How do you draw with your hands? It's the path to enlightenment.
- Tony Felice
- Aug 20
- 4 min read
Updated: Sep 5
“How do you draw with your hands?” a woman asked a child as they passed by.
I didn’t hear the answer, but I knew it.
You sculpt, of course.
Yes, perhaps you paint in clay as well, though drawing is more precise. Which is precisely my point.
To draw or sculpt, one must first see the form before it exists. That takes precision and courage. Michelangelo is claimed to have said he did not carve stone, but instead, released the figure wanting to be free from the stone. And in a sense, that is what I have been doing with my own life these past months: releasing myself from the hardened calcified remains of who I once was. And boy was it heavy.
To sculpt a self on a path to enlightenment is to first endure the duality of existence: the joy and madness of truth, the weight of fears, desires, shame, guilt; many things imposed upon us without permission, which we sometimes take up as our own. Over time, they become a strange melody, a song played on flat keys. They form the small self and it gets heavier and heavier over time.
Yet inside, under precise simplicity, the bigger self emerges when we start asking the big questions again, later in life. Who am I? Why do I exist? To answer these questions, the second more powerful, more enlightened self emerges. And art begins when we strip the false ‘us’ away. Or art reveals it. That’s it’s job.
Tim often says, “once you notice it, you can no longer get away with it.” Like a mark on a painting, once you see it that’s all you see. And that makes sense, once you see the small you that has been running the show for your entire life is just a shell surrounding the larger self, that’s when, magically, the larger self starts to take over. And what emerges is more aligned, more at peace, and more centered in the grounding of true self.
I’m pensive today. Yesterday, two friends passed on from this world. Though I didn’t know them deeply, their presence left a mark on me. They offered grace freely, without restraint. Their absence reminds me that as some impose wounds, others bestow blessings. They both shaped me.
So today, I sat in the stillness. I listened to the trees and the wind. I watched our dog, Obie, bark at strangers as if echoing my own desire for privacy. And in the spaces between sounds, I noticed something new: it has become easier to cast off negativity. Easier to stay centered. Easier to glimpse grace in the “moments between moments” — the small intervals that define the larger arcs of our lives.
A butterfly landed beside me today with a secret: transformation only comes when the chrysalis is shattered. I wonder, does the butterfly laugh at its old shell as it flies away? I think not. Reverence would forbid it. And so it is with us.
All around, symbols of expansion: the roses blooming, sails catching the wind off the bay, the rigging ting, ting, tinging against a mast, clouds rushing by so fast they crowd each other out, and the sun.
For so long, my rhythm was: do, do, do, do, do, do, do. Only to collide with the reality of choices made by the small self.
Now it is: listen, think, create.
Everywhere, I see confirmation of my own intriguing thoughts–curious coincidences that begin to define my days. A book titled Love: The Universal Law mentioned in a comment by a stranger. People say what I’m thinking or I swear I hear they say it before their lips begin the task of uttering words. I speak the lines before the character in a show I’ve never seen. They are not confirmation of any brilliance on my part because the truth is out there, waiting for you to discover it. It’s a frequency we can all hear if we tune into it.
But in order to do so you have to leave the small self behind. And it can hurt like hell to rip off parts of yourself that no longer serve you because they were never yours to carry in the first place. And these little coincidences, I’ve described are simply bursts of light, triggered by higher vibrations. And before you roll your eyes, the vibration is real. So is frequency. If you don’t know that, you haven’t been paying attention!
And now, what of my two friends, have they cast off the final shell? I wonder where they are. I wonder how they felt when they knew the moment had come. Perhaps transformation means setting aside those questions and simply stepping into the work of becoming. Breaking the shell before it breaks you.
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This is my first blog post. I suppose I should follow the rules and post a bunch of promos for the show here. Once you know, and abide by the rules, you can bend them. And this whole book and podcast is sort of bending the rules. But for love’s purpose.
Just like time. Love bends it you know?
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📚 Learn about the book: www.santalandpodcast.com
