Last year I met a new “character” in my dreams. She’s pretty remarkable and unforgettable; she has six eyes. I never gave her a name; she's an image of me.

She populates two three-dimensional watercolor pyramids and a few small paintings, most notably, “Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling”.

Postcards of this image are available, send SASE: PO Box 61707, Honolulu, HI 96839-1707

A few months later I saw another image in a dream, this time of an onion with six eyes. Onions are a ubiquitous food in the world, so this image leads me to believe that we all have six eyes.

This is the first of many more onions in the book I'm creating.

Peeling an onion reveals more of the onion, sort of an internal archeological evolutionary “dig” into our psyche.

Shortly after the six-eyed onion appeared to me, I received an email, seemingly out of the blue, from SARK. She invited me to attend a webinar about a Succulent Wild Business Incubator Program she was starting.

My energy was on high-alert after the webinar so I signed up for the nine-month program.

The weeks leading up to the first in-person retreat filled me with anxiety. I knew I was about to begin a new important leg of my journey through life.

I was scared.

What if I couldn’t do it? What if I couldn’t live up to my potential? What if I failed?

I took all of my anxieties to watercolor paper and created “Eyes of Awareness”.

The painting calmed me down and gave me hope. My anxieties were no match for what was to come.

All of my energies would be joyfully, gleefully released when I allowed myself to move forward rather than stay stuck in fear.

At the first SARK retreat in Key West, we were introduced to SARK’s tool, “Inner Wise Self Love Letters”. Essentially we all have an Inner Wise Self and she/he is always with us.

Many of us have known about this inner wisdom and call it by different names. No matter what you call it, feeling its loving presence is a gift.

I credit my Inner Wise Self with giving me all of the imagery in this post.

I’m delighted to have a new, more direct way of dialoguing with her as a result of working with the SARK team (Susan Ariel Rainbow Kennedy, Dr. Scott Mills, and Suzanne Evans). Mahalo nui loa!

But Wait! There’s more to come.

I’ll share it with you soon. Stay tuned for “My Inner Wise Self and Me, Part 2”.

Stuart is always ready to play — ball or just about anything else. His little body is filled with love and he was a joy to paint!

When entrusted to paint a member of anyone's fur family, I start with a good pencil drawing. I want to get him or her situated on the page just right.

First I paint the eyes. Next I paint the nose and add a little more love to the eyes.

The eyes, those windows to the soul, really need to shine forth.

You'll see me smile while I paint these loving pets. I feel their love and I express my love for them back into the painting.

When I'm pleased with the realistic features of the pet, I begin to play with color for the rest of the body. This is done in stages.

Sometimes I'm asked to paint a pet in realistic colors. These are just as much fun and as much of a challenge as the colorful portraits; I love painting them just as much as the colorful pets.

When painting in "Hawaiian-style" colors, I work to capture the nature of the pet with a joyful rainbow of colors.

Any white lines between the colors show where the pencil lines were. They help me to remember the different planes of the face and the shifting of the color value I want to paint. I carefully paint around the lines so they can be erased when the painting is dry.

The background comes last and is meant to highlight the portrait of the pet.

If you can feel the love of the pet, and the love I felt for and from the pet while I was painting it, the portrait is a success.

Stuart is one tiny, compact bundle of BIG loving energy!

The pineapple is a type of Bromeliad. From Spanish Moss (also known as Pele’s Hair) to the Pineapple, bromeliads come in all shapes, sizes, and colors. Pineapples are a symbol of hospitality, often given as gifts to those new to the islands.

Pineapples make for fun paintings — I've done several!

"Growing Sunshine"

A fan recently mentioned that he’d like to see a painting of a pineapple at the beach and I thought, “What fun!”

So I took a pineapple to the beach to take photos of it up at the waters edge. I didn't know what it would look like there.

Amazingly I captured a few photos of a wave crashing over the pineapple just before the force of the water pushed it over.

That pineapple went on to become a delicious smoothie and then a painting!

This is just the beginning of the painting, it hints of what's to come.

When we mix things up, put something different into the stir-fry or wear polka dots with plaids, we take a tiny risk.

I've worked a little more on the top of the pineapple and around the splash.

We stay alive by nudging ourselves outside our comfort zone, even just a little bit.

I’m sure some people thought I was crazy taking photos of "my pineapple" at the beach. I didn’t care. I honestly didn’t know what it would look like, how much fun it would be, or how much it would make me laugh!

Laughter is Life on a good day!

Reach for those good days, it's within us all to grab that gusto we often hear about. It means reaching outside of ourselves.

Go ahead, reach just a little further outside your comfort zone, try something new, live Large!

Do you ever hear this question echoing in your head?

It’s a great question to play with consciously. Play with your inflection as you ask yourself:

WHO do you think you are?

Who do you THINK you are?

Or, Who the H*** do you think you are?

WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?

Do you feel the difference?

These questions came to mind after my photo shoot with Jeremy DeWeese at the SurfJack Hotel in Waikiki.

A photo shoot can have many uses and meanings. It can be a folly or an incredible experience. It depends upon the lens through which you and your photographer view the world.

Jeremy sees the world through the lens of love. By doing so, he gives his subject the opportunity to see self through the eyes of love.

The gift of being seen for who we truly are, from the inside out, brings tears to my eyes.

Seeing the world through eyes of love is something we can all learn. It’s a practice to consciously choose.

It’s rare for us to focus our lens of love upon ourselves.

To look through the lens of love is to see deeper than the surface, and to experience the heart of all matter.

We can reduce everything down to love —
even though love is a power
larger than anything imaginable.

Why do we so easily, often without thought, hide our love away from even ourselves?

Do we not know how strong and powerful our love is?

Or do we know how strong and powerful it is and fear its power?

Is our powerful mind at war with our powerful heart?

If so, it’s a waiting game, for the heart always wins. Even if it has to wait until the very end of life, the heart always wins.

The attitude, thoughts, and feelings that we exercise the most, become the strongest.

Make a choice in every moment to exercise the parts of you that you want to grow.

Learn to see the world & yourself through eyes of love.

To see ourselves through eyes of love might be the most important exercise we undertake in life.

Train your eyes to look for love within and, with practice, you will see love grow in our world.

“WHO do you KNOW yourself to BE?”

Be that YOU.