It is in our willingness to courageously turn and walk into those areas of our lives where our identity, as an ego, might come undone that we find inspiration. It is in this undoing that we find our true identity, separate from any limiting, known reference point in the world. As our controlled, ego creation begins to diminish, a unique creative expression begins to emerge.

Most of us seek some kind of individual expression in the world, and we do so, mostly, in insignificant ways. These ways often reflect or slightly improve on what others might already be doing. To fully inhabit one's individual expression, without reference point to the known world, is a very lonely business. It is this inherent loneliness keeps most of us from fully exploring the territory.

It is the nature of the ego, bent on control, to fear change. The ego interprets any radical departure from a personal or cultural fix as sure death to its existence and it is entirely correct in this assessment. Something old and calcified must die for anything new to be born. It is in the metaphoric "dying" that the inspired possibilities for our lives come alive. There is a quote by Yogananda that alludes to this strange paradox, "To set out on any holy purpose and to 'die' along the way is to succeed." Most of us are too busy "surviving" to open ourselves to the unreasonable requirements of this paradox.

DWG: How did death lead to renewal for you as an artist?

JW: We are in a transitional period in our world and many of us are intuiting the need to stop and look more deeply at the way we live our lives. A deeper inquiry has the potential to tap into and express the zeitgeist, (the spirit of the times). It is our individual connection and quiet response to the zeitgeist that ultimately effects social change.

As a result of my own response, I left behind the discipline of active doing (painting) and opened my life to a new kind of discipline-the discipline of conscious being. Being took me into a more formless relationship with inspiration. An inspired moment will always expand our small ideas about our world and ourselves. I gave myself to exploring the holy science of an inspired moment, separate from any form-art or otherwise.

DWG: You have had quite a positive response to your book and the Parabola documentary film that was made about your life and art. Why do you think you are getting this attention and why are people responding the way they are to your unusual story?

JW: I think there is something in my story that has found a resonance in the hearts of others going through similar experiences. It gets back to the zeitgeist. When any expression strikes a chord in the heart of culture it usually does so because the creativity of the person doing the expressing has tapped into something universal-something we all recognize and identify with as our own. When we have been inspired by an experience or an idea we feel we have found what we have been looking for.