What is your project idea and how will it help you achieve that? The more specific the better - help us envision it. What mediums will you use, how will you learn new skills, what inspirations will you draw on.

I love this platform. Makes it so seamless to answer right here in the note! *wink

For only Finding about this competition the day of, I feel so equipped with Playbook creator tools! wow

But seriously well done Playbook. What an incredibly good~willed way to get creators on an incredible platform.

I asked the universe to give me a microphone and it told me about this opportunity exactly 8 hours and 40 minutes before submission deadline. Let's see what's possible.

Ok, confession. I made great art. Like high art. I'm a wizard of a poet. And I tried my hand at prose. And succeeded. And told a story.

This is about to be a whole bunch of show not tell. You with me?

So the story's about the inner child holding the inner flame going on a journey for the ascension of the highest self. It's a story about the integration of unconscious, subconscious, and consciousness. Its about transformation that occurs in the individual through the pursuit of the dream. In some ways it is the pilgrims progress and Dante, if the pilgrim was on a space odysee into the interior of the soul, if ascension was about reaching the heavens within rather than the realms above. Basically, Inside Out and LOTR's soul child.

Ultimately , its about the Great Work of Alchemy taking place to a sense of completion in the individual. No, in you. I used myth and fable to tell the story because the truths of this transformation have to be felt. And trust me its felt, you'll cry so many times and not know why.

The World I've made is just beautiful...

But I'm getting ahead of myself. I should start with my story.

My actual real life spiritual journey began when this mystic mentor of a stranger walked up to me and asked, "Are you a writer?"

My world got rocked every day for the next 6 weeks. Total upheaval and grief.

And a man who had entered into my life to equip me with an esoteric path that would lead me out of the overwhelm and into a way of peace.

And I wrote a children's book about it. And I need your inner child to read it.

He taught me to enter the heart center. To hold something unconditionally, and through it learn the deeper secrets of alchemy and manifestation.

I understood my assignment. Write. Be the writer that brought these truths to others. I began. Post after post, I wrote until the language finally synthesized and I could begin guiding others through it.

12+ hour writing days for seven months followed. I dropped a career as an executive consultant, picked up a silly sales job, and dove all the way in on this project. I saw a vision to make accessible the truths of transformation that had been given to me and I took it.

The Universe *cracked the door open towards coaching top 100 execs.

The first was director of publishing for a major toy company. I happened to mention the children's mega-fable that I had literally just begun.

Since that moment I've been all in on a once in a century tale. I enter the state of energetics that I was taught, and I let a story that is infinitely greater flow.

I channel and I weep. And sometimes those tears are poetry.

Recently....

I wrote the scene of the protagonist's double overcoming a Jungian shadow at the crescendo of the story and rising into final ascension. spoiler

You could see why writing the scene challenged me as an author...

My personal takeaways were about how a half dreamt dream is a great danger to the dreamer, and how we often give our greatest strengths the least belief.

Total Self awareness is the shadow - turns out it was only a mirror - visible only through complete self love - when belief in self is finally complete.

Anyways this is in a kids book. With songs and poems and tales of whimsy and wonder and total immersion for your imagination... AND truths like this.

So Why mix the esoteric and the imagination? Because truth has to TEXTURED.

Think about it. Home is a Smell. A smell creates home, safety, calm, all of your stories and preferences and everything. A single smell is a massive amount of information. I need your subconscious engaged with this, and so I spoke in the languages of the subconscious. I wrapped the truth in parable and rhyme and color and made the world as immersive as humanly possible, because Immersion in Truth yields Transformation. And because its was fun.

It's a meta- arc of therapy for the soul, guiding the deeper parts of you through its revelations while the rational mind is immersed in play + wonder.

Transformational Literature? Children's mysticism? Making it stick to a genre's tough.

But here's what I do know. It's going to change storytelling.

And for me, that' enough to put my whole life behind it. I went through some really tragic losses to be able to have lived the transformation that I have transmuted through this story. It's time for the world to see it.

And that's what the takeaway from the Shadow scene was: ITS TIME.

It's time to fully immerse myself in the absolute identity I saw: The writer, the poet, the sage ~ this old soul that wanted to be an author when he grew up ~ That was my personal Legend. That's what this is about.

