The Power of Life

Before the new era of regulation began in Country G, sci-fi American TV shows, British dramas, and Hollywood blockbusters were my absolute favorites. I believe that all art works that possess vitality come from God, the source of everything. They are all the colorful and diverse language of God. As long as people are willing to open their hearts, they can always hear God's whispers. The following excerpts scattered in my notes are the messages that I heard from God through American dramas, British dramas, and Hollywood blockbusters.

"On May 24, 2016, through watching 'Mr. Robot,' I understood how humans connect with God. By watching 'Jupiter Ascending,' I learned the true meaning of the Christian royal identity. The reincarnation of the queen of the world symbolizes the identity of Christian royalty. She is an ordinary person on earth, but in the cosmic world, people know that she is the queen of the universe. Her orders will be carried out, but she herself is weak and needs the help of a creature mixed with animal genes. The implementation of divine kingship (i.e., reigning with Jesus, healing diseases, driving away demons, and controlling the weather) requires learning, just like humans need to learn to walk and eat."

After God cleaned my balcony for me on May 30, 2016, I wrote in my notes on June 3, "Perhaps 'Alice in Wonderland' is telling me to believe in miracles, to believe in impossibility, which means indeed there are angels always by my side."

"On June 6, 2016, 'X-Men: Apocalypse' taught me how to release my own negative energy. The character is Jean. I will strive to watch it again today."

"On October 25, 2016, 'Mechanic: Resurrection' told me that those who are most hurt will become the best healers. Phobias found me, and my prayers to God for many years were in vain. The reason is that Mo Ran Yan believed that I was the best candidate to fix her, trusted my ability, and therefore stuck around. Yes, all diseases are a kind of dialogue from different dimensions. They make us pay attention to them and solve them. I believe that diseases arise because of a weakened, missing positive force in the body, so we need to strengthen this positive force fundamentally. In terms of traditional Chinese medicine, we need to take tonifying medicines. Spiritually, we need to praise God because God is the greatest positive energy. Physically, we need to believe in the Qi that God has given us, to encourage it, and trust it. In our routines, we need to follow nature and listen to our body."

"On January 9, 2017, in the second and third seasons of 'Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.,' the alien object, the obelisk, will cause people with alien genes to evolve when touched, while ordinary Earth people will die when they touch it. This represents the human reaction to the Internet. Some people will become addicted, while others will absorb beneficial information and become more professional. The secret lies in human genes."

"On March 13, 2017, through the TV series 'The X-Files,' Jesus responded to my worry, 'You wanna be fine,' when I was concerned about a dry nose."

"On February 1, 2018, films like 'Maze Runner: The Death Cure' with its pace, depth, and gravity can satisfy my spiritual hunger. They are my spiritual food. Shows like 'The Walking Dead' and 'I Am Legend' are characterized by a fast pace and tension. Their rhythm and tension resonate with my spirit. Secondly, the environments they depict are highly dangerous, lacking safety, which fits my mood. Thirdly, they possess a positive, selfless force, mutually assisting and supporting each other to overcome external evil. They contain elements of love and support, which are precisely what I lack and yearn for."

In summary, American dramas and Hollywood blockbusters are essential tools for me to communicate with God. They are mediums for me to interact with a group of artistic geniuses and channels to interact with higher world entities. This intangible higher world, through these channels, conveys the energy of life to me, ensuring that my life is rich and full.

