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Tomas Loarca grew up in the San Francisco art scene of the 1980’s and 1990’s with his mother and father the artist, Carlos Loarca. Tomas learned to appreciate the arts when he understood the transformation that took place when expression and creation became one. Tomas has worked with foster children and families over the past 10 years. This experience has taught him about human behavior, trauma, and healing. Tomas has become intrigued with the dichotomy, that exists universally, he experienced growing up in San Francisco, contrasted by religion, art, and his work with foster youth. Tomas co-authored, A Possible Reality: Carlos Loarca – Artist and Muralist. Tomas’ articles have been featured in several Southern California Magazines. Follow Tomas @TomasLoarca
Welcome. You’re listening to Sancit, where you’ll find everything to do with spirituality, life lessons, holistic living, and medicine to become your true self. We all have stories, journeys, experiences, and love. Here’s your host, Aron O’Dowd.
tening to Sancit. On today’s show, we have Tomas Loarca. He grew up in a very creative family. His father was an artist, and while growing up in San Francisco in the art scene in the 1980’s and 1990’s, Tomas did not think of the art and the artist, and wanted to run away from that scene, but later on, he discovered how art can transform the creative process in the viewer and the artist.
Tomas works with foster children and families in how he can create a better environment for the family and the child. He has been working in this area for the last 10 years. It provides great joy for putting families and children together, but yet, he talks about that in his very hard work on the physical, mental, and the soul. He is a co-author of “A Positive Reality” and “Carlos Loarca: A Portrait Artist and Muralist.” Hello and welcome to the show, Tomas. How are you doing today?
Tomas: I’m doing great. Thank you.
Aