S leeping — Resting Energy

Nature supplies everything with a quantity of energy. The amazing thing about the human species is that we have the ability to take the energy we are given and change its quality. As a result, with the healthy cultivation of this energy, we feel as if we have more energy. Perhaps the truth is we only changed the quality of this energy, not the quantity. Resting, recharging, and rejuvenating energy seems to have the power to change its quality. The power of this transformation starts with knowing when this time comes.

After and during the time my mom was letting go of her mind and body, I clearly felt the need to exercise. And I did, although this time, I no longer had a studio or at least a studio with a roof on top. But this was fine, like any other studio I occupied. I first looked to see if I had daylight in which to work. Now my studio was the streets of New York City, and there was plenty of light and an abundance of dense energy inside me and surrounding me. So I got it all out of my system once again for the next two or three years by painting the iron circles and surfaces in this city “that never sleeps.” From one manhole cover to the next, until each ounce of pain dissipated into the already restless pulse of the streets. I truly did not start really resting my energy until I parted ways with my job of 10 years at Madison Square Garden. It was then that I soon realized it was time to sleep on the process of taking in energy, whether it was the twenty-thousand people I worked with and was in front of each night or the one person inside of myself. These days of rest consisted of trying to sell all I had created in the past few years, seeing my daughter off to school, and picking her up on any day I was asked or allowed to. I would take odd jobs, and with every ounce of energy left over, I did my best to get to a place where I could rest and write what you read today.

My word seemed like a good place to start in transforming what surfaced as I rested. Although, at times, I saw my word like the battery supplied on a cell phone. Talk-time used up more energy. Even though sometimes talk can charge you up, the power lies in choosing who, what, where, when, why, and how much we talk. The first question I asked myself was “Who do I talk to?” The answer, at the time, was to pen and paper.

At first, it took some time to rest the reactive energy I possessed. Thus, I often found it a priority to allow the essence of myself to remain still. Sometimes, this took suspending all of my judgments and definitions of success. Though I was “resting,” I worked at finding the “now” not by searching for it, but rather allowing my mind to arrive at a state where the “now” naturally surfaces. With this, I was often given the efficient ability to improve the quality of my energy.