“The Lost Trail of Heaven” is a series of sculptures that I designed to chart my journey beyond the thresholds of psychosis and schizoaffective disorder; and onto the healing qualities found through the imagination of iron casting sculpture. I hope to provide some insight into the complex healing process that circles around the issues concerned with schizoaffective disorder; and that compassion, empathy, love, and most importantly art may the best tools to assist someone who may be on this heroic journey of the imagination
My goal is to share my story by building one of these sculpture in a different country, thus leaving a trail of hope that one can follow. It is a testimony that we can rise above the challenges of mental illness and grow beyond our present limitations. I hope my story will be a grail in itself that can provide the healing elixir for mental illness.
Star on the Horizon
There’s a distance within our hearts and minds that many of have all traveled. A journey where we have become lost in a deep longing to be accepted as genuine and valued members of the soul to the human race. We want to be gold. It is said in the new testament that the kingdom of heaven is found within. Knowing this, many if us have left the familiar grounds of consensus reality, only to set sail across the dark night of the soul. We find ourselves in an epic search for a common unity to all things that leaves no room for sorrow. Thus we chart our course through the center of ourselves, only to discover an overwhelming sense that the dim starlight of our being, appears to be luring us further and further away from the very center of that universe. And as we yearn for more profound and clearer meaning to this riddle, the greater the inner mountain seems to become.
A Hint of heaven
I don’t know why certain persons affect so deeply. Why they touch our hearts to such an affinity that we are shaken with an overwhelming delirium and madness. They seem to cause a wellspring of love and confliction in our hearts that can last for years.
We often long for their invitation to wade in their waters, because they return our hearts to the familiar acknowledgement of the innocence and complete joy that God promises our heaven to be. Yet they awaken a reckless rebellion and denial to reason and status quo of our emotions.
Until they receive us all we can do is toss copper coins into the whishing well. We can only watch as time transmutes them to an aged-green patina of a complex hope, while our hearts submit to the drowning in that color. We can only whish to be the treasure they discover resting in the bottom of their own basin. Our love for them is our life as well as our death. And until they receive us, our hearts are a torn in an incomplete wellspring of fever. There seems to be more a loss of life and significance in us rather than a sense death. Without them we are simply less real and made eclipsed more of shadow.
Yet if they do not receive us then we are required to make atonement with our desire and approach the truth we do not want to face. We are called home- though we know in truth the subject of our heart’s love is really its home. Therefore the body and mind may return as the prodigal son, but the heart will always refuse and thus we are lost at sea. We are conflicted. Home is far when our feet long to wade in the water.
The heart in love will always be mad and its content will never be grasped. It can only fumble in the dark searching for prose and poetry to be a lighthouse – which itself is lost at sea, – leading itself in infinite circles. But perhaps if we can master the rhyme, we may in some sense find ourselves walking across the water, standing by the miracle of our love. Perhaps they will see that it the passion of love allows us this power. Thus the sea that once held us to be lost, becomes the water that we voluntarily and now tirelessly roam upon, not lost nor found but caught between the two. Yet we can only hope that the star of Heaven that shines by day and night will lead to deliverance, to either bring us to the doorstep of their heart, or to release us forever. For in love faith is powerless. Only the affinity of hope can endure such a force.
The Broken Circle
We are bound to the circle of love like Prometheus is to the stone. There is no escaping it. It resides within us and outside of us. The two meet at the heart, and there lies the secret of the circle. Even if we intend to destroy it or do so accidently, it is actually eternal. Once a soul steps within its sacred bonds it is forever connected to it. However, we do control the quality of the circle. It is an enchanted forest with mountains, valleys, beasts and angels. We either rise or fall in its embrace. Yet, it is in the power of the divine spirit residing in all beings that shapes the quality of this ring. It is up to us to transmute our circle of fate to a circle of destiny. There, the forest becomes a labyrinth and at its center is the wondrous garden. The great gift of the universe is that it allows us the freedom to choose in what our directions our circle may go. Eternity can be heaven or hell and all degrees between. It will make us lame or make us fly. It will free us or imprison us. We can become a lord of the forest or a serpent crawling on our bellies. It is up to us to decide. The circle is a stone that can be shaped. It is here that faith, virtue, morality and justice become the principles to lead us on. And though our thoughts affect the shape of the forest, it is the great spirit of the universe that holds the infinite potential to create a heaven far beyond anything we could imagine. And for this we must be led. Still there is no heaven without fellowship. It is left to us to liberate each other from the crosses on which we are hung. The Great spirit hides the key in the circle. If we search for it we will find it. Guard your heart and be mindful of your thoughts for it will control the quality of the circle in which you live.
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We all hold the boundless circle of heaven in our hearts. Yet some of us are called to bring that infinity of emotion to expression. If we refuse this call then only suffering will follow. The problem lies in the fact that many of us feel the boundless but do not know how to give it life and freedom. This is why we suffer. We are crucified in our own world. The secret path is laid before us only when we answer the highest and deepest longings of the soul’s magic ring. Not everyone experiences this. Those of us who do, will have to at some point, face the great dragon. That dragon has many names and is the great shape-shifter. What drives our hurt to the core is that we see the holy city lying just beyond the beast. And the beast’s lair resides at the center of our imaginations. His fangs sink into us every time we turn our attention away from him. He will continue until we face him truly and resolutely. He is the enchanter and lord of the forest-the forest being our souls. His power over us lies in our ignoring his call. Yet if we do face him and inquire into his riddle he will be overcome with gentleness, for he really is the boundless seeking expression and freedom through us. If we set him free he will grow wings and take to the heavens. His blood and venom will become the precious medicine; and he will becomes our guardian through our remaining days. The very thing that sought to destroy us- in the end saves us. Our consciousness will become the new Lord of the Forest and we will come to the gates of the Holy City
