267. Tools for Evolving Consciousness - Lauren Mantecón

Kara Goodwin: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the Meditation Conversation. I'm your host, Kara Goodwin, and today I'm joined by Lauren Montahan. She's an artist based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. her lifelong studies of metaphysics, spirituality, and fascination with the Inexplicable Mysteries of Life inform her work, which features symbols of veils, miss orbs, black holes, string like pearls, abstracted landscapes, and ghost vessels.

Lauren focus. Throughout her career has been navigating the crossing points between Earth and Spirit in a multi-dimensional universe to gain a deeper sense of belonging.[00:01:00] 

I've really loved this episode with Lauren Monta con. I love discussing. How creativity helps us to connect deeper to our spiritual nature. But I have to admit that it's a little vulnerable for me to talk to somebody so deeply immersed in the arts. That scene. Your second grade niece could talk circles around me when it comes to art. 

But Lauren's so connected to the metaphysical, the spiritual, and I really wanted to get her perspective and experience. And I know that you're going to get so much from this, just like I did. There's a lot in this episode from connecting with loved ones in dreams. To receiving guidance from elders in the ethers to trying to understand galactic origin and the deep feeling that you're from somewhere else. 

To awakening the shockers through the vibration of color and so much more. So before we get started with that, I have a couple of things to mention. First is simply that if you find this podcast worthwhile, please [00:02:00] rate and review and tell your friends. That's a free and easy way to support the show and help it grow. And I really, really appreciate it so very much. 

It means so much to me to read your reviews and get your feedback. And to know that we're connected through this format. The other thing I want to mention is that Jenna at star family wisdom is running a summer camp for star seeds. This will be a four week course. Of online mystery school teachings and transformational practices live on zoom to support your awakening as a star seed. 

You'll work with spiritual protection, connect with your star family and learn how to reprogram your mind, to remember the truth of your reality and access A more magical, beautiful experience of life on earth. 

This will be deep, fun, informative, and experiencial. You also get four bonuses when you sign up, I've got the link in the show [00:03:00] notes and using that link, lets them know you heard about this. For me. So I really appreciate that. And now enjoy. enjoy. this episode 

Kara Goodwin: So welcome Lauren. I am really excited to connect with you.

Lauren Mantecón: Hi. Thank you for having me, Kara. I'm really excited to be here today.

Kara Goodwin: So as I mentioned when I invited you onto the show, and, thanks to listener Kathy for suggesting this connection. and we just spoke about this before we started recording, but I'm not so. Super well versed in the art scene, and I can see your paintings behind you and they're absolutely stunning.

but what I wanted to talk to you about is that art seems to be a medium for deepening your connection to your soul. And this is where we'll focus our. Our conversation today, and I'd love to start by just talking about your belief in creativity and especially [00:04:00] painting as a healing balm for the soul and for the world, and that the process of painting and how that helps you to stay in the process of life.

So I'd love to hear how art helps you to navigate life and process life.

Lauren Mantecón: I like to use perhaps creativity, which would encompass all the arts, basically. when we live in this mundane world with our, the middle world, the upper world, the underworld. So when I say mundane world, I mean that middle world. We are in our left brains. And I strongly believe that our evolution depends on the creative soul.

 As kids, we can have that abundance of creativity, but we seem to be going to [00:05:00] school and having this rigorous. Math, arithmetic, reading. Let's give a point system. Let's treat every child the same when we all learn differently so that creativity is really chaos. And chaos is a beautiful thing when we can trust and learn to swim in it.

But the world doesn't often support that, and so I believe that. For instance, when I teach, I'll see. People come up against a canvas and just go into complete fear sometimes, I don't know what to do next on this. I feel frozen, and these are the tools that I use, especially in my mentor practice of really.

Learning to listen and have a dialogue with the work itself, because whatever fear we have that shows up on the canvas is usually the same fear that we have [00:06:00] in life. And so risk taking is often imperative and not being completely in that left brain, but to allow for what I call wild abandonment. And the more we can do that, the more we're in touch with our intuition as well.

It's like flexing a muscle.

Kara Goodwin: Hmm. I love that. and what you're talking about with children and how they have this wide open perception of the world and how they interact with the world. It is so much freer and it's like this training that we go through where it's this. We get into the duality, right? The yet it's this and it's not that.

And we learn it's like our learning is a way of whittling down the world into this very limited. Viewpoint and something that's been opening up more and more for me, very recently from a conscious perspective. I'm sure that this [00:07:00] has been going on, but I haven't been noticing it so much.

But it's this, full brained. Processing where especially when it's quiet and things are calm, it's not so easy for me to tap into it if I'm like on the go or I'm really distracted. But if I am in that quiet space or I'm about to go to sleep or something, I can feel the spaciousness in my mind and that more.

More connections, but or more of my brain is working together. You know, it's not just one small part of the brain working at a time and it, that seems to be so much reflected in what you just said in terms of how our creativity helps to open up the right brain and maybe also to just help some like neural.

