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Spirit Depiction Art
5. My experience (Omega workshop 2000)

Quick sketch of the pavilion in the woods and Alex Grey saying that "the mission of art is to make the soul visible".
7/24/00, CJSchroeder, pens

When I committed myself to attending an intensive visionary art workshop (with Alex and Allyson Grey at the Omega Institute in Rhinebeck, New York), I had no idea what to expect. I had only my hopes for a refreshing and unique vacation, a way to more closeness with my artistic fiancee, and a boost to my confidence to draw spirit images. I received all of these to great satisfaction. What's more, I think that a cumulative showing of what I produced may provide you with an instructive and enjoyable sequence of spirit depiction art.

My first extraordinary experience actually came a week before the class. I had a very solid kind of dream, in which I was taking a bus to a kind of camp, and then attending an art class with many people. During the dream, I was relating what I was seeing to memories of summer camps and high school, and not to anything upcoming. Only after awakening did I realize that it was likely precognitive, and indeed it was! When I got to camp Omega, Kimberly and I entered the classroom after most everyone had taken seats already, and we ended up sitting to the left of the teachers, exactly as in the dream. In the dream, there was a medium height curly dark haired female teacher, and this was just what Allyson Grey looked like a week later. Curiously, I did not see Alex in the dream, although I did recognize him by chance in the camp bookstore before the class and struck up an easy conversation.

In the dream, I told the female teacher that her art was abstract, as if that was a brilliant proclamation. She was amused and turned to the entire class and said "Carl says my work is abstract, what do you think of that?" Well I didn't do this a week later in reality, but it is true that Allyson's work is abstract, and she did a presentation on this fact in contrast to her husband's mystical realism.

In the dream, I drew an underwater scene with soft oily crayons of a kind that I was unfamiliar with, but rather liked. My arm movements were sweeping and self-aware. A week later in reality, I was working for the first time with oil pastels that my fiancee had brought, and feeling quite confident about the whole activity. It definitely helps you to be more present and enjoy yourself when you can live the same scene twice!

In the dream, I finished the underwater landscape but something felt missing. Then I got the image of a bold elongated orange figure, striding along the sea bottom, so I quickly colored him in. I especially worked on his left arm facing me, before I ran out of orange because a woman to my left had taken it, so I tried drawing green veins with white shadows but was dissatisfied.

A week later in reality, Kimberly was sitting to my left in the drawing class. I quickly grabbed the pastels I needed, knowing this time to draw the orange figure first (the oil pastels that I sensed I would use don't layer well if you do a background first). I didn't let go the oranges til I finished "goldfish man", as I liked to think of him. Then I filled in the sea bottom, and used the green for seaweed veins around the figure. Now it looked right from the start, and the connection was done! People in the class responded very strongly to the image, and Kimberly later even called him the "goldfish man" as well without being prompted. I was clearly onto something. In fact, after I told the whole story to the class at the end of the week, some people joked "it's Allyson!". I said no of course not and was confused, until I noticed that she was wearing that day a dark orange vest of similar color to my undersea friend!

"goldfish-man", 7/24/00, Carl Johann Schroeder
oil pastels + pen outline, sprayed with fixative

I have not had another contact with this being since, and in fact I feel a little scared to. I've liked science fiction and contact stories since I was a boy, but this was getting very real and I was feeling it. "Goldfish man" is humanoid but also very non-human in appearance and persona, though he is a kindly sort. Someday we'll meet again I'm sure, when I'm ready. For now, I've been noticing a heightened awareness of the sea in me, including tuning into a fascinating story in the Boston Globe, that they (scientists, explorers) are now realizing that most of the creatures on the earth by volume are likely transparent ocean dwellers. These strange beings are so numerous but invisible and fragile that they have simply not been studied before, having been seen only as some odd and easily dismissed jelly fragments washed up on seashores. You simply have to go to their environment, and look real closely with bright lights for brief outlines flashing by. Yet sometimes they are as big as beach balls, and may swim clung together in organziations over a hundred feet long!

