Gregg's 20x20 featuring the art of Alex Grey

My gratitude to everyone who came out to Pecha Kucha 2 at the DIA last night. I enjoy putting faces to names. It was a fun and valuable experiment for the Lab, and for me personally. I'm working on a full write up on the process of preparing the presentation. I want to explore it a bit, as I think it reconnected me with aberrant strands from my past, and future.

My gratitude to Alex Grey for the permission to use his very sacred art in my workshops and presentations. I never envisioned sharing these slides or my work with so many people!

My highest gratitude to Angela though, not only for inspiring me to reach higher than I ever have before, but also for her wisdom and patience as I stutter and stumble towards a some tangible understanding of those heights. Thank you my love!

Gregg's 20x20 featuring the art of Alex Grey:

Revisiting: Acknowledgement, Gratitude, & Self-Expression

I write almost everyday, but very little of it actually sees the light of Detroit As A Portal! I've been revisiting some of the positive posts that got held up as drafts for whatever reason and cleaning them up for your perusal. Thank you! ~Gregg

October 04, 2008: What a day, as Gristle would say. Saturdays at the Lab are these non-stop brilliant experiments that really take me to the edge. I love every minute of it and all the people I share with are incredible.

Angela and I are truly blessed, but when I finally sit down at 10:30 pm and pause for a second the immensity of the day and what I see happening before my eyes really settles in.

This is serious shit. We're small hands in the midst of some incredible work going down in the world. Every person I engaged with today expressed a great desire for change. Even the guy at Busy Bee Hardware who sold me a furnace filter was talking about sustainability and community.

Though I know I tend to lead a conversation and love to introduce ideas to new people, the simple fact is that I had meaningful conversations with everyone I met today. I think that's both rare and fortuitous, and I'm quite sincere in this. I try to give these things weight through words and sometime I wonder if it's possible. I spend my days in constant awe.

There are problems and concerns and I fall into doubt just as often as the rest of you. (Please tell me if I'm wrong about the doubt thing so I can make the proper adjustments.) But I've found the antidote to doubt to be equal portions of gratitude and service. I don't understand it, so I'll admit to an almost blind faith. When I selflessly share my talents with others and recognize what they've done for me by simply gazing at my work for even a moment, the universe seems to make a way. I don't always remember this VITAL fact, but when I do it does wonders!

I watch whats going on in the world at large. I see the division, the culture war that's coming to a head and in the face of it I have a serious proposition. What if you decided to engage? What if the next time you interact with someone you look them in the eye and truly acknowledge them as a fellow being, if only for a moment? I'm not proposing that it be a hippie love fest, we have a wide range of emotions that we can share more fully with others when we take the time to engage. I think that we are quite close to a tipping point and that creating meaningful connections with others, particularly our neighbors, will serve as a great boon in the coming days.

Acknowledgement, meaningful appreciation and gratitude, and heartfelt self-expression seem the call of the day. I really want to thank everyone who has supported us and helped us move forward with the Lab and our own personal development.

On Gratitude from this week's Evolve Detroit

Read the full version edited by yours truly. ~G

This weekend, our Canadian brethren to the south celebrated Thanksgiving. Their "giving of thanks" must have somehow rubbed off on us here at the Lab, as we were filled with a heightened sense of gratitude. We focused inward a bit seeking out some of the core aspects of our being in order to recognize and thank them. Each one of us, at this very moment is engaging in an activity that is utterly awe inspiring. The act of reading; parsing words, creating categories of meaning and identifying as with, against or indifferent to them are all complex tasks.

There is a great deal going on within us and around us that we filter out. This is not from spite or distraction, but from an innocent lack of awareness. Certain aspects of the world around us, our bodies and minds, function so well we don't really notice them until there is a problem. They are unsung heroes when things are running smoothly and typically villainized when they are not.

These unsung core aspects are what we focused our gratitude upon this weekend. And this week, as we revel in these warm and beautiful days, we highly recommend taking a moment to thank yourself for all you do. Do it every day, as often as possible. If gratitude is sincere there can never be too much.

A pat on the back is great, but we recommend seeking depth with this expression of gratitude. Leave judgment behind and give yourself permission to go deep. Take a little thing that you do or a function of the world and explore how it unwinds and connects to other aspects of your experience. Recognize the complexity and, from the depths of your being, thank the process, the players and the results.

Recognition and gratitude shed light and seem to clean out the trappings of these "automatic" functions. We posit that, though these minuscule aspects of our lives do in fact function on their own, they are enhanced by our participation. We tend to be pretty hands off when it comes to our perception these days. Shining this light, pouring this gratitude into the depth of our being reconnects us and grounds us so we can begin to participate more fully.

This is a vital part of that Evolution we talk about all the time.

Long Day, But I've Got To Get A Post In

What a day, as Gristle would say. Saturdays at the Lab are these non-stop brilliant experiments that really take me to the edge. I love every minute of it and all the people I share with are incredible.

Angela and I are truly blessed, but when I finally sit down at 10:30 pm and pause for a second the immensity of the day and what I see happening before my eyes really settles in.

This is serious shit. We're small hands in the midst of some incredible work going down in the world. Every person I engaged with today expressed a great desire for change. Even the guy at Busy Bee Hardware who sold me a furnace filter was talking about sustainability and community.

Though I know I tend to lead a conversation and love to introduce ideas to new people, the simple fact is that I had meaningful conversations with everyone I met today. I think that's both rare and fortuitous, and I'm quite sincere in this. I try to give these things weight through words and sometime I wonder if it's possible. I spend my days in constant awe.

There are problems and concerns and I fall into doubt just as often as the rest of you. (Please tell me if I'm wrong about the doubt thing so I can make the proper adjustments.) But I've found the antidote to doubt to be equal portions of gratitude and service. I don't understand it, so I'll admit to an almost blind faith. When I selflessly share my talents with others and recognize what they've done for me by simply gazing at my work for even a moment, the universe seems to make a way. I don't always remember this VITAL fact, but when I do it does wonders!

I watch whats going on in the world at large. I see the division, the culture war that's coming to a head and in the face of it I have a serious proposition. What if you decided to engage? What if the next time you interact with someone you look them in the eye and truly acknowledge them as a fellow being, if only for a moment? I'm not proposing that it be a hippie love fest, we have a wide range of emotions that we can share more fully with others when we take the time to engage. I think that we are quite close to a tipping point and that creating meaningful connections with others, particularly our neighbors, will serve as a great boon in the coming days.

Acknowledgement, meaningful appreciation and gratitude, and heartfelt self-expression seem the call of the day. I really want to thank everyone who has supported us and helped us move forward with the Lab and our own personal development.