Connections to be made that are not able to really be, [00:08:00] created when we're in that yes no black, white world.

Lauren Mantecón: I think of it, I think of ourselves as a tree, we have this conscious relationship with the invisible world that, or maybe it's unconscious, but when we sit to meditate, we wanna expand and open up and often we wanna live in this upper right connecting to heaven. But when we're anchored, and this is where I think creativity is so important, because it anchors us in our body.

we are moving, we're somatically working things out so we can have this brain that gets to expand. But we have our feet on the ground. It's a teetering balance as above, so below. So when we're willing to feel into our bodies, like where is this fear? is it my heart? is it in my solar plexus?

is it my security in my root and. When we [00:09:00] can ask ourselves questions and be willing to even open up shadow work, I feel that's where the best creativity can find its way in. when I'm living in that upper realm all the time. Yeah, it's hard to make choices that you do need to make when you're painting, because we can muck about, that's a word that I use, like not knowing what the heck I'm doing, and I just will say, keep doing it and doing it till something changes, because it always does.

Kara Goodwin: Mmm

Lauren Mantecón: It's all we have. Life is just change. But if you can feel it in your body, then you're able to access even more information.

Kara Goodwin: Mmm.

Lauren Mantecón: I like to work with the chakra systems.

Kara Goodwin: With your like to be reflected in your paintings.

Lauren Mantecón: Yes, actually, I like to do a lot of chakra meditations, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet. And I know there's even colors that we can't see that we're beginning to [00:10:00] tap into in consciousness, but. Even working with Red, for instance, like I have a color series that I did over seven weeks.

When, we had this shutdown, I was starting to do these online classes in each week with online participants. We'd do a meditation, we started with red, and then I'd do the history of red, and then I'd show how to use red in painting with techniques. And I literally felt each week because I was so immersed in it, I had setups with like red flowers for red and orange and other thing.

I could feel myself moving. I. Through each one. And I will say when I got to that threshold of green going into the heart and got up into here, I was like, ha. Home.

Kara Goodwin: yeah.

Lauren Mantecón: I could feel it. And I know that yellow often. My solar [00:11:00] plexus, I had a life when I was young, where for whatever circumstances I set off on my path, very independent feeling.

I had to prove myself. So when you're working with that will all the time, it's exhausting.

Kara Goodwin: Hmm.

Lauren Mantecón: we have all these guides and helpers and when you think you have to do it all alone, you have that willpower and yellow is also Christ consciousness and so many other things, but we always have.

We always have a shadow side and a light side to everything in life, including when we're cleaning out our chora system. So yellow was really challenging and I could feel it and I could feel like that electric energy and I was getting combative and

Kara Goodwin: When you got to that, with that series,

Lauren Mantecón: yes. And then what? No, just yellow in particular.

Kara Goodwin: right. Okay.

Lauren Mantecón: red is our,

Kara Goodwin: The

Lauren Mantecón: our survival, it's our roots. It's everything that has to do with feeding and [00:12:00] clothing and shelter and orange is our creativity. And, I can swim around in that pretty well. And then I. You get to the yellow and it was a little murky, like it had a little orange in there and a little, my heart like strings.

And I got to the heart and I started to feel better teaching this green and the abundance of it. And then the communication goes into the blue, which is very creative.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah.

Lauren Mantecón: I've started, teaching recently. I call it soul narration. And I'm now using the chakra system with. Animal guides or any guides through meditation in workshops, and then making these collages and then painting it for, so there's a dialogue of the information of something that's very recognizable.

Making a collage that you can tell what it is, and then maybe moving into abstract.

Kara Goodwin: Oh,

Lauren Mantecón: So it's kinda a lifelong study.

Kara Goodwin: [00:13:00] yes. You know that kind of. That was a question that, that popped in while you were speaking, that goes really well with what you're talking about with taking like a collage and maybe even going abstract with the inspiration. just last night I had a little bit of a mystical experience as I was drifting to sleep and I saw the flower of life. But three dimensionally and how it is like these spheres that are interacting and like other dimension, spheres. And it made me think oh, somebody translated that three dimensional into what we recognize as the flower of life and that two-dimensional representation. And it makes me think.

How that works for you as you're so tapped into the creativity, the right brain, and you, I don't know if you like see, or [00:14:00] maybe it's different with different pieces, but that you're seeing something and you wanna translate that down onto Canvas, but it becomes flat. And if they're, or do you see it that way?

Lauren Mantecón: I, I rarely see. Something before I make it. I did have one profound experience, which I could tell your audience of, which had to do with orbs and the seven vibrations of color. But go, but before I do that, I believe there's, or you find order and chaos and sometimes it can just be downloaded while you're painting.

It makes me think of the crop circles and sacred geometry, and I have gotten a bit more structural lately. Like behind me you can see like a pyramid and just these geometrical shapes. And I've been working so atmospheric for so long. I feel that this is a way of more grounding for me. I set [00:15:00] out a few months ago, I'm like, I'm going to paint the merkaba and.