From my past life experiences, I have deeply understood the tremendous differences in the spiritual worlds between individuals. Some people's spiritual worlds are lush, blossoming, and thriving, while others are barren and desolate. The former requires a large amount of rich spiritual nourishment, while the latter has little spiritual demand. Therefore, when deprived of spiritual life in reality, the former will suffer immensely and struggle to adapt, while the latter will remain blissfully ignorant, able to live carefree. I clearly belong to the first category, yet I was born into a time and place devoid of spiritual life. Since learning to read, I have always yearned for good books, but what I received were propaganda materials designed to brainwash. During my high school years, the society of Country G began to open up, and finally, publishers published the poetry collections of Byron and Tagore. Without hesitation, I squeezed money from my daily meal budget, sent it to a distant publisher via post office money order to buy books. When I was in university, I read "A History of Western Philosophy" for the first time. It felt like a destitute man in the desert who had found a diamond gleaming under the sunlight. My ordinary body seemed infused with a life force, I felt human for the first time. I imagined that perhaps this was how the ancient Adam felt when God blew breath into his clay body. At that moment, I decided that I would apply for graduate studies in the history of Western philosophy, regardless of the obstacles. That was a very difficult thing to do at the time, because given the population of Country G, the acceptance rate was like one in millions. But I was determined, no matter how hard it would be, I was ready to face it. The first problem I encountered was that I couldn't buy "A History of Western Philosophy" anywhere. In desperation, I did something I still consider deeply humiliating today—I lied. Maybe it's because my DNA inherently carries many honest genes. As a child, I often got scolded by my mother for being too honest. I remember two incidents clearly. One was a courtesy in Country G at that time—invite familiar people to join meals when seen during meal times. But when I saw that our meal was finished, I refused to greet acquaintances, thinking, how could I invite others to eat when there's no food left? This was clearly a lie. For this, I got scolded many times; adults saw me as a rude child. Another time, one of my teachers came to our house, saw us eating meat—a luxury in those times of poverty. The teacher asked me, "Is the meat tasty?" I told the truth, "Not tasty!" Because of this inappropriate answer, I got scolded heavily by my mother after the teacher left. Saying that the rare meat was not tasty would make others think we were particularly wealthy, and wealth was seen as a sin in Country G then. The truth was, for some reason, I've always had an aversion to red meat. We seldom had chicken at home, and I would hardly eat anything except for the neck and the entrails. The meat we ate that day was the remnants after my mother boiled medicine with it. It tasted like chewing wax to me. My answer was just the plain truth. Due to my inherent honesty, I suffered many misunderstandings and hardships, more than I can say. But for the thoughts of some long-deceased strangers from the distant West, I went against my nature and thought of a plan to acquire two philosophy books (Volume I and II) by selling out myself. I lied that I had accidentally lost these two books, thus becoming their owner by paying a hefty compensation. Even today, I am puzzled about how calmly I lied to the librarian. After paying a fine equivalent to one or two months of my living expenses, I felt a sense of accomplishment akin to a successful bank robber. To commemorate this humiliating success, I pasted the two receipts for the compensation on the first page of each book. From today's perspective, these two books I obtained through deception are inferior versions compared to similar books I bought later. The entire book is full of critiques of the so-called "fallacies" of the great thinkers, based on the red ideologies of Country G. But I've cherished them for many years, as they represent my thirst for knowledge. However, because of the means I used to acquire them, I felt I had stained myself. I was finally overwhelmed by guilt and threw them away. Despite my lie, I didn't get the result I wanted. In the end, because I couldn't buy the comprehensive science books, I was forced to give up the dream of taking the graduate exam in the history of Western philosophy.

Upon graduating from college, I turned down an invitation from the only Agricultural Finance postgraduate tutor in Country G, who invited me to participate in his Master's program for Economics. Such an invitation was a rare opportunity at the time. The tutor invited me because of my excellent grades, but I utterly disliked economics and was not willing to betray myself again. Eventually, I was sold by the school to a bank at a high price, equivalent to the cost of a house per person at the time, and thus began my incredibly dark professional career. As I had no connections and was not good at networking, my job in the bank was to count cash every day. However, I was astonishingly slow, my hand speed always seemed unable to keep up with the pace at which my brain counted numbers. Despite being simple and mechanical, this job brought me a great deal of stress. Although my salary was very high and the benefits were good, I felt as if I had fallen into a dark abyss with no hope in sight. I couldn't leave the system because it would mean unemployment, and I didn't think I had any skills that could support me outside of it.Because of my dreadful experience of being enclosed and confined, during the precious time when Country G was open, I tried to arrange time in my busy life to read the online version of the Wall Street Journal, watch Hollywood blockbusters, American dramas, and British dramas. I always had an ominous feeling that the good times would be fleeting. Therefore, when I discovered signs of Country G closing up again, the first thing I did was to pay to download a large amount of material from the internet, and buy many books for collection. Not long after, the stifling, rotten atmosphere that had pervaded the space in which I lived resurfaced. Along with the continuous spread of this atmosphere, the Wall Street Journal disappeared, American dramas became mere decorations, replaced by a series of baffling discourses and pervasive surveillance. When Northern Country G was hit by a series of heavy snowstorms, there were articles saying that a certain foreign country had created this snowstorm; when the stock market crashed, it was said to be a conspiracy of a certain foreign country to destroy the financial industry of Country G; when an epidemic occurred, it was attributed to a foreign country spreading the virus. When sitting in a car with friends and relatives, a relative complained about current affairs, but a friend working in a government department immediately stopped them, saying, "There are listening devices everywhere on the road." The public account that specifically introduced Israel's customs, national history was permanently blocked. The most baffling thing was that one day, I collected an article introducing world-famous paintings because it contained unfamiliar artworks. I planned to download and appreciate them when I had free time the next day. However, this article, which merely introduced world-renowned paintings, was deleted the next day on the grounds of violating related regulations.

I felt extremely uncomfortable and frightened by the rapid deterioration of this living environment. I don't like childish entertainment and I hate being in a knowledge desert that is isolated from the outside world and unable to connect with masters of knowledge. However, I found that except for a few people who understand economics, the vast majority of people turn a blind eye to these changes, are completely oblivious, or even revel in them. Some of my relatives and friends focus their work on surveilling and dealing with people who have "incorrect" thoughts. When talking about their work, they all have a sense of superiority, of controlling and dominating others. This puzzles me. I tried to engage them in deeper conversations, but I felt that what I encountered was not them personally, but a string of ideological clichés and the like. These things have the power to control them, sucking the life essence out of people, making their souls weak and dried up, turning them into spiritual mummies incapable of "human" thought. What frightens me is that this plague of vanity has infected not only a few in power, but it has also become widespread among the common people. My guess is that the less capable and more inferior people feel, the more they like authoritarian control. Because control can make capable, thoughtful people become as stupid and inferior as they are due to the deprivation of spiritual life, thereby giving them a sense of psychological balance.

