Now that I’ve completed a project conjured up and seemingly finished three years ago but not, I can finally write about it.  After reading Drunvalo Melchizedek’s books on the Flower of life, an idea began to percolate in my mind.  Why not build this ancient symbol on the front forty acres.  Not even having a tractor at my disposal, a good friend suggested I scale it back a bit.  So I started on one acre instead.

Trying to explain my reasoning for initiating this project was my first challenge.  The war in Iraq was raging and I was sensing  a complete disregard for not only many peoples of the Earth but the Earth itself.  Being situated just outside Yellowstone National Park, which is basically a volcano overdue to explode anyway, maybe self-preservation was a factor.  The concept of Gaia, the Earth as one living organism, resonates with me, especially living in Montana.  The thought of giving something back to the Earth began to make sense purely in a balancing act type of scenario.  But it would have to be something substantial.  Instead of mining, industrial agriculture, logging, drilling, extracting, not to mention poisoning the very substrate of the planet which supports all of us, I felt a little thank you note to Mother Earth herself was long overdue.  In my small way, building a sculpture into the Earth of the original creation symbol struck me as appropriate.  Doing everything by hand except driving the truck to and from the quarry, also seemed to be the low tech and proper way to approach the project.

Armed with a piece of rebar for the center point, a 15 foot radius of string, and a pointed wooden stick, I began scratching circles into the sun-baked soil.  The entire symbol is nothing but 30-foot diameter circles all crisscrossing either a center point or the edge of a neighboring circle all within one giant circle.  When completed it looks like a giant lotus flower from above.

The material I chose was paramagnetic volcanic basalt rock dust.  The owner of the local quarry, John Fanuzzi, was kind enough to donate the rock dust material for my project.  Paradise Valley is a high desert and the soil was not irrigated and rock hard.  The simple act of scratching lines into this soil canvas was a two month project in itself.  Terra Firma indeed!  By the time I was halfway through, my lines were fading so I strategically placed colored irrigation flags around the perimeter of each circle.  I was toiling amidst a sea of multi-colored flapping mini-flags representing symbolically, the flags of all nations.  It became somewhat confusing having only the primary colors at my disposal as they all  intersected around me.  But I continued to reposition the rebar post and scratch more circles into the backyard.  Finally, amidst a sea of flags, my layout was complete.  These lines were painstakingly gouged into the ground on hands and knees effectively ruining more than a few sets of workpants.

The sense of accomplishment was short-lived when I had to determine the best way to make this a permanent sculpture, hopefully.  Fortunately, my eyes caught sight of a piece of yard art, a pioneer era, manual, one-prong plow.  No horses here, just serious manual labor.  I proceeded to plow each circle individually, then use a narrow irrigation shovel to clean out the furrows.  I can’t begin to explain how grueling this process was considering the hard pan I was trying to churn through with my century-old plow.  But eventually the trenches began to form a pleasing pattern.  Unfortunately, digging the 6” deep and 5” wide trenches was still only step two.  Next were my regular visits to the Black Diamond Quarry.

I would take my pickup truck up the mountain to a huge pile of the basalt rock dust.  Most people have experienced what a shovel full of dirt feels like, weight wise.  This basalt granite dust is so dense  it felt to be approximately three times the weight of a shovelful of soil.  Then I would proceed to hand load about a ton of rockdust  into the bed of the truck.  On my return home, I would crawl down the mountain in low gear and 4­-wheel drive while practically dragging my back bumper due to the excessive weight.  Luckily, I only live about a mile down the road.  But that was a scary mile, every time.  The hood of the truck was so elevated I could barely peer over the steering wheel.  I did this twenty four times.

The process of unloading the truck shovel by shovel into the waiting trenches became a labor of love. Regardless,  the questioning of my sanity would frequently present itself.  The soundtrack for this entire process was a CD by the Indian violinist Shankar, along with my favorite tabla player, Zakir Hussein.  Sounds like “Who’s sane.”  Five months into the project, I was saying, “Not me!”  But I was in much too deep to abandon the sculpture even though the thought occurred on a regular basis.  Occasionally, my wife would come out, hands on hips, survey the scene, shake her head and retreat back to the house.

Looking across the Yellowstone River to the 11,000 foot peak called Emigrant, I noticed there were three peaks from this angle.  Thoughts of the Trinity, body-mind-spirit, and other trilogies meandered through my brain.  But the craziest thought, no, not thought more like telepathic transmission formed in my consciousness on a regular basis throughout this process.  The specific message was “Build it and they will come.”  I felt like Kevin Costner in “”Field of Dreams.”  But instead of a baseball diamond, I was constructing a sculpture symbolizing life itself!  But I wasn’t sure why anyone would want to come all the way to rural Montana just to take a peek at my piece of handiwork, ancient symbol or not.  But in the ensuing two years, after putting that project to bed ( I thought!), I built the AquaBliss Institute.  Since AqauBliss has the capacity to elevate anyone’s consciousness to higher levels, the meaning of the telepathic message became clear.  Build your AquaBliss teaching Institute and the people who need to transform and expand their consciousness will come. I’ve built in the ensuing two years a  solar/propane heated pool and attendant outbuildings along with an observation deck in order to teach my life-altering method of AquaBliss.

But back to the Flower of Life which had begun to fade over the last two years.  The light grey of the rock dust and the dry grass of the high desert valley didn’t really offer much contrast.  Coupled with incessant winds and a gradual encroachment of weeds, all my hard work was in danger of disappearing.  I racked my brain for a solution to make it more visible and permanent.  Eventually I decided on bright white marble chips conveniently bagged and sold at the local home center.  200 bags later, The Flower of Life stands transformed and more prepared to withstand the ravages of time and weather.  Being able to really appreciate the beauty of the design because of the contrast wasn’t the only difference.  There seemed to be an energetic shift as if it was taking on a force unto itself.  The Flower was coming to Life!

I hadn’t realized upon my initial completion of the Flower that the paramagnetic basalt rock dust, which had solidified into a cement-like footing, was just that, a footing.  It wasn’t the building, it was the foundation!  The marble represented the structure, the temple, if you will.  Since the F.O.L. is found at many sacred sites around the world, the marble seemed appropriate being that many Greek, Roman and other ancient statues and temples were made out of this re-crystallized limestone.

Just before I finished laying down all the marble chips, I went to the local hot springs to give an AquaBliss to an old friend and ran into John, the generous donor of the basalt.  He’s an expert in sacred geometry and the energetic of rocks and minerals.  I mentioned that the energy was changing from the straight basalt after piling the marble on top of the lines.  He told me the marble was diamagnetic placed on top of paramagnetic.  He went on to explain that our bones are paramagnetic and our soft tissue is diamagnetic.  It was mimicking the structure of our very bodies.  The addition of the marble really did bring it to life!

Not only that, there is a book called Love is in the Earth which catalogues the metaphysical properties of the mineral kingdom.  It informed me of marble’s qualities which include promoting peak states of meditation and total recall of dreams.  It also helps actuate the “unused” portions of the mind, providing for the strength of self-control, mastery of thought and the power of serenity.  I’ll keep you informed of any positive effects or changes attributable to the F.O.L. in subsequent blogs.

All I know for now is that it is a beautiful work of art capable of standing the test of time (with a little maintenance) and it is my thank you card to Mother Earth for all she has done and continues to do for all of us.

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 11:42 pm and is filed under Deep Meditation, Emotional Healing, Sacred sites, sacred geometry sculpture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.