I started working with the Merkaba kind of big, and then it kind of went off into its own thing and I'm like, maybe I'll circle around someday and it will come back. So I don't see it in 3d. I don't. I actually, I. I know a lot of people who work in sculpture do, but I don't think of it as like we're a flatness of the 2d.

I actually see it in depth or entering into a dimension that is more communicated through the symbols and the color and wanting to create the poetry, like a. Emotional intensity that someone might get a hit from through maybe some depth in a painting in the colors that are used.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah, that's beautiful because the painting, looking at what's behind [00:16:00] you and the one, the pyramid one. So if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see, But there, you can tell that there, there's depth 

Lauren Mantecón: Yeah. 

Kara Goodwin: to that. And there, you know that the behind the pyramid it that there is depth and then also the, to me, those look on the, on my right.

So over your left shoulder, those look like skyscrapers to me.

Lauren Mantecón: Well, it's interesting that also, I think my, whatever you're going through personally in life comes through in the paintings and it's more like a portal, structural doorway, I call it, between a rock and a hard place. Cause it's some things I'm going through in my life. So there's this entry point and it's not meant to think, oh, I'm 3d, but it's suggestive kind of like what poetry does.

It gives you maybe an abstract little hint of a symbol and then it's got this little cloud and that is an orb or the breakup of [00:17:00] space and, I like to think of it as a spiritual dimensions that might be coming in. Sometimes when I'm really into my painting, I can, and I'm, I know that I've let go.

I can feel my hand do this, and I'm like, oh, I'm not alone.

Kara Goodwin: Oh wow.

Lauren Mantecón: get the good spirits because there's so many spirits flying around out there.

Kara Goodwin: Have you experienced that? Where you feel like, oh, okay. I'm not sure that I want the influence that is

Lauren Mantecón: I have, yes. so once again, it's when I go into my own fear, my own turbulence, the painting process. Can become very sacred and like a prayer to bring me back to what has Corin meaning in my life. So I really try to set intentions of clarity. I burn copel. I, and then sometimes I don't, sometimes I don't.

And often those paintings just don't make it. there's a [00:18:00] reason for that.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. Wonderful. I would love to talk a little bit more in depth about some of the influences of your work in terms of the more esoteric elements of life, if you'd like to share.

Lauren Mantecón: You know, when I was really young, I was always a contemplative and I always, I can remember when I was 12 reading books on reincarnation. And,I wanted to go to Waldorf School, but my family, that wasn't their path because I love the transcendentalists. I love people like Rudolph Steiner. I was so interested and going on from reincarnation and looking for ways of how do I connect to something that's higher in me.

It's I feel like in many ways I woke up knowing that middle world was just not enough and. My studies led me to studying with [00:19:00] breath work and shamanism, and I ne I didn't really take the Buddhist path because I think of that as just empty mind. I was more about I wanna connect to the angels and the spirits and the animal guides and do the breath work and see what can flow into me and have a coexisting relationship.

And so, Not being too dependent on it, on a certain dogma or a certain, group. I dip my toes into so much and then I go back and I paint. And when I was younger and went to graduate school to study, I. Painting. it was a very different world and it was about a conceptualism and intellectualism and that any new age studies was seen as rainbows and unicorns where.

I [00:20:00] later realized there was really a deep intelligence around beauty and spirituality. And if we think about it when we say new ageism a hundred years from now, when we talk about what is going on in our culture, we're all living under that age of new ageism in many ways. So I spent. A lot of years. I don't know if you've ever heard of Eslan Institute in Big Sur.

It's the granddaddy of the human potential movement, and I did a lot of somatic work with the body meditation. Kundalini yoga. Became, a practice that I did, which I do more of my own yoga practice after doing it for so many years. I just find what works for me and, I have found in this day and age, there's just a lot of chaotic energy out there.

It's like having to have Wonder [00:21:00] Woman with a psychic Galactic Shield. So I've noticed that I'm meditating a lot more and really trying to stay grounded because it's like, who's getting my hook? Who's getting their hooks in me? And so.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah, well, there's a lot of wisdom there and that's part of the evolution, I believe, it's like we can begin and really need that guidance. when we're first waking up or realizing that there is an invisible world that's very real, you know, it can be like, okay, who can teach me about this?

Or who knows about this already? Because there's something going on. And,

Lauren Mantecón: That's why I love Shamanism. It's about coexisting and that we are not beyond any other living thing on this planet. talking to the plants and the birds and the messages, they bring to us. even just walking out our door, we can ask for a sign and if we listen, we can even see a tree that just moves in a certain way that is whispering to us.[00:22:00] 

Kara Goodwin: Hmm. Yeah. Yeah. I love that. Well, you talk about some of your early influences in that you were drawn to like books on reincarnation at a young age, and that resonates so much with me. I was always wanting to explore the spiritual, um, 

Lauren Mantecón: I'm also, yeah, I started studying astrology at a very young age.

Kara Goodwin: Oh yeah.