Contrary to what we opaque and gravity balanced land dwellers may think, it seems that it's even easy to be invisible- your molecules just have to be aligned at half the wavelength of light apart to pass the visible spectrum readily. Invisibility comes in handy in an ocean home, where there is nothing to hide behind and life is completely floating and diorientingly 3 dimensional, like deep space itself. Though of little ability to physically impact as individuals, transparent life is so numerous that its ecological presence is intense and overwhelming - blooms of these creatures can make or break entire ecosystems overnight!

It seems then that the sea is the home to nature's correspondence to the entire astral realm, even more so than we might have imagined possible. Only the eyes of transparent life must remain somewhat opaque, since they must absorb some light and cannot pass it all. Well as any beginning meditator may be startled to discover, countless eyes are one of the first recurring images you get when you are willing to peer into the astral realms. There is often a big eye right in front of your face, often called the eye of God, and it is likely your own sixth chakra reflection looking back at you!

So I thank the goldfish man for being my deep sea compatriot as I practice my astral research. My time-bendingly precognitive dream also leaves me wondering where free will begins and ends in time and space. I drew in a dream a figure to complete an undersea environment that I was going to draw a week later, yet a week later I was drawing the figure first because I'd already had the dream! And somewhere in between a being from another world had given me his image, my first astral commission.

I wouldn't want you to think that all of my spirit depictions met with equal success. When you are seeking to further a spiritual connection by art, any art, there is a measure of developmental triumph that comes within the divine creative relationship that is you are attentively nurturing. There is a success in the continuity that is personal growth, even as each objective artifact of a personal experience, the artworks themselves, may or may not simply flop. As an untrained artist I am attentive to detail, but prone to common beginner's mistakes, such as misapplied tools and poor proportions which I deny require fixing until it is too late. For the sake of the big picture, I want to show you the good with the bad results for my art intensive week, complete with the stories behind the scenes. I hope to inspire you to try your own spirit depictions, and I think it is a spiritual experience just to be entrusted with an honest context. Few things complement a good dream or meditation so well as some sketches that actually go with it, for the wonders seen. Poetry and music may follow...

To the right is an image which Alex gave us at the beginning of the week, for the seeing heart which connects the visionary divine sphere above with the material world below. Alex is very aware of personal energy systems, so we did a lot of chakra-based meditations through the week to spark our inner vision. In our first meditation for imagery, we projected energy from our heart and 3rd eye chakras to see what we would see. I got flashes in my minds eye that formed a narrative, which I tried to record by a back to front, left to right, and bottom to top "sequential art" approach. (Along these lines, I heartily recommend "Understanding Comics" by Scott McCloud, a truly inspired guide to the medium. I can personally attest to the spiritual power of comics, and I don't just mean for those nasty obsessed salvation tracts from Chick publications, though they did both fascinate and horrify me as boy, coming as they did from my uncle the Baptist minister. But more to the point, in several out-of-body experiences, I have been informed about relationships and people by a visible energy of comic book form that I was ecstatic to find myself able to lucidly read and comprehend, the experience impacting all the more for coming entirely on the astral plane!)

So in my meditation I saw a scary charred skeleton (bottom left), and after accepting its presence I pushed it away as something I didn't want. It then became a monkey demon (bottom right) that scampered away, and I felt success (This illustrates an important point - I find that a key to developing glimpsed meditative imagery is to take it as an invitation to some interaction, much like an adventure game that advances by little puzzle-solving steps. Often a revealing will occur spontaneously, and you will glimpse the being responsible for a gift or, in this case, a torment). I then saw a very large eye floating in space, completely liberated of its socket and fed by many red veins. As lurid as this was, I took it as a good sign and recorded it afterwards faithfully, since I usually see a half open lidded single eye which I presume to be my own third chakra. Then I saw a woman's lidded dreaming eyes come out of the fabric of space itself, and the brow seemed to be formed from a bird like a swan. This I greeted as a wonderful image for the Goddess herself, and in answer a purple door swung backward out of the spatial fabric to reveal an even larger space beyond.

