Against Inevitable Change: A Nooumenon Encounter
Emotional Habitat: Darkness; Dead dark forest shadows over a broken rainbow path; Midnight-blue sky; Luminous celestial moon/planet
Spirit Creature(s): Earthly Ephemera with Celestial Nooumenon
Color Archetypes: Red = Anger; Purple = Depression; Black = Hopelessness/Emptiness/Uncertainty; Blue = Despair; Aquamarine/White = Awakening/Transcendance; Yellow/Orange= Love/Compassion; Green/Yellow/Brown = Grounding/Naturalness/Intuitive Wisdom; Rainbow = Possibility; White = Divine View
Background: Not long ago, a tragic series of events resulted in the loss of my entire family. No matter how many ways I tried to understand how this loss came to be, there is no mistake that there is nothing I can do to bring us back together. For years, I have struggled through the grieving process and a majority of my time has been stuck in the states of denial, anger, negotiation, and debilitating depression. Acceptance was a concept I was aware of but it was farther from my heart than anyone could imagine. Eventually, after intensive practice of meditation and journeys through altered mind states, I picked up my watercolor pad and began to draw. Then, something incredible emerged from the page.
This painting explores my deep resistance to accepting my profound and significant loss and the emotional fragmentation that I had acquired when I simply refused to let go. Rather than healing through grief toward acceptance, I became trapped within the darkness of its earlier stages, defending the very things that imprisoned me. But through this painting, I discovered The Nooumenon, and after contemplating its symbolism, the darkness began to clear and I found my path to acceptance.
Interpretation: This moment captured in the Nooscape depicts me as a powerful Ephemera in the form of a panther-like creature locked in a confrontation. The muscular panther Ephemera embodies strength and conviction with sharp teeth bared in fierce protection of an identity and long-held beliefs I refuse to acknowledge and release.
Yet its body is fractured between crimson reds and deep purples, symbolizing the destructive emotional states of denial, anger, and sadness. These emotions have become the Ephemera's armor possessing a weight so heavy it has buried itself into darkness. Although the Ephemera can reveal colors of the rainbow by scratching the surface of the blackened earth, their colors are false truths to my circumstance that only reinforce my misguided world view.
Standing opposite is a Nooumenon who appears to be emerging from the Ephemera and darkness as a being of brilliant inner light, radiating love and compassion and possessing incredible Earthly and otherworldly energies. Although the Nooumenon’s appearance is unsettling, it is not an enemy. It represents awakening, self-love, and transcendence, presented as a gentle demand to stop hurting myself with destructive feelings and finally surrender what no longer serves me. The Nooumenon appears larger, calmer, and more powerful than the Ephemera, not because it dominates the spirit creature, but because it has arisen from within me to end my suffering over this loss and transcend to a higher state of existence that awaits for me in the rising full alien moon (or planet) where my life of peace resides.
However, the Ephemera may choose to stay and possibly carry on its life in the imprisonment of grief, but the rainbow road of this journey is not an easy one. This is a harsh path of boulders, shaded by the dead limbs of a dying forest, leading into the twilight of lands on the verge of eternal darkness.
Fear is the central emotional force within this piece. It is an illusion that holding on to false and destructive beliefs that prevent us from changing, transforming, and healing is a sign of strength. All to the contrary, real courage and bravery comes from letting go because healing requires us to leave behind everything we believe defines us and emerge from our own prisons into an uncertain future.