Lauren Mantecón: And so I have an absolute, and that's another thing, going back to that map or seeing geometrical shapes, the natal map that we're born with is fascinating and just seeing squares and trines and what that means on an esoteric level.

I was, I, if as an astrologer, I think I'm more le, I lean more towards what's called evolutionary astrology.

Kara Goodwin: I have not heard of that.

Lauren Mantecón: it deals with the soul.

Kara Goodwin: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Mantecón: Jeffrey Wolf Green is a, is a big astrologer it's, and the transcendentalism will take this into account. There's Mark [00:23:00] Edward Jones. It's more of not.

It's moving the soul into a psycho spirituality. So it deals with the psychology of a human being at a deep and profound level.

Kara Goodwin: That reminds me of human design. Is

Lauren Mantecón: I also do human design and it's really nothing like human design. It's got in depth. Aha. who, I hope I said his name right.

Who was, had a download, I think it was in the seventies, on the Island of Ibiza in Spain. he saw it all probably in that 3D that you're talking about, because human design is, the Kabbalah, the Tree of Life. It's the e ching. So it has the 64 Hexagrams in there. And it's astrology and it also deals with quantum physics.

And you have four types, or you've got the manifestor, [00:24:00] generator and the projector and the reflector five types. And when I started studying it about 10 years ago, I thought it was the perfect compliment to the Western astrological. Chart and I started reading charts, combining the two because human design the way, I don't know why it works, but it really does seem to work.

So yes, there is astrology in that. And, but, and I guess, I guess in many ways, you can look at the soul. you can't help say soul and all of astrology, but it doesn't really get into, the depth of what like the planet Pluto means and what that means for consciousness

Kara Goodwin: Well, and Pluto just changed signs, right? For the fir is

Lauren Mantecón: It's now? Yeah. Well, for the first time, yeah, it went into Aquarius, but now it's gonna be Retrograding back and forth to zero and one [00:25:00] Aquarius and then back to Capricorn, and it just went into Capricorn again a couple of days ago. So we are gonna have a year of this.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. And the thing that, with that evolutionary, astrology, when you mentioned it was like soul, how did you said soul psych,

Lauren Mantecón: Psycho spirituality, Um,

Kara Goodwin: which I pick up that flavor with human design. I'm not a scholar on it by any stretch of the imagination. I know what my type is, but I feel like there is that

Lauren Mantecón: your type?

Kara Goodwin: manifesting generator.

Lauren Mantecón: that's good. You can just communicate anything and go forward. I'm a projector. I have to wait for the invitation. It can be so I'm, so, I'm impatient.

Kara Goodwin: Oh.

Lauren Mantecón: No, but I guess what evolutionary astrology is willing to do is go to the shadow to really work with our shadow work and uncover why, What [00:26:00] is it that makes us who we are and how do we heal that and look at trauma and be able to see it in an astrological language and just face it.

Kara Goodwin: Mm-hmm. Do you with the focus on the shadow, because I'm a hundred percent with you. It's, I try to help, try to make sure that people aren't just trying to like skip past. Reconciling and healing up those shadows, because there can be that tendency to be like, Nope, everything's light, everything's love, and I'm not gonna think about the stuff that I don't wanna think about.

And it's that balance, of what is in there that still needs to be processed and that we still need to learn from and so forth. But it makes me think about timing, or the evolution of the person in terms of readiness for the integration of our shadows. Do you think that 

Lauren Mantecón: we're never ready. Sometimes we're never ready. there's a. There's a, therapist, he's not a therapist. He's actually a [00:27:00] renowned, youngian writer and worker with Shamanism. His name is Paul Libi and he has written a book that talking about evolution and people ready for this consciousness.

It's called Wako, W E I T K O, which goes back to tribalism and. Or that word does anyway, but he talks about how our collective consciousness might not be ready for it. Because if we are living in this world where, let's say we have discrimination or prejudices, but we are busy seeing how the world is doing it, like what's going on in the news, and oh wow, this world is so.

Effed up and how can we not be conscious and why are we doing this? that is us? That we all have a piece of that inside of us, and until we're willing to own it, that we really can't heal the world because it's not [00:28:00] something that's happening over there. We're all a part of it because we're all connected.

So all the evil in the world, it's basically saying all the evil in the world. We need to start with the evil in us. And be willing to own it. Not an easy thing.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah, that's a wonderful point. I love that. So if we do go back to your early beginnings and your early, because it seems like you've either been tapped in from a very young age or maybe, you didn't arrive as asleep as some of us, but. What I remember hearing about like the role of dreams for you in particular, and some of the things that have happened at a young age related to dreams.

So how have dreams, what role has dreaming played in your life and in your, evolving consciousness?

Lauren Mantecón: Hmm. Good question. I'm a big dreamer and I always have been [00:29:00] and. It's not like I have a dream and I dreamed of being on a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. I'm gonna go paint a lifeboat in the middle of the ocean. This is something I might work with my unconscious, where I'm able to then start painting and seeing what flows.

