Roving the Earth
This painting is exactly why I paint without much conscious thought as to why I create what I do. I painted this painting back in 1998 while living in Italy, but didn’t quite understand why I created it. It is not as if I was obsessed with religion, either way.
I was brought up Catholic and like a good boy went to Catholic school. That in itself was enough to make me run the other way, but what really stuck in my gut was being taught that I should fear God. I just didn’t get that. Not from when I was a little kid to today. And I think that was the main reason why I turned away from all main-stream religion. I still don’t get why I should fear God. That is like saying a baby should fear its mother. (Which might be a good idea if she’s a crack-head.) And so my spiritual journey was an eclectic mix of religion, eastern philosophy, and my own gut feelings.
When in my twenties, I was on a bus about to depart for Luxembourg, and my aunt said the strangest thing to me. It baffled me for years. She said something to the tune of: I hope that one day those devils that seem to be chasing you stop. I reasoned that she said that because I kept moving from city to city, country to country, and continent to continent.
But was I running, or was I trying to find something. I had an excellent job, a nice house and car fully paid for by the time I was 37 – and yet those “devils” kept chasing me. There was always something missing.
Recently I came across a book and I burst out laughing. It was like the author had written the book just for me. Finally someone had connected my dots. I smiled till my jaw hurt. The dots had finally connected me to not what I was running from, but rather what I was looking for.
I had no idea what Kabbalah was and had never heard of it before, besides some vague recollection of Madonna and something or other in the past. Wanting to know more, I came across all the hype about the Kabbalah Center. My world crashed. What seemed like my answer in connecting the dots just made me feel like a fool. How could a cynic like me fall for such a thing. I thought of main-stream religion and saw the similarities, and became even more disheartened.
But stubbornly I continued to search for more answers. And I am thankful that I did because I came to realize that the Kabbalah center was not the be-all and end-all of Kabbalah. I decided, in this case, to shoot the messenger and keep the message.
I feel like I have finally found what I now realize was the direction I was searching for, and what I felt in my gut since I was a kid. But don’t get me wrong – and let me hasten to add at this point that what I know about Kabbalah probably amounts to average – I still have a difference of opinion on some things. Some things that have happened in my life cannot be argued away with a wave of the hand and an explanation that they were just some religious induced fairytale.
But I have definitely learnt just how destructive the ego is. And looking back on my life, realize how many mistakes I made. Decisions based purely on my ego, or someone else’s. I feel like I have wasted 30 years of my life. But that is what it is all about – learning how destructive the ego is and correcting it. And even if you take God completely out of the (Kabbalah) picture, keeping the ego in check makes for good economic and personal sense. Out of control ego’s are the cause, and the state of the world we now live in is the effect of that out of control ego. And until we resolve to correct our egos, we will continue to destroy ourselves, each other, and our world.
Now, more than 10 years later, I begin to understand why, once that painting was complete, I was more intrigued by what was hidden behind the curtain - what was not being revealed – rather than the obvious interpretation. I look at that painting and I see what my soul was trying to maybe tell me. A genetic imprint showing me the way home.
An overactive imagination? A fascination with the unknown? Maybe, but my dots are mostly connected, and I don’t believe in coincidences. Maybe I’m done roving the Earth.
