Conscious Inklings Blog. IDEAS, INSIGHTS & INK-SPIRATION. / latest

Welcome to Conscious Inklings—the official blog for Conscious Ink! The team at Conscious Ink is so excited that so many people have come to know and love our unique body art and our company’s mission to spread inspiration, love, and growth.   Conscious Inklings will provide our customers and supporters another way to stay connected to the positive messages of Conscious Ink, and we will feature articles aimed at inspiring, encouraging, and promoting greater awareness, as well as news about what is going on in the wonderful world of Conscious Ink.

For those of you who haven’t already heard, Conscious Ink is an innovative company that creates unique temporary tattoos and greeting cards that bear empowering messages and positive affirmations, however Conscious Ink is so much more than just a tattoo and card company.  It is a manifestation of one man’s mission to touch the lives of others.  

Frank Gjata has many passions, and the thread that connects all of his endeavors is a genuine desire to encourage the growth of others and to support people on their paths to becoming the most authentic, aware, and blissful versions of themselves possible.  It was out of this desire that Conscious Ink was born.
Like most truly inspired ideas, this one struck quite unexpectedly when Frank’s daughter, Eve, came home from a birthday party one day with some temporary tattoos. It occurred to Frank that these very simple little pieces of body art could be an incredibly effective medium to positively impact people’s lives on a daily basis through the power of intention.  Research has demonstrated the ability of conscious intention to affect change at the microscopic level of matter, creating waves of impact in our lives.  What we believe, hope for, and desire, truly does affect the world around us!

Frank envisioned temporary tattoos that were fun fashion statements and powerful tools to help people set and stay connected to positive intentions in their daily lives.  The practice of selecting a Conscious Ink tattoo that has a personal significance or meaning and applying that message to your body creates a ritual around setting positive intentions.   You may choose to wear your Conscious Ink tattoos somewhere very visible so that you can share your intentions with others, or you might want to wear them “secretly” as a personal reminder of an intention you have set for yourself.  Regardless of how you choose to wear them, the messages we share with Conscious Ink tattoos are “temporary on the skin, indelible on the soul”.
Each Conscious Ink tattoo is designed to promote empowerment and healing with great care put into every detail from the meaning of the words to the aesthetics of the script and color choices.  Conscious Ink tattoos are also produced with the utmost consideration of global sustainability and socially conscious business practices.  We do our best to ensure that our products and methods are as “green” as possible and we are constantly striving to find ways to make Conscious Ink a company that truly lives up to its name.
We hope you will join us as we continually put forth our conscious intention to create positive change throughout the world and we will look forward to all of the exciting and wonderful things that are sure to come!

There are many people who have contributed to the development of the amazing company and movement that Frank Gjata started when he founded Conscious Ink.  Over the past year and a half, Suzanne Campbell has been a very important part of the Conscious Ink team and has filled Conscious Ink orders with the characteristic joy and love that she brings into all of her endeavors.  While we are very sad to see her go, we are very proud to announce that Suzanne is following her bliss of giving others the gift of meditation by opening "Sitting Lily Meditation Instruction" Sitting Lily, a meditation instruction studio in Playa del Rey, CA.  This week’s post is a letter from Suzanne sharing how Conscious Ink came into her life and the ways that the messages of our temporary tattoos will be with her always.

Dear Conscious Inkers,
      My name is Suzanne, and if you have ordered tattoos in the last year and a half, you most likely received a hand written note from me.  Each order I have filled with Conscious Ink tattoos, I have also filled with a lot of love.  It has been a joy for me to see the sweet notes you have written and pictures you have shared.  My career path is taking me in a new direction now, and while I will always be a supporter of the Conscious Ink message, I will no longer be filling your orders each week.  Before I go, I wanted to tell you a bit of my journey and show you how a tattoo, Follow Your Bliss, changed my life. 
    I began meditating a few years ago and, the more I practiced, the more I realized what a simple yet amazing gift it was.  I felt myself drawn to the teacher’s path, and I found that working a full time job with an erratic schedule was holding me back from studying and deepening my meditation practice.  I decided to quit my job so that I could meditate more.
    Yes, you heard me right.  For the first few weeks of unemployment, I was embarrassed to even say that out loud.  When I met new people I would pretend I was still at my old job—in other words, lie, just to avoid the long explanation, which really wasn’t that long. 
    Even though I had savings, I spent the first two weeks stressfully looking for part time work that was flexible, before deciding that this was not the mindset that would find a peaceful job.  I realized that I needed to let go.
    As I prepared to go on my friend, and Conscious Ink Ambassador, Jen Pastiloff’s yoga retreat, I was very excited to unplug and leave my job hunt behind.  I spent the weekend coming back to center and remembering why I quit work in the first place—to take some time and allow myself to make a shift.  It was on this retreat that I met Frank Gjata, the owner of Conscious Ink.  Frank had given a wonderful talk and brought Conscious Ink tattoos for all of us to wear.  Frank and I chatted throughout the weekend and on the last day of the retreat, he asked what I do.  I told him that I had quit my job to meditate more and that he was the first person that I had told this to.  I told him that I had lied to every other acquaintance in the last month, just to avoid an awkward conversation.  Saying it out loud, I felt silly.  I realized that I had just not wanted to admit that my “plan” was so unclear. 
     Frank asked if I had received one of the tattoos from the weekend and I had not yet.  He went inside and came out with a tattoo that said Follow Your Bliss.  After putting it on my arm, I was excited to see where it would lead me.  Five minutes later Frank asked if I wanted to work for him part time as one of his employees had just moved.  The amazing thing is that I had not mentioned to him that I was looking for work, but I looked down at the Follow Your Bliss tattoo on my arm and immediately said, “yes”! 
     This moment taught me that being true to myself meant also being honest in life.  It is ok not to know where you are headed all the time.  Some of the best detours in life are unknown roads to beautiful places.  When I tried to picture what work would best complement my journey of studying and teaching meditation, it involved being a part of a company that was very mindful of its message.  While working with Conscious Ink, I could answer the question, “What do you do?” with the following response: “I mail Peace and Love around the world, literally.”
    My time spent working around tattoos bearing messages of “Listen”, “To Thine Own Self Be True”, “Believe”, “I Am Powerful”, “Let Go”, (the list goes on…) have been constant sources of support and encouragement.
    Thank you to the Conscious Ink team for being so amazing, fun to work with, and providing me with encouragement on my journey. Lots of love to you, Inkers, and Follow Your Bliss, wherever it leads. 
     --Suzanne Campbell
If you would like to be reminded to Let Go, Believe, and Follow Your Bliss, check out our beautiful temporary tattoos that were created to provide you with support, encouragement, and inkspiration wherever your path may take you!  They are waiting for you in The Conscious Ink Store.

