This image bounced around inside my head for several weeks before it became a reality. Through meditation over the past few years, I started to realize that there was some profound difference between our thoughts and the real ‘us’. But I only started clearly picturing it like this while reading A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle. He explains it so eloquently and vividly.
Over the span of a few weeks, I created and continued adding to a note on my phone as I realized some of the things that we may sometimes feel define us, but that actually don’t.
For example, ’emotions’ is a big one. When we feel an emotion like anger or sadness, it engulfs us and we think that’s all there is in the world at that moment. When we’re overcome by a strong emotion, it’s all that exists to us. But in reality, an emotion is just electricity firing in the brain. And although it’s tough to do sometimes, if you can recognize when you’re feeling an emotion, things start to feel funny.
You realize that ‘you’ are actually the one who is recognizing the emotion, not the emotion itself.
Eventually, I just decided to open GIMP and get to work creating it. I knew that I wanted a dark background to allow the bright white in the center to stand out.
I wasn’t sure how to make text go around in a circle like that in GIMP, but knew that that’s what I wanted. So I googled it. Seven seconds later, I was watching this 8-minute video tutorial of a guy efficiently walking the audience through exactly what I was trying to do. Man, I love the internet.
I was originally picturing one row of words around the circle. But when I created the circle in GIMP, I created it wider and noticed that two rows would actually work. Once I messed around with that idea, I loved that approach.
At the end of this project, I was SO proud of this work that I had to send the image to several friends and family members. This feeling of seeing something in the mind and actually making it is gratifying and addictive and I couldn’t contain it. Still can’t! Hence this website : )