But when I was very young, It was very confusing for me because I have this connection, for lack of a better word, of dreaming people as soon as they die, they'll visitations basically. And I was afraid to tell my parents. I, when my grandmother died, my mother, I was dreaming her. And then my mother walked in and said, grandma, just passed.

And I was like, oh, I, I just had a dream about her. but then for [00:30:00] about a month straight in my bedroom, I had this, the windows would be closed, it would be dark. But I had this headboard with this brass, like a. You could open with the brass and it would go bba B just one. Bba, BBA and I knew, as a young one, oh, grandma's here to visit me.

I never told anyone. I thought it was my imagination, but I didn't think it was my imagination. So I disassociated

Kara Goodwin: Hmm.

Lauren Mantecón: and over time with these dreams, I started claiming it. Owning it. I'm here telling you the story with an audience because I think that when we're squashed talking about that child in the imagination, that gets squashed to go into the left brain.

It keeps happening. And adults will go in private. I have the same thing, but yeah, it's Woohoo. Someone will go, oh, that person's, we still have that, and it seems so archaic.[00:31:00] 

Kara Goodwin: Hmm.

Lauren Mantecón: But my paintings, I started connecting to a vessel and I realized that vessel, and this was not that long ago, about a decade ago painting these was really that crossing over between one dimension and another because where did we go when my, one of my grandmothers, my other grandmother died.

I kept having dreams that there were these freeways and she was stuck in an overpass.

Kara Goodwin: Oh, after she passed away,

Lauren Mantecón: After she passed away, I took that as a symbol of she's confused or she's lost. And so I worked with someone who is, more skilled than I am of helping one go to wherever they're going next. I've had some people die and they visit me and some that are very close to me, and I'm like, they're gone.

Whew. They're just, they're, I don't know, but they are outta here, and who knows if they'll swing back and visit again, but [00:32:00] those beings, we need our protection around us, so we know that we want benevolence around us. we don't like, for instance, fear. there's. Tentacles of maybe beings out there that feed off fear and it keeps us in fear, so it's not ours.

So we have to learn what is ours, discern, what is our stuff and what is that out there? But at the same time, we're navigating, okay, there's the evil in the world. Where is it in me? How do I eradicate it?

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. Right, right.

Lauren Mantecón: when I was young and then went off to graduate school and started talking about my. Spiritual experiences or my love of shamanism or my love of astrology.

I was really poo-pooed. I was, but not every system is like this, but the particular one I was in, I went to graduate school in the nineties. It [00:33:00] was like, oh, don't talk about that. And it's really surprising. It's really surprising because, years later, There in the seventies, there was a huge show in Los Angeles called The Spiritual and Art.

we have a revival going on with transcendentalism. So it wasn't like this wasn't going on. I just happened to probably be in the wrong system, but maybe not because I learned how not to teach and it really put a conviction in my values. So anyway, I, towards the end, I had graduated. I'm trying to fit in with my peers and make work that really wasn't authentic to me at all.

And I, I was thinking of quitting and I asked for a dream. I actually was reading a book on the Oracle of Delphi in Greece, and I was reading it one night and it talked about if you have a question, Bring it to the Oracle. All you gotta do is like almost pray, [00:34:00] say, please show me in a dream.

I literally did that and that night I had a profound dream. I was in a warehouse and back in the day when I went, when I was an artist in Portland, Oregon, we were all the hipsters and we'd have art shows in these. Old industrial buildings. And so I walk up and I walk up the stairs and there's a wooden floor.

And to the right is one of my colleagues who had made these sculptures outta recycled materials and everyone's Ewing and eyeing them

Kara Goodwin: this is in your dream.

Lauren Mantecón: my dream. That's correct. In my dream. Thank you. And to my left, are these 36 by 36 7 orbs. On wood panels, red, they were pulsating. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, and an elder man took my left elbow and an [00:35:00] el elder woman took my right elbow, and the elder man says, do you know what your work's about?

I said, no. And the older woman goes, it's about raising vibration through the frequency of color. I woke up, I don't know why, but I was elated. I like felt like a ton had come off of me of weight and it took me Cara, another nine years. In fact, I have a card piece here. Let me just show it to you.

Yeah, it took another nine years, but I actually made that body of work.

Kara Goodwin: Really.

Lauren Mantecón: and I showed it in a one long line, but here's one of 'em.

Kara Goodwin: Oh wow. That's gorgeous.

Lauren Mantecón: So that's, thank you. That's our, the blue chakra. So

Kara Goodwin: Beautiful.

Lauren Mantecón: So that I, like [00:36:00] I said, I rarely see something before I paint it, but there I did and I saw it to completion. Yeah.

Kara Goodwin: That gave me, when you talked about that and the message that the elder woman gave you, I just had chills, like all through me. Just like a full body resonance.

Lauren Mantecón: Yeah. And so I'll have another one like the, this was about five years ago. It was meditating and I had an elder man, and by the way, I was at the time painting pearls, like pearl, like string forms. Quantum physics thinks we might live in two or three or four dimensions at once, and Quantums have pulsating energy.