I poured my heart on the page while it was still bleeding so these truths wouldn't slip by me. I wrote and published and built community right through the stages of grief. I poured my heart out and leaned all the way in to the teachings of the old mentor and mystic and followed that transformation. And I kept writing until the language crystalized and parable and teaching formed around the process. When it was ready, the story wrote itself.

And it wrote and it wrote and it wrote. And I showed up.

Every day I held an absolute energetic practice supporting the interior resolve to bring this book to life. My relationships, job, financial security, and so much more became secondary to the one thing that I let burn so brightly within that ascension through it became inevitable.

Read my instagram threads and you will see a library of poetic musings of wisdom that will guide and support so many people when this book is complete; I revel in the treasure trove of unseen genius and transformative truth that public repository is! And I have so much story to tell in the world I've created, with dozen of story's and characters fully written already for an intricate tapestry of fables, and dozens more ready for the anthology and other releases that will support the work.

You haven't seen it at this point, but SO MUCH ART will be inspired by this Book, and in an age of AI I think it will equip so many people with the immersive and imaginative capacity to deeply ABIDE in self creation.

Okay, I'm going to overstay my welcome if I hold your attention any longer. But at the expense of you being a bit tired, I think I just took you through a journey that is very similar to the way that you will experience the story.

It's a panaroma type experience, where the entirety of what's possible in a dreamscape is explored. Whispered truths and little dancing puzzles of wisdom guide every moment of the narrative, with a constant state of reverie and reality ebbing in and out of the perspective of the reader.

You're excited. I'm Excited.

BTW. My hope is that this is admissibly long for what it achieves, but thank you endearingly for your patience nonetheless. A stream of consciousness grant submission is a little on the nose, I know, but it is a story about a dream. Let' see how much of the story I can show you now. Its absolutely deserved.

Hope you were entertained. Let's storyboard below.

Oh there were more questions, hmm. here ...

Let's start.

What kind of impact—artistic, intellectual, communal, civic, social, political, environmental —do you hope your project will have?

I believe my project will equip a generation with modern, intercultural myth about spiritual tools and the the truths necessary for Transformation. Alchemy is present both in the meta-reality of the book but also active in the soul of the Reader. At the very minimum it will entertain and make accessible the wisdom of the awakened to the unawakened, and also be a sort of bible / creation story / mythological framework for the alchemical tradition. At the very minimum, of course ;)

How do you want to grow as a designer, artist and maker? How can the Inspiration Fund help you grow?

Let me share a bit of my personal energetics to paint this answer.

My books have spilled from the shelves and marched around the room. Antique volumes of classic poetry, great classics, tales of adventure, and coming of age stories remind me who I am again. My plants (poor things are as starved as me) each represent an area of growth in my life, and time nurturing them, caring, and connecting with them, is time communing with the abstract - abiding with the vision I have held. The Smells, the books, the rituals - Who I am is written in a memory palace of my own sentiment, affections for the somatic and sensory delight of Life that bring me perpertually into the present of my choosing.

Immersion yields transformation. It is about volume. It is about capacity. It is about speaking the languages of the soul so that the work can alchemize inwarldly before it actualizes outwardly. There's mysticism in the dreamscape, in the heart centered journey following one's path. (If only there were a kids book about this. I need to give this to your imagination. Its the best chance you have to understand it. )

Its possible I've written the greatest synthesis of story yet conceived in literature. Help Me FUND this beautiful dream of a work that has brought me to truths so much bigger than me!!

When the book is the hands of families across the world, we will realize that we all share the same secrets of fate and destiny, and that waking up is something we all have access to. With this Project, I will spend the rest of my life teaching and coaching and encouraging and equipping people to write their own stories. What an incredible dream of a Life. And its a few thousand dollars away.

Will you like super humbly support this? I've put more on the line than most will ever know. It's really time for my life to change.

Push me through the publishing and so many lives change.

The Crystal Healer:

The whistler bumped right into him. He was an older, very peaceful man, who could not see unless his little opal spectacles sat right at the crook of his nose.

Somehow not surprised to see the boy, he said, "Come with me, I'd like to show you the finest crystal shop in the town, it is my life's work." The opals glared as he turned in the sun, and through the alleyways they quickly cornered. The man introduced himself and talked to the boy as they walked, though he was quite soft-spoken.

The little steps of the boy could hardly keep up. “A man must walk with haste when he walks towards his life’s work,” the man said, apologizing over his shoulder to the boy.