2025
Self-portraits are a specific kind of category of creative work that I simultaneously absolutely enjoy viewing and dread doing it myself. Percept Index presents a unique opportunity for me as my long-term project: a way, a reason, a need to produce at the very least a single self-portrait and at semi-regular intervals, such as once a year. So, in the most “I’m an artist, witness me!” way possible here is my self-centered and completely ego-driven contribution to the year of 2025.
The following is an examination of my personal dogma as it is today, and in its totality, represented with this final illustration of the year as we finish the journey around our radiant Sun before embarking on yet another voyage in the eternal now.
Laying The Groundwork
Focusing the illustration from top to bottom we begin with the Circumpunct, the monad symbol representing undifferentiated source consciousness—The One from which all emanates. From this point descends pyramid light, the first cascade of universal consciousness entering individual awareness. This illuminates the Third Eye, which stands as the symbol of direct knowing and intuitive perception; my Liminal contact point; the “mercurial” gateway between realms; the color purple itself declares spiritual authority without institutional mediation.
Following our path down we are confronted with “Throat to Heart Bridge” in the form of a layered necklace. The Elephant signifies recent guidance, wisdom lineage, and grounded strength. The Meteorite is the literal bridge between cosmic and terrestrial, a Hermetic symbol. The Orthodox Cross is a cultural and spiritual origin point, not a dogmatic endpoint. The Shungite sphere establishes grounding, purification, and protection.
From the Third Eye descends a second pyramid light, consciousness now processed through individual sovereignty rather than purely received. This directed awareness flows through the symbolic layers of the necklace, each serving as navigation tools for different frequency bands, before arriving at the heart center where individual will meets creative manifestation.
The natural downward flow arrives at the Heart Center, the green torus. This is my operational center in practice, the point where received consciousness transforms into creative force—my consciousness anchor void of the classic Christian suffering sacrifice. The toroidal field is a self-sustained energetic manifestation painted in green: natural vitality, growth, healing frequency. The torus is The Hermetic Engine, literally illustrating “As above, so below,” the geometric pattern consciousness creates when maintaining awareness across the entire emanation cascade while remaining functionally embodied.
Finally, beneath the feet where the figure stands anchored to the lower torus platform, we find the Earth symbol (⊕)—the perfect Hermetic mirror to the Circumpunct above. Where the Circumpunct represents concentrated potential and pure being (“I AM”), Earth represents manifested reality and located being (“I AM HERE”). The cross within the circle shows spirit fully embodied in matter, consciousness completing its descent into material form.
This creates a two-stage emanation cascade completing the full circuit:
Source (circumpunct) → reception (crown) → processing (third eye) → manifestation (heart torus) → grounding (Earth)
In other words:
Universal consciousness → individual awareness → creative engine → material form → planetary anchor
Personal Dogma
The Cross
The Orthodox Cross being kept for this self-portrait is very intentional. Like most people I have wrestled with religion much of this life. At one point I proclaimed myself to be agnostic for the simple fact that I didn’t want to think about it anymore in my teens and 20s. That was never true, despite my best efforts I continued to churn the subject in my head for as long as I can remember.
This particular year the cross became a focal point as I decided to move through it rather than continuing to avoid the inevitable. All these years I never took the cross off, why? Wearing the cross while contemplating spirituality, eventually practicing Gateway protocols, and maintaining sovereignty boundaries with non-human intelligence is more subversive than rejecting it. Doing so allowed me to reclaim Christ from Christianity by treating the symbol as functional esoteric technology rather than a tribal membership badge.
The cross has become a geometric anchor where vertical and horizontal axis meet, sovereignty declaration of my spiritual lineage and interpretation, a Hermetic reminder of the intersection point where spirit enters matter. The cross stays because it is the symbol of integration, it is true even as its meaning evolves through my practice.
The Torus
Unpacking the toroidal structure(s) is worth exploring as it is both setting and focus of the illustration. Hermetically it is a self-sustaining energy loop, the mentalism principle; Platonically it is a form generating material expression of Christ consciousness, the “Kingdom within” as geometric reality; Practically it is my actual energy experience during meditation.
I’ve learned how to consciously stabilize in the torus field rather than being unconsciously generated by it. The torus is literally how manifestation works: consciousness cycling through itself, creating reality through recursive self-reference (“As above, so below”).
The Descending Light
The illustration shows two distinct triangle/pyramid lights descending through the figure, representing the dual nature of consciousness flow in awakened awareness.