"monkey-demon, eye, Goddess", 7/24/00, CJSchroeder, pens + oil pastels

Next meditation: inviting your muses, guides, and friends into a boardroom to project images onto a screen together for you to proceed by. I saw a deep blue space, perhaps underwater, and what seemd to be a face with goggles. It could also have been an owl, and when I drew the figure later it reminded me of a racoon man. The nonhuman being was carrying to saftely a grateful and happy blond woman, who I believe to be an aspect of my own larger being, as we have met many times quite joyfully to merge in dreams and out of body. (Once in a particularly lucid oob experience, I saw myself in a mirror and was startled to see that I was me but in her body! I then decided to do just what anyone would do in this situation I suppose; I inspected myself a bit before floating on.)

"rescued by racoon-owl-man", 7/24/00, CJSchroeder
oil pastels + colored pencils

"blue guide-woman", 7/25/00, CJSchroeder
colored pencils + black pen

That night in the tent, camping with my fiancee, my hypnagogic imagery was active as ever but also seemed to be more sustained. I got a good look in my mind's eye at a spirit friend, a woman of Amerindian or Inuit features, jet black hair, and blue skin. I interacted with her a little to add a yellow stripe across her forehead for more color, and she seemed amused to agree and keep it. The next day back at the pavilion she was my first drawing.

The next two meditations were shamanic style, the first to the lower worlds and the second to the upper (we did not go to the middle world, which is essentially the same as remote or astral viewing the familiar Earth and its human ages). The shaman imaginatively journeys (imaginally and by willful self-guided meditation, usually to a drum) to the lower realms usually by a cave or tree stump, though it could be any way that works. A guide is often invited to show the correct door or passage, in order to demonstrate one's willingness to be helped and not be in know-it-all ego. A world of talking animals and nature spirits is then encountered and adventured through with passion; shamanic narratives are known for being rather visceral, at turns joyful and shocking. I got a glimpse in a lower cave-world of a curious winged archetypal being, possibly a faerie, performing to me a hand gesture that I would later recognize and do at the camp's yoga classes. The shaman's upper worlds are often accesssed by climbing a rope, ladder, mountain path,

"mandala from the upper worlds, unfinished", 7/25/00, CJSchroeder
pencil design + oil pastels

or taking a magic carpet or reindeer ride. The upper worlds are typically more humanoid populated, and are places of angelic classrooms and abodes. On my journey I thought of coming to a river, whereupon I glimpsed women washing clothes. One woman kindly gave me a blue t-shirt with a mandala, which developed in detail with each look I gave. When the meditation was over, I experimented with drawing such a mandala, but I used more colors than I truly saw and the image could not be finished satisfactorily, as the oil pastels were too smudgy for the finer work. I may touch it up a bit for this web page, it was pretty messy.

"the finger-angel", 7/25/00, CJSchroeder
charcoal + fixative

For the next two days of the class, we then focussed on drawing from live models. We were encouraged to interpret and depict energy fields, but I mostly focussed on increasing my confidence and accuracy with the human figure. The first model was trained in yoga, and we did 7 drawings, one for each chakra which she interpreted in her pose. The next set was a couple who showed great endurance to model a variety of emotionally charged interactions. Such exercises weren't exactly the spirit depictions that I had come all this way to make, but one can argue that matter will be as spiritual as you allow it to be. So I drew from true observation, but not direct inspiration, and any metaphysical hints came from toying with my imagination and intuition, and were not transcendentally communicated to me with any confidence. I did not see auras, though some people in the class did. But clearly, a life drawing exercise is very valuable and enjoyable for the would-be spirit depictionist, and I think you will glean that I had some fun. Perhaps you will be encouraged to try your own life drawings when you see how uneven the proportions and results of mine are - anyone can get lucky or not. No puns intended, please. You can always use a mirror if you have no one else around (other sources include photographs and paused VCRs, which can show poses of yourself or others). Incidentally, I discovered watercolor pastels during this phase and tried them for effects on top of my initial charcoal and pencil outlines; the watercolors were less messy than chalk and layered better than oil, but still did not seem ideal. You just have to experiment to find the set of media that feels right for you.

"7 chakras of a model", 7/26/00, CJSchroeder. Charcoal, pencil, and watercolor pastels.

"Dynamic poses of a couple", 7/27/00, CJSchroeder. Charcoal, pencil, and watercolor pastels.