That kind of vibrates. I'm not sure what it looks like under a microscope, but I think about 'em as pearls. So I was meditating and I had, I have these big meditations where I go to these places and I sit with my guides and I had an elder who. Handed me [00:37:00] nine pearls and I said, what do you want me to do with these?

He goes, I want you to swallow 'em. The sky is falling and you need to anchor the light. So I'm like, what am I supposed to do with that? And I wasn't necessarily meditating every day and helping to anchor the light. So I came into my studio and I worked to paint it. I'm not sure if I executed it the best I could, but that didn't really matter.

I think it was more the act of being in the creative process of being in the moment and treating that as my meditation.

Kara Goodwin: Hmm. That's fascinating because. As you've been speaking and talking about being this bridge really between these, the invisible, the ether, and then letting that come through you and translate into paintings and artwork. It is that sort of grounding of that energy and saying okay, here it exists, and it, we can't [00:38:00] see it.

We can't, like with the physical, with the human, where we are in our evolution right now, it just, it's out there. You can. Get this inner sense of it, but it is that, taking it and making it physicalized and it does beg the question of it, and I'm sure it's multi-layered in the, it's a yes to all of it, but it's like the action of doing that and just getting it out there and the, and getting that vibration put in there and where maybe it doesn't necessarily ever have to be witnessed by somebody, but.

The grounding and the anchoring of the light and putting it in something physical. Does that, you know what I mean?

Lauren Mantecón: Yeah, I think I'm even still, I'm always learning, right? But I'm still really catching the breadth of that concept. I, 19 years ago, I had gone to an event called The Standstill of the Moon at the Callanish Stones. In [00:39:00] Scotland on the Is of Lewis, which is the furthest northest point of Scotland. It's like Stonehenge.

And it was quite the event where the Pagans came and the Christians came and we were there all night where the group of Shamonic, astrology group, that was. Who the hosted by Daniel Giamario, who has started Shamonic, astrology and I, the energy pouring through. I want, at one point I had to stand in my head.

I, I had to touch the rocks. I was. I was for two days, I saw colors that didn't exist. I was totally sober. I came back, I didn't even know what to do with the energy because it was vibrating so intensely inside my body and I thought, I have to paint this. So I set out to actually get a large six foot and try to paint one of those standstill rocks.

That wasn't it. It was, [00:40:00] it would've been more, and I did not know this 19 years ago, to just allow whatever comes out and know that might be the download from the galactic forces to the rocks to the earth coming up my feet and into my body.

Kara Goodwin: Right, right.and you, your work, you've got the symbols, you've got the geometry aspect to it, and my. Understanding or belief or experiences that we carry with us in our fields, these codes, these symbols, and maybe there are some people, I'm sure there are some people who can actually see them, but for most people they can't see it.

But just the fact that. We carry them. Even we don't necessarily have to do anything all the time. There are times where, I just have this overwhelming urge that I have to go and, if I have a morning where I don't have [00:41:00] anything scheduled and it's like I just need to go to the coffee shop, and maybe there's a feeling within me of I haven't been, I haven't really Been in a outside of the house setting for a few days, in terms of I go out, but just, I've been very insulated maybe for a few days, and then I'm like, okay, I'm gonna go and do exactly what I would be doing here at home on my computer, but I'm gonna do it at the coffee shop.

And it, but it seems necessary. It's I need to go and sit there specifically and. And sometimes it's even to the point where I'm like, am I gonna see somebody? Am I supposed to go and something's gonna happen? And maybe I will, maybe I won't. But more often than not, it just seems like I'm supposed to just.

Get out and just be there for whatever that does. You know what I mean? But just the bringing the physical presence in and what I hold in my [00:42:00] field is just enough, for that

Lauren Mantecón: Who knows, you might be helping somebody that's there next to you.

Kara Goodwin: Right,

Lauren Mantecón: Just by your energy that this is going on all around us. We don't know. So it doesn't even need to be so someone you met or something physically that happened or an event.

It's just presence.

Kara Goodwin: Yes. That's, I don't know if you've looked into Dolores Cannon's work at all,

Lauren Mantecón: sure. Finished the book of hers.

Kara Goodwin: did you, which one?

Lauren Mantecón: Oh gosh. Oh no. oh. I can't believe, I can't remember it. But it's the one, they all are where it's going into more in depth of when she was learning about the alien abductions and the stories, maybe you know the name of it?

Kara Goodwin: is it the three waves or the

Lauren Mantecón: Yes, yes, yes.

Kara Goodwin: okay, that's.

Lauren Mantecón: Volunteers.

Kara Goodwin: of course it is cuz that's what I was going to, that's what I was gonna bring up, is that she, that's one of, I, I think I've only [00:43:00] finished, that's the only one I've finished of hers and I've got two more on the go.

but. One of the things that came out of that book was that of an understanding I didn't have before was that there are especially,now we have a lot of children who are being born and they're carrying an energy and we have more and more people who are carrying that high frequency, but there are different.

