live, die, and decompose to make soil so that the forest can eventually become prolific in growth and benefit all island life.  It is a necessary relationship.  They understand they can help the earth heal from a natural tragedy.  They also understand it is a process that takes a long time and so they do it for their children, and the generations to come. Their respect and nurturing approach to their land is key to their own healing.
Two cultures inhabiting lands half the world apart in time and space...both living examples for me to follow.  Thank you to the Irish!  And, thank you to Hawaiians!  May I live with as much intention and action as you model! 
* https://www.abbierabinowitz.com/tropical-art-nature-retreat/
** https://www.crescentgrange.org/luck-of-the-irish/  and  https://www.crescentgrange.org/
*** https://www.nationaltrust.org.uk/giants-causeway

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"Emerging" is the 2nd in my Soul Dance Series.  It was painted specifically for entry in the 2018 Broomfield Art Guild's Black and White Show.  It was the first time I had ever painted without color and I was surprised how much fun I had creating it.  I was becoming more familiar with my process, and more comfortable being informed by my inner guidance.  This painting soon revealed to me many ways in which I am emerging, as an artist and human being.  If you've read my explanation about my soul dancing on canvas, I hope it is evident how the form I describe shows up in this work.
My daughter sees a nesting bird.  I love abstract art.  So much can be seen in a painting, and each viewer finds their own unique interpretation.  And, viewers can explore the different layers of the abstract, lifting out of it infinite meanings and emotions from the art.  It becomes a relationship between the viewer and the viewed.  Right and wrong have no part in this relationship.  There may be a personal preference, like or dislike...but those are neither right or wrong.  So, enjoy abstract art.  It is a gift to the world and I am delighted to be a part of bringing abstract expression into the world to enjoy!  Thank you for taking the time to read about my paintings.  I am blessed by it!  

This 2019 year's Black and White Show invited me into another opportunity to express without using the power of color.  Translucent Transformation is my expression of how challenging it is to me to see evidence of the transformation I feel. I know it's happening.  I'm doing the work.  But, I'm not completely sure what the process, or the destination is suppose to look like.  Often, I find myself perplexed.  Beautifully perplexed!  A caterpillar experiences metamorphosis within the privacy of its cocoon.  The process we all know leads to the beautiful butterfly.  I wonder what it would be like if the caterpillar was aware of the changes occurring within its form or the approaching transformation.  Would it feel afraid, or doubt the process?  If I were an aware caterpillar, I'd find myself impatient, wanting the transformation to hurry up and be finished.   However, I wonder if it is ever really complete.  For a butterfly, yes.  For humans...for me, maybe?  I don't know?   To help nurture my trust and faith in this transformation process, I do two things.  First, I sit in the quiet space of my heart.  This is the place where I feel and know I am complete.  I am whole.  Second, I try looking at my life from different points of references, like through my relationships, or in my service to others, or in my mental dialogue to see evidence of some kind of progress.  Do I find patience, peace, love, and joy?  Evidence is there, but it is translucent.  Beautifully translucent!