In my spiritual perception, the surrounding environment I am living in now, if filtered through a lens to remove the decorative color and deceptive disguise of noise in life, leaving only a pure essence that reflects the truth, is almost a replica of the world in the American drama "The Walking Dead". In this increasingly rigid red world, I am one of the very few living people who have not been infected by the zombie virus. My sensory organs are still functioning normally. I can smell the scent of decay, stemming from a culture that castrates people. I can perceive the hatred filled around, stemming from the jealousy of comparing with each other. Moreover, I know that the reason why most people like the simplicity of thought is because they have been deprived of the ability to perceive since childhood. Their limited brains can't accommodate too many stimuli. It is this profound and insightful soul that comprehends everything in life that makes me feel deep loneliness and pain. I want to read the true narrative of the world around me, but what I get is distorted and polluted information. I am an independent and rich soul with no place to perch, just like my vibrant flowers and wild grasses that have not been filtered. They are placed against a background that has been run through a negative filter. Though they add lively colors to the monotonous scene, they also feel out of place, as if they are not from the same space.

As the isolation and lockdown grew more severe, my life became monotonous, dull, and boring. All I could do was pray for my true God to provide me with substantial help. One day, while aimlessly walking in a park near my home, my gaze was suddenly drawn to the bark of an old tree. Its vivid pattern seemed to be telling me something. I felt an inexplicable touch and couldn't help but start taking photos with my phone. Curious about the effects these photos would have under various filters, I uploaded them onto my computer. The images they presented after adding a negative filter astounded me. The negative filter seemed to function like an X-ray, removing appearances to reveal the essence of things. However, the true light source then became an important part of the image, and the pictures could only be displayed on the monitor. Once printed into flat photos, the images seemed to transform into something else. As I continued to observe and appreciate the subtleties of various images, I began to realize more and more the importance of light to objects. The same object can exhibit different colors with changes in light, and we humans can only see objects through the medium of light. Jesus said that he is the light. Could it be that our relationship with God is like the relationship between my artwork and the light in the computer? That is, without light, it seems to become a soulless, rigid, and monotonous dead object, and the vivacity and liveliness of the images in the computer come from their oneness with light. Due to my fascination with exploring the relationship between humans and God, I fell in love with my work.

The tree bark uses the power bestowed by God to guard life. Its texture represents the life force fighting against various external harms, enduring wind and rain, sun exposure, insect infestation, and human logging, struggling to protect life. It is the battlefield left after fighting against harsh environments, the mark of the life force of nature, and the fingerprint of God. For me, the peace bestowed by God is the power to confront a highly uncertain and dangerous environment. It is of the same origin as the power of the tree bark to fight against the external environment. The power of life contained in the bark has spoken for itself through the photos I took. I just translated the life force contained in the bark into a more intuitive visual language through the ways of clarification, namely the filter and focusing. I really love the power of life because it is spontaneous, soft, flexible, colorful, infinite, resilient, subtly influential, inclusive, and harmonious. I detest the power of authority because it is rigid, stiff, monotonous, limited, commanding, confrontational, controlling, fragile, indoctrinating, and unbalanced. The land under authoritarian oppression can only become a graveyard for thought, a desert of ideas, and a barren land of knowledge.

My extensive use of various filters in my artwork perfectly expresses my observations of the so-called real world. I pondered the root cause of a diverse world being singularized and discovered that it is because most people root themselves in the soil of vanity. The essence of vanity is to compete for glory with God, to contest with God. God is the life force and the original source of diversity in the world. Living in a world without the majestic life force provided by God, people gradually turn into walking dead in terms of thought. Because of these realizations, I consider it my undeniable duty to connect more people with my true God. It can be said that all my works are created for this purpose. In the creation process, I received help from the real God everywhere. When I was holding a flower in one hand and a phone in the other without a third hand to press the shutter, God's power appeared, allowing me to use one hand to hold the camera and find the shooting angle, and free up a finger to press the shutter. When I need to shoot materials, I will have an inexplicable touch, as if I had the ability to communicate with the materials, and I could notice the presence of materials in a casual glance. For some unknown reason in recent years, I can't look at the screen for a long time, otherwise, my eyes will be extremely uncomfortable. So God sent my friend Xiao Yan to be my creative assistant, bearing almost all the screen work for me except for the creation itself. The full range of help provided by God like this is not something I can describe in a few words. It can be said that God is the true author of all my works, and I am just an assistant, helping God sort out materials, that's all. Painting is a kind of interactive relationship between me and God. Due to the fear of uncertainty in the future, I need a lot of prayer every day. During my prayers, images often flash across my mind. My prayer is more of a soaking communication with God. I don't ask for much, but just enjoy the presence of God and seek guidance. All my works, except for a few done for myself, such as the "Space-Time Child" series, are either for communicating with God or created to praise God. "The Power of Life" is such a praising work.