Waves, depending on when you were born, of peop of beings who have volunteered to come in to help with this transition. And one of the things that they say is that there are some people who are here and they're just like, I. Antennas, they're just anchors. They're not like, their purpose is just to be, it's not that they have to do something.

And that can be kind of unsatisfactory when you're waking up and it's no, I'm sure I'm supposed to do something with this, But I found that fascinating where it's no, there are just some people here. And it's your job is because of what you're holding. It's just to, [00:44:00] to be there, be accessible to people, and even if you're just.

Reading the phone book to them it's, it's offering a vibration that's beneficial.

Lauren Mantecón: just by being there. I found that book quite just absolutely fascinating of, oh, cuz here's the concept that I didn't get. I'm like, how can I feel like I don't belong here? That I come from somewhere else and feel that so strongly? But yet have these past life memories that are, that seem so real.

And she talks about a concept of this simulation imprinting.

Kara Goodwin: Yes. 

Lauren Mantecón: I was like, wow,

Kara Goodwin: Do you wanna share a little bit about that in case there's somebody who is unfamiliar.

Lauren Mantecón: I'm gonna do the best I can. Sometimes it takes me a while to assimilate after I read, she's, that book is so new to me, [00:45:00] but, I've always felt, I've even at a young age, I kept saying, I wanna go home. you are home, honey. No, I'm not. No, I'm not. I wanna go home and just that I felt like I, I just was from somewhere else.

Kara Goodwin: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Mantecón: I am right. I am from somewhere else. I know this. So we might have this weave that goes on. We can be from somewhere else, but have all these memories of Atlantis or being in La Marion Times, and maybe we were there or part of us was there, or we were imprinted. And the why was the reason she says, we are imprinted why?

So we can hold a knowingness of planet earth.

Yeah, and I think it was like if you're from somewhere else and you've never incarnated here, it's to assist you so that you have a frame of re some frames of references and apparently you can't really tell the difference,You know, [00:46:00] that's why it's confusing to

me cause because also when you think about it, SRAs and basically whats are karma? I hold that, I know that I'm triggered by certain people. I meet someone and I'm like, I've known you before, so I'm still working my consciousness of where all that fits in.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. Yeah. It's fascinating and it, so I teeter back and forth between I just wanna understand it and then just no, enjoy the ride because so much of, yeah, cuz so much of it keeps revealing.

Lauren Mantecón: But I do know, as a mentor and an artist is what I chose at a very young age. I didn't even choose it. I did not, it chose me and I taught my first creative workshop at the age of 20 in Southern California, in the back of a new age bookstore way before I ever thought I would be teaching.

So, Whatever [00:47:00] I'm doing, I think of it as this is just what I do, and people say, oh, but do you not like teaching? I'm like, no, I'm supposed to teach, you know this. They go hand in hand. If I just paint, then something's not fed. If I just teach, then something is really not fed because. you're giving creative life force to others and you're not feeding yourself.

You've really, even if you are here just to hold any kind of frequency for others, you gotta find how you're nurturing and taking care of yourself. And that's been a really big one for me of how to really mother my own self. Yeah, I think it goes back to having to prove myself at a young age and not living in the feminine.

as the feminine in this earth, and this is maybe why the shaman practices I love so much that reminds me, you know, she is Gaia as a living entity [00:48:00] that is also going through grief and a lot of change. we're going through this chaotic change in time as well, and it brings me back to the word of patience, but which isn't, Always my strongest suit and to just, I used to think of my teaching and I don't do it so much anymore.

I mentor others to find their own way to be in their full-bodied expression.

Kara Goodwin: Mm-hmm.

Lauren Mantecón: that marries spiritualism or whatever they're passionate about, to not make apologies. And I think this brings me back to what I did learn in graduate school and that experience that was so painful to me of, having gone through it, to not have other people have to do that.

Kara Goodwin: Hmm.

Lauren Mantecón: have to say, oh, I'm not creative. We're all creative. It's just how much do we choose to tap into it?

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. And that masculine feminine, the feminine repression, I think that there are a lot of people [00:49:00] who can relate to that too, because it seems that the feminine is becoming more pronounced now. But,I came from a corporate background for, my first 15 years post-college was in, blue chip companies working in it, and it was.

Like trying to understand the landscape of that and even like university and academia, it's it is a masculine setting in terms of that definition of success and what it takes and the sacrifice and what you need to focus on in order to be successful in those types of environments.

it's a very masculine.

Lauren Mantecón: Yeah. And then there's the other side to that. There's there, this is what I meant by we're teetering where we are. We shouldn't be too dependent on one or the other. is you can have an academic setting now where you can't fail anyone. And when they come in and say their dog ate their homework and they didn't do their art assignment and.

You, the [00:50:00] instructor gets in trouble for failing 'em. That, that, that's going on as well

Kara Goodwin: Y. Yeah, you're right. We need balance. Absolutely. Yes. We don't wanna go so far in the other direction. For sure.

Lauren Mantecón: So, Hmm.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah, but there is a lot of, I know my experience was very much, and I think that contributes to a feeling of being a stranger in this land too, where it's okay, I'm supposed to be like motivated by, things that maybe aren't inherently.