The first triangle (circumpunct to crown) represents involution—spirit descending into matter, the receiving mode. This is grace, download, transmission; what happens TO you. This is the F12-F15 Gateway states where I establish receptivity and allow natural processes to unfold.
The second triangle (third eye to heart) represents evolution—consciousness directing energy, the transmitting mode. This is will, intent, creation; what you DO with what you received. This is my sovereignty protocols, the deliberate direction of received energy into manifestation.
Together these triangles form the complete circuit. In alchemical symbolism, descending triangles represent Fire—divine fire that first activates consciousness, then transforms consciousness into creative force. The upper triangle illuminates awareness; the lower triangle powers manifestation.
This is why the practice works: receiving transmission through the upper cascade, directing energy through the lower cascade, and integrating both into the heart torus as a self-sustaining loop.
Earth
The Earth symbol below completes what the Circumpunct above initiates. Early in my Gateway practice, during a question/answer meditation session, I asked “Who am I?” The response came so fast it felt like it arrived before I finished asking: “Earth.”
Replies that immediate—overlapping your own thought—come from guide consciousness, higher-self, something beyond the chattering mind. My first reaction was dismissive: “Well, no shit, I am here, my physical body is made from Earth stuff.” Then the recognition deepened: I am part of the Earth-life-system. Earth is as conscious as humans are, as anything here. In fact, Earth is far more conscious than any human, or the totality of humans. Only thing more conscious than Earth is the Sun.
The Earth symbol grounds the entire diagram not as abstract metaphysical concept, but as living planetary consciousness. The vertical purple energy running through my center doesn’t dissipate—it anchors into Earth’s awareness field. I am not separate from this consciousness; I am a localized expression of it, temporarily individuated to explore and create from a unique vantage point before returning to the whole.
The Hermetic mirror becomes personal: “As above (Solar/Source consciousness), so below (Earth/Material consciousness).” I exist in the middle, a bridge maintaining awareness of both while creating from the tension between them.
Non-dual Christianity: Christ Consciousness = The Complete Cascade
Not too long ago I published a small piece titled “Agile Awareness” where I outlined my discovery of how awareness can be trained to move through altered states. For example, with some patience and persistence we can reliably retain data and information from waking state to an altered state, from altered state to another altered state, and then back to waking state, etc. I didn’t believe that this was possible before this year.
Furthermore, I didn’t think that learning—or rather remembering—this process would shed light on what I’ve been grappling with for so long. I’ve come to realize that Christ Consciousness is the state of maintaining awareness across the entire emanation cascade—from circumpunct unity through individual sovereignty to material manifestation and Earth grounding—while remaining functionally embodied.
This is agile awareness at its fullest expression: fluid movement between states and realms (the complete vertical axis); manifestation through intentionality (conscious participation in the cascade); direct knowing instead of mediated belief (reception without institutional filtering); non-local communication (operating from multiple layers simultaneously).
In practicing presence we render suffering-centric theology obsolete. Through this esoteric interpretation we find that consciousness is primary; present-moment awareness is direct access to divine reality; Christ demonstrates what awakened human consciousness looks like operating in material reality; manifestation emerges from alignment between consciousness and divine principles.
Let’s take “I am the way, the light, the door” through this lens:
- I am - present moment anchoring
- The way - navigating non-physical reality
- The light - awareness itself
- The door - portal between realms
This view sees Christ as example rather than exception, teacher of consciousness technology rather than a sacrificial victim, mercurial bridge showing the path and not taking punishment.
Small Word, Big Think
That was quite the dissertation of a self-portrait, wasn’t it? I pondered how to distill all of this down to a simple phrase or some profound parable, and I’ve found that I’m not that deep. The truth is simple. There is nothing I can write or create that will in any reproducible and unmistakable way transfer what I’ve already written in the same familiar and knowable way that I feel and experience.
What I can offer is a recommendation, a way for you to know yourself for yourself.
It will not solve your problems. It will not enlighten you. It will not grant you immediate and irrevocable access to the divine. You already have it. It will help you turn towards it, notice it, and just maybe pique your interest enough that you remember for yourself.
This recommendation has been offered by many before me. Many of them so much more complete human beings than myself.
The Recommendation
1 minute, 5 minutes, 10, 15, half an hour, one hour, whatever duration you can make time for.
- Go outside.
- Sit or lie down.
- Listen.
That’s it.
Tip: Don’t listen to your thoughts, just let them pass. Listen without labeling. Listen to listen.