Next up, Allyson presented her art style, which was interestingly contrasted to that of Alex's because while she draws upon the same insight experiences, she processes them entirely differently, employing sacred geometric task and writing. She finds this to be very meditative, and her works are beautiful and fine, produced over many months. We did a meditation to find a seed for such a work within ourselves, and after a few moments I saw an orange square between a woman's legs, as if being birthed by her. I expanded upon this image in a drawing that suggests (but unevenly executes) sacred geometric proportions in relation to a human figure, as well as fractal generation (the repeating diminishing blue squares). What's really neat is that when I showed this to my fiancee, she exclaimed "I saw that!". Apparently, Kimberly saw the orange square in a yellow circle first, and I telepathically received them between a woman's legs to ascribe them to the female's conception - doubly appropriate, since the entire exercise had been initiated by Alex's own muse and soulmate Allyson. In fact, their workshop was the pre-honeymoon for Kimberly and me!

"orange square and a woman", 7/27/00, CJSchroeder
colored pencils

Next is a little sketch I did after watching the new and brilliant video from Michelle Wortman. Michelle and her husband Guy Aitchison are very talented, intelligent, and developed artists with a shared biomorphic vision. They were attending the visionary art workshop not for the first time, and they were always delighted to explain and befriend. Their complex portfolio includes photography, oil painting, pencils, video, and tatoos. I am encouraging Michelle and Guy to present more documentation of their process and theory on their website, because their macro-world effects are startling and effective for the conveying of Deepak Chopra's poetic reminder, referenced by Michelle in her video, that we are but living in an energetic soup that we have only strained through our limited senses in order to form the realities with which we are familiar.

"flower-form", 7/27/00, CJSchroeder
colored pencils

"talisman", 7/28/00, CJSchroeder
colored pencils

The final meditation of the week was for a personal talisman, projected outward from our heart chakra and recorded in one capstone image. I saw a vulvate shape rimmed with 2 hyperbolas, reminiscent of Goddess icons, and for its drawing I enjoyed my increasing confidence with colored pencils.

On Friday we bid farewell to our new friends, and we left the Omega campus to visit my mom nearby, where I had grown up (yes, the Hudson valley was a wonderful place to call home!) For the rest of our stay in the area, I expected us to be busy calling on friends and relatives, yet curiously everyone had called my mom to cancel or delay. Furthermore my mom had somewhere to go the next day, so on Saturday Kimberly and I found ourselves alone with one more afternoon of sweet drawing time. I took this auspicious opportunity to record in an image a powerful event which had occured for me that last Thursday morning before dawn. Alex had even showed me the next day after this event his sketches for the first model, and the way he had aligned eyes vertically up her chakra points startled and impressed me as synchronous reminders for what I had seen. Specifically, Wednesday night I was besieged by a nightmare of a haunted house of many classic movie monsters, and the insidious point was that in the dream it was Halloween, so no one but I knew that these monsters were real and not simply masked and innocent children. The monsters had abducted a little blond girl who was in my caring, and I was terrorized. From this dream I leaped awake around 4am, and felt the need to do something to resolve the scene. I meditated resolutely in the dark of the tent, and demanded that the monsters be vaporized. I visualized this, and saw my little girl run home safe to me. I was satisfied and thankful, and then I got a treat; I glimpsed clearly in my mind's eye this grand helper being! He was distinctly blue, with multiple arms uplifted almost salutory, cross-legged, powerful, confident, in friendly repose to me but capable of fierce action, with horizontally positioned eyes going up his midsection and diminishing into the space above his head. It felt great to draw this protector being at last almost 3 days later; the likeness came out very well indeed, and it is quite accurate. I relate to the being as a Shiva, and I have felt/imagined his swift multiple arms cutting off attackers and protecting me at times in my life, but this was something new for me to receive a spontaneous image of him, and it felt unexpectedly and wonderfully real.

"shiva friend", 7/29/00, CJSchroeder
colored pencils

And that's all folks! I hope you have enjoyed my spirit-art tour. Next time you see a precious image from inside of you, remember, it is yours to draw any way that you like, and the pleasures of new friendships are calling you!