This was a great endcap to my Australian tattooing trip, on the last day of Rites of Passage, on my good friend Gregos. It symbolizes the jaded concepts and oppressive constructs of the world obscuring the jewel of enlightenment and peace inside every person--and the ability of each of us to transcend the ego trap with the blossoming of true knowledge. I consider this a companion piece to the book and flower tattoo featured elsewhere in my tattoo gallery.....Nick Baxter


with the permission of nick to use his art on my blog, i thought i would share this tattoo that nick did on me last year....it sums up in basic terms what i see as our beginning....that which we are fed, blinds and misguides us....and our potential to transcend and bloom with awareness and an expanded consciousness......
it seems like a horrible and difficult existence....and thats often not far from the truth...it would have been a hell of a lot nicer to stay pure as we were in birth.....the truth is, we wouldn't understand the beauty of what we have and the purity within without first first living and ultimately understanding and seeing through the falseness of the darkness we were fed.......yin and yang, dark and light, etc....one can't exist without the other....its impossible to understand that which we perceive as good, without first understanding and living the bad.