Last week I made the drive from Los Angeles to San Francisco for a dear friend’s wedding.  I have made this drive so many times before. 380 miles.  Hours of straight, flat road.  In the past, it was always a game: fly as fast as you can up the highway without getting caught.  For most of the drive, the speed limit is 75 MPH, but when you have hundreds of miles of open road stretching out in front of you and a horizon that seems to recede endlessly into the distance, even 90 MPH seems painfully slow.

I would drive as fast as my conscience could stand, alternating between staring at the horizon, wishing to be there, and neurotically checking my rear view mirror for black and white cars with blue and red lights.  The whole time, I would wish for it to be over.  I would wish for the hours to go by quickly.  I would wish hours of my life away.

But this time was different.  It had been years since I had last made this drive, and so many things about my perspective had shifted since then.  Despite all of the exciting things that awaited me in San Francisco and all of the people that I couldn’t wait to see, I set out on this trip with the conscious intention to remain patient, to not rush through this journey, these six hours of my life. I set an intention to be present.

The funny thing is, the trip went by faster this way.  It still took me the same amount of time, but I allowed myself to be absorbed in the experience, rather than fighting it.  Instead of constantly checking my clock and my mileage, calculating how much longer it would take at my current speed, I stayed present with the journey.

I noticed the beauty of the scenery; I enjoyed the peacefulness of the solitude and the singular task in front of me, just to drive. I had expected to feel frustration, but instead I felt gratitude.  Gratitude for the opportunity to see my friends and be with them for this important moment in their lives.  Gratitude for the opportunity to take a vacation from work, for the opportunity to travel to a city that I have always loved.  I recognized how different this experience was and the ways I have changed, become a little more peaceful and aware, and I was grateful for that, too.  Even the little things, the lambs frolicking in the open pastures along the highway and the children waving and giggling from their backseat window as they passed me, brought me so much joy.

I wondered why I had resisted this experience in the past.  I had spent so much time staring at the horizon, wishing to already be there.  I had missed everything that was right here.  I know I have done and continue to do this in so many areas of my life, particularly in my career and romantic life.  I have this idea that somewhere, over there on the horizon, things will be better.  Once I have the career of my dreams, the relationship I have always wanted…maybe once I have the perfect body or have reached some sort of nirvana where all of the aspects of myself that I consider flawed have melted away, I will float through life in a state of permanent bliss.

But this is it. This is where bliss happens.  Right here.  Not over there somewhere, out on a horizon that will probably always elude me, because, that’s what horizons do.  They are only illusions.  Just like my eyes perceive an endpoint to the landscape in front of me, my mind creates some sort of finish line in my life, but neither is real.  Once I reach the farthest point that I can see right now, there will be a new horizon, just as far away.  And even if I do achieve my dream career, my ideal body, and find the perfect relationship, my perspective will have changed along the way and there will be new things to attain, new endpoints in the distance.  So, for now, I will enjoy the scenery wherever I am at.  I will notice the beauty all around me, the giggling children, and the lambs frolicking in the open pastures.  After all, the grass is pretty green right here.

You can find all of the tattoos from this article over at the Conscious Ink Temporary Tattoo Store along with many other beautiful temporary tattoos designed to help you Be Present, find your Bliss, and remember that Life is This Moment Now.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not really a big fan of fear. Sure, it’s fun to seek out a little scare every once in a while in the movie theater or on a roller coaster, but in general, fear is something we want to avoid, right? Not so, says Frank Gjata