Motivational,just a salary upgrade or whatever it is, And,

Lauren Mantecón: sure.

Kara Goodwin: when did you stop, when did you leave the setting of corporate world?

Um, well, we got transferred to Italy in 2014, and so when we, that was for my husband's [00:51:00] job, and so that was the right time to, and I was already, by that point we had two young children and by that point it was like, I just felt like I wasn't doing anything. Very well. I was doing like so much in terms of like very fast career trying to raise kids and domestic duties and so forth, and I was just spent like all the time and that just really didn't feel like I was.

Doing a very good job of connecting with my kids, but also always seemed like I was behind with work. And so when that opportunity came to go to Italy, it was a big yes, please.

Lauren Mantecón: This brings me to, to the trust of our intuitions. I think that as we move on, especially in the next decade, we need them more than ever. And I know for myself, I can get confused of. what is my intuition and what is [00:52:00] my imagination of fantasy? or what is fear? those three things of vacillating.

And I think that gets to the chakra system again, cleansing the chakra system, working with color, working with vibration of sound, tapping.

You

the tapping techniques for anxiety, opening up our crown chakra, closing all our systems down, opening this and just being in, in silence

so we can hear what voices ares and what voices and ours we're gonna need it.

You know, like I said, walking outside and, okay, bird, you're the first bird I saw today. What is the message? And you might say, oh, this is just so silly. A message isn't coming in. But to spend some time just writing anything out, writing it all out. we can go to books like Jamie Sims of the [00:53:00] Animal Spirits or Ted Andrews with his, he has got a great book on animal spirits and guides, but in the end it's us.

Right. It's us. I know that as we're evolving, many people that used to go to psychics or used to go to energy Healers and we're learning to do it on our own.

Kara Goodwin: Yes. I really appreciate that viewpoint and just, I mean, I. Would also say, if you still want to get those types of readings done, definitely engage with it, but hold it lightly because we so many people, it's like the be all, end all, and they'll change, they'll completely change their frame of reference or their, they'll.

Hand themselves over and be like, oh, they told me I'm a reptilian, or, they told me that I was one of the Spanish Inquisition, inquisitors or what, and and what does that mean? My goodness, I did that.[00:54:00] it's maybe, but maybe not. I don't know. there, so it's,

Lauren Mantecón: that's the thing with reincarnation. Everyone wants to be someone that was important. And this gets back to what you said, maybe you just held frequency.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah.

Lauren Mantecón: Maybe like Play-Doh with, the fire on the wall. people are watching this, the shadows on the wall while the fire's happening behind them, and nobody says Turn around and look because we're not listening to our gut instincts.

Kara Goodwin: Mm. Yeah. Yeah. I love that.

Lauren Mantecón: Yeah. it's interesting that. There's so much access, and this is why I think know, knowing your chart or knowing human design a little more. someone can give you the tools and then you can go on your own and study just the, you don't need to know the whole dang thing, but, knowing some of the basics.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah.

Lauren Mantecón: Hmm.

Kara Goodwin: Yeah. Absolutely. Lauren, this [00:55:00] has been incredible, just so nourishing to be with you. can you please tell people how they can find you and your work?

Lauren Mantecón: Sure. Hmm. My name is Lauren Montahan and, I think you'll have it in the notes. It's, so I have a website, lauren monteon.com and, that can take you to all the workshops and everything that I offer online to Monteon Studio. And I have a Facebook page, Monteon Studio, and an Instagram, Lauren Monteon. So they're two are intertwined.

I have a blog where I do more writings on consciousness. And fear and art and breaking barriers. And I have a membership where I give a prompt a create a prompt once a month and do a meditation that is supplied for everybody around that. And for those artists out there, we do a last Friday of the month [00:56:00] zoom call.

just talking about creativity or sharing work that's in pro process. And, you can also get ahold of me, individually. You can just write me at,lauren dot LaunchCon gmail.com. And if you're interested in, I call it astrological design, where I combine the astrological western chart with human design.

Kara Goodwin: Oh, you do sessions with people with that. Oh,

Lauren Mantecón: And how, and I do my sessions a little differently. I sit down and I do a meditation beforehand and sometimes, usually a visual image comes in and I've been reading the Tero since I was 15 as well. So I'll pull some cards and those always seem to tie in. And then I go into the reading of human design and their natal chart and sometimes into their transits.

Kara Goodwin: Into their transits.

Lauren Mantecón: Transits. That means where are the planets going on right now in relationship to where the planets were when you were [00:57:00] born? Are they making squares? Are they being conjunct? How are, how what? Yeah, it's a way of reading what's going on right now in your astrological chart.

Kara Goodwin: Oh, fascinating. Wow. Okay. Well thank you so much. What a beautiful discussion. And thank you for all of the light that you're holding and anchoring in right now with everything that you're doing. What a blessing to connect with you.

Lauren Mantecón: Thank you so much for having me, Kara.