“The moment you take on the role as artist becomes the very moment you sign up to be a warrior for the greater good.”~#MarioCampanaro ©
“Dear Human Being,
Sometimes you simply have to put yourself first…for everyone’s sake.
And sometimes you have to let go of everyone…for your own sake.
And sometimes you have to let go of your Self…for God’s sake!”~#MarioCampanaro ©
“No one nor no-thing can ever separate you from the source of your creation. There is not a person powerful enough nor an organization strong enough to dismantle what your artistic impulses set out to manifest. The most worthwhile success an artist can experience comes from the trustworthy ally within.”~#MarioCampanaro ©
“Art is meant to free us from the enslavement of our own mind’s conditioning. It generously allows us to liberate ourselves during the process of our own creation and then inspires us to share it with the world as our soul’s voice.”~#MarioCampanaro ©
As long as I can remember, I have always been intensely passionate about observing and trying to discern what motivates us to make the choices we do in regards to the outcomes we consciously or unconsciously desire.
Though taking in world this way may not make me the life of the party at all times (lol) , it definitely keeps me extremely present with the company I keep.
Humanity fascinates me.
What we do, how we interact, how we listen or not, how we respond or not, even our own silence triggers me to understand and apply it all to Life and Art.
I always want to know what’s behind the social mask because the false concept of what the social mask represents is blatantly obvious.
Yet what I witness over and over is that damn thing called ‘fear’.
It’s not the kind of fear as if a tornado is about to swirl in stimulating the sympathetic nervous system.
It is that invisible internal omnipresent fear that is always whispering to us in the back of our mind.
It’s a fear of reality.
Imagine that!
A fear of reality…of everyday Life as it actually is in this here and Now present moment.
And then that fear expands to other parts of our Life like the Exxon oil spill corroding our perception of ourSelf and the world we live in.
So in turn, we begin to experience a fear of connection between one another and our environment.
Then we develop a fear of compassion and kindness because it now feels foreign and creates all these ‘what-ifs’ that accompany the ‘risk’ of opening our heart to others.
So then we begin to hide our authentic Self exacerbating a fear of vulnerability for being seen and judged beyond a filtered ‘it’s all ok’ existence.
YUP, WE GET A FEAR OF WHO WE TRULY ARE BEHIND THE MASK.
And so to costume our fear we adjust our behavior and our connections to avoid being seen or effected in a profound way.
A human way.
The one thing that has remained constant in everything I have observed is that we all yearn for our experience to be witnessed and validated.
This connects all of us.
But we go on validating our filtered lives as if our own Life is our own avatar never getting to reveal our true essence.
The thing that astounds me the most is when all cover-up is dropped and things get real, I can see people start to breathe deeper.
It is like this heavy burdensome weight has been lifted.
I can see their eyes shine brighter.
I can hear their voices vibrate stronger.
And most of all, I can see them happier and experiencing a new found peace.
Not so much because something has been lost.
But because something real has been found.
Art asks of us to show up in all our grit and glory.
Ironically this is exactly what happens towards the end of our life.
So if we know this is part of the inevitable journey, why not start our BEing right now rather than waiting.
What are we hiding and why?
Is it truly worth the work it takes to hide our authentic Self for the sake of an idea of how we think we are suppose to appear?
I don’t think so…
I can promise you everything you are behind what you think you have to be is far more interesting than you have ever admitted.
We all posses energetic reactions that occur as messengers to our present circumstances.
They can manifest in a myriad of ways but mostly noticed as the physical or emotional feeling life.
Yet we have gotten caught up in criticizing and second guessing these messengers that very often we lose our way and endlessly search for answers that innately exist within our own being.
Our lack of faith in our feeling life condemns us into a cerebral world shutting down our instinctual fire.
It does not take Jung or Freud to understand that this probably comes from years of being told what’s appropriate about how to feel and then react based on those feelings.
The truth is we are not encouraged to feel our feelings and trust our instincts.
We are taught to listen and believe what the ‘adults’ or ‘educators’ say is THE way.
Unfortunately for the artist, this conditioning can deprive us the opportunity to discover our own flow in a healthy creative manner.
How many times as children have we had our feelings surrounding a particular experience only to be shut down because it threatens the comfort zone of what is normal?
As a result, we reluctantly begin to adjust our feelings and hush our inner guide.
We develop habits in order to cope with our feeling life and manipulate our experience to go the way it is ‘suppose to go’.
We become a puppet pulled by the strings of our own avoidance.
Maybe we laugh, joke, sigh, hold our breathe, excessively clean, overwork, become sexually compulsive, drink, smoke, use drugs, etc just to hide from these physical and emotional messengers.
However when we allow ourself the opportunity to truly dip into and flow from this place of our own inner truth, our instincts open the floodgates for our own individual wisdom, guidance, and knowledge.
We begin to dissolve our own limitations, disintegrate our conditioning, and follow through with what we know is good and true for our best and highest purpose.
