I am Angie.
I am a lawyer by training, a systems thinker by nature, a creator, and a truth seeker. All of the words on this site are my own, and they are expressions of my own truth and my own creation. Similarly, all of the images of titled paintings used on this site are my own original work.
I spent the majority of my childhood in Australia, my country of origin, then spent my adolescence and early adulthood in Arizona, and finally I landed in Oregon in 2011, where I have been ever since.
There are a lot of stories I could tell about my life, as I have thoroughly lived all of it, but that would take a very long time and I would not know where to begin or end, so instead let me give you a little background on where the insights and ideas contained in this website stem from.
As I have stumbled along through my life, making mistakes, learning, and growing I had a distinct point at which I crossed a line I could never un-cross and I ended up with this really wide angle view of the universe and my place within it. I got here by closely examining all of my deeply held beliefs, by questioning everything, by breaking down many of my habitual coping mechanisms and addictions, by getting more in touch with my body, and by getting more in touch with all that is through a vast (and ongoing) exploration into altered states of consciousness.
I have developed a relationship with several plant medicines, and the journeys I have taken have had a hand in shaping my understandings of language, consciousness, and reality itself. From these experiences, I developed my own meditation practice. My meditation practice began as simply writing a little, then sitting a little, then writing again. It has become an almost daily practice of writing and then a meditation that may be silent and still, or may include chanting and motion, and which ranges in time spent from about ten minutes up to multiple hours. In meditation I came into contact with myself and my own guidance system (of which we all have, and actually can access any time once we learn to do so and to trust it). My dreams came up to meet me, and I experienced (and continue to experience) the connection between my dream space, my meditation space, and other altered states of consciousness.
I began working with, and continue to work with, a wonderful empath and spiritual teacher who has helped me to contextualize and trust my experiences. I found and have been building a community of people, my own vast support network, to give me strength through my work. I also work with a psychologist who, in early days, was instrumental in helping me begin to break down my own patterns and addictive behaviors so that I could peel them away to find ever more of my authentic self. I began painting back in 2016 — and I mean a LOT. I started with acrylics and now work in oil and acrylics. I have made perhaps a hundred works in the last four years. All of it is process for me. I take the paints and I become one with them so that I can channel any energy or emotion or experience that must be expressed and worked through into the paints and the brush. The results are a beautiful, unpredictable, line of paintings of the depths of my consciousness. Painting has become one of my primary tools for processing, and one of my primary mediums for creative release and expression.
All of this work and experience ultimately lead me to a time in 2018 in which I experienced an almost complete breakdown of what I had previously known as myself. I was lead on a journey through many different realities, and I was shown more of value during this brief time period than I have perhaps ever seen in my life. I had so much universal information and consciousness flowing through me that I was overloaded. My entire world became a type of initiation, or a series of tests I had to go through. At the time things were coming in so fast that there was no integration possible, and for a time I stopped tracking our three dimensional reality almost entirely as I was off in a mirror universe in a different time. My physical body, of course, could not really be pulled to this other place — so it was left going through the motions here while my consciousness was taking in what would become many of the most valuable lessons of my life — and certainly what would become the basis of my understanding and gnosis about and of reality itself.
Having such a complete break down and then break through was one of the hardest experiences of my life, and it was hugely trying for those closest to me. I ended up behaving erratically, and seemingly insanely. I wound up in a mental hospital struggling to get myself integrated back into my body for a few days. I managed to do it, and I have spend much of my time since integrating the knowledge I gained. I found others to talk with about my experience who had been through similar things. I continued to build all of my practices that maintain my energy levels and allow me to interface with deeper levels of reality while staying grounded into my body and this time and place. I went from a place where I had been struggling to manage my energy — which over my life had many spikes and pits — to a place where I found balance. Since my break down and break through of 2018 I have been in a stable, and more balanced, flow. I have found my life and experiences rising up to meet me. I have found an inner peace that is resilient against much outer turmoil and distress. And I have found a space in which I understand myself and reality in a way that I find empowering and productive.
I do not know how to tell anyone to find what I have found. I do not see myself as a spiritual teacher or guru of any kind. But I would love for my journey to inspire others on their paths. I would love to share my knowledge with anyone who would like to hear it or who might find it of use. I would like to use what I am doing in my own life, and the changes and evolution I have begun (this journey of discovery and growth really never ends) to be of service to others and to the universe.
I decided to start this website back in 2016, and there is more on that below.
Why Goldfish Mind?
Several years ago, right around the time I began painting, right around the time I was laid off from my job, right around November of 2016, I decided I wanted to own a website. I thought I would like to share my little bit of nonsense with the world, since so many others are. But what to call it. I wanted it to be something deeply meaningful, but not too serious. When I consider our predicament here as humans, and how to conceptualize what our relationship with each other, with the interconnected universe, and with consciousness itself I have found over the years – beginning sometime back when I was in law school – that I return time and time again to the concept of individual consciousnesses being akin to goldfish bowls, wherein the bowls are touching each other and the fish can therefore perceive each other and the world, but only through the a multitude of distortions caused by all that glass. Many of us walk through life somewhat like this – and without even realizing that we (or anyone else, for that matter) are viewing the world through glass at all.
Imagine a vast matrix made up of fishbowls stacked as high, wide, and deep as all the space in the universe. Imagine there is one fish in each bowl. The fish look out and see the world beyond their bowl, and even beyond the bowls of those close to themselves. Our world views are similar. We see everything through our experience and consciousness. And through the masks and mirrors we hold, build, and wear in time with ourselves and with others. We are often unconscious of distortions in how we see things – we mistake our perception of reality for reality itself; and we mistake our laws and rules and model of reality as the only one available. It isn’t. What if the goldfish could jump between the bowls? What if some of the bowls were smashed? Imagine being a goldfish experiencing different bowls. Imagine what the experience of the fish would be like if suddenly all the bowls disappeared, and the fish were all in the water experiencing a clear view of each other for the first time. Imagine what would be possible for the fish then. The bowls had limited them so, had stunted their growth and development. First, their brains were completely underutilized in the bowls. Second, they were not able to grow to anywhere near their full physical size and potential. Imagine the language – the labels – we build up to define ourselves and others. These are like the bowls. Imagine breaking them down – breaking through the glass. If we did this, we would see each other for our more authentic selves. We would perhaps be more in tune with our interconnectedness.
On my own journey, I had to break down before I could break through, and I had to go in before I could see what was possible for humanity and our world. I had to break down and break through many old patterns and old beliefs. I had to go deep inside and revisit, heal, reframe, and learn from so much of my past that had been shelved. I believe we can all heal ourselves and evolve our own consciousnesses, and in doing so we can also begin to heal our collective consciousness and our world. But first, we must break free of the matrix that is our self-limiting believes about ourselves, others, and the universe we inhabit. We must let go of the notion.