Being attuned, willing to trust, and allowing ourself to get back to this natural state gets us off the detour and on the right path for our individual needs.
That’s the gift of our feelings and the job of our instincts.
These are our own special little messengers.
Let’s get personal…
As actors, it is not uncommon to have an extremely sensitive and even empathic instrument.
We willingly live our lives experiencing the deepest level of the human experience.
We expose our deepest self to the world not only because of choice but also a divine calling.
We are messengers of what is hidden.
We are speakers of what is unsaid.
We are un-doers of what is doctrinated.
And we are hopefully the shifters of the human consciousness towards that which is good and true.
However, there are moments in our work when this can feel burdensome.
It can go so far as to manifest to the point that we suffocate in our own despair.
We keep giving and forget the need to nurture ourself.
So we try to reach out to mentors and loved ones hoping that they will say that one thing to help remedy our experience.
Though the intention to help is there, often we don’t get that shift in our feeling life that we crave.
So as highly sensitive individuals, what do we do?
We have to be our own medicine!
This is OUR own journey and the accumulation of our own life experiences which have brought us here and now.
Just as we do not viscerally understand what’s going on in someone else’s life, it is just as impossible for anyone out there to understand what’s going on in our own.
So as artists, what are we to do when we feel lost and broken?
We stop right where we are!
This is a sign that there is too much going on in and around us.
This is a sign that we need to unplug and recalibrate from a world that has become unnaturally fast, toxic, and chaotic with inhuman expectations.
These feelings are a divine gift that notify us that something is off and its time to go within and reconnect to our center.
It is a crucial moment to make the changes we need for our body, mind, emotions, and spirit to heal so we are able to continue our very special path.
We have forgotten that we are not superhuman.
We are not robots.
We are human beings that require a time and space to get in touch with our silence and peace in order to transmute our defiict into something of a higher vibration so we can continue our work.
We forget that this IS part of our work.
This IS part of our process.
This IS part of our growth.
This IS part of our essentials.
THIS is our powerful non-toxic holistically hopefully habit-forming medicine!
It is so easy for us to go through our everyday life sleepwalking.
We become part of the herd.
We listen, believe, and become reactionary to what’s shown and said.
We get lost in the illusions that smother us into submission.
Our defenses go up and we unconsciously are in attack mode.
We can feel this all around us.
We see it every day on the news and throughout the world.
There’s so much anger, rage, hatred, deception,… the list goes on.
We’ve become too comfortable with all the darkness.
It doesn’t make sense.
It’s backwards.
We’ve become more fearful of love, then it’s actual opposite.
We’re scared to show it, we’re scared to say it, and even scared to receive it.
We’re so afraid that the vulnerability that comes with love will destroy us, when in reality it’s the only thing that strengthens us and build us up as a humanity.
So with all the political and social unrest that’s going on in the world, there must be a wake up call as a collective humanity that is greater, louder, and more powerful than this unthinkable unrest.
We need to get back to what’s real and true.
The signs are all around us.
We’re not the sum of what we’re told, and we’re definitely not the accumulation of everything we are taught.
We’re more than that.
Love is who we are, it’s what we’re made of, and it’s where we come from. Anything opposite of that, is a labyrinth of illusion.
It’s deception at the most basic level.
When really considered, EVERYTHING we do in life has love at the core level.
Every action we take somehow someway is about love.
Either getting it or not getting it. Either giving it or not giving it.
Whether it’s receiving it or giving it, it’s all about love.
LOVE is who we are.
It always has and always will be.
Fact check that as a REAL political statement!
We never really understand the saying “the dark before the storm” unless we allow ourself to bear witness to experiencing what that really means.
I think the best answer I can give up to this point is that for everything good and true, the opposite exists as an illusion (for truth cannot be in flux and is at the center of all things good, whole, and complete.).
This is not so much a choice but more so a reminder that somewhere/somehow there has been some dreamt detour from what is good and true and, boy/girl, some growth is about to happen!
But for that growth to happen, there MUST be a stimulus that initiates the dive into discovering truth for oneSelf rather than it being doctrinated by another’s interpretation of it .
Very often, or I should say most likely, this knocks on our life’s door as some type of strife or intense obstacle.
When this so called opposite is dreamt up and therefore “experienced”, there is a sleepwalk away from truth and this temporary season is the series of learning lessons that bring us to that inevitable waking moment.
This can be a long painful journey and it takes a lot of work, patience, self nuturing, self guidance, and intuition.
But without fail these growing pains strengthen our inner constitution and complete our connection to who we are and where we come from.
Yes it hurts.
It hurts so bad that it’s good.
The more difficult the journey, the stronger we become.
So when that dark hour sneaks in, it is worthy to greet it with gentle gratitude as it is holding our hand and walking us straight to our own awakening.
There is no escape and fear is fruitless.
But our glorious metamorphosis is inevitable as long as we are willing to believe that the truth will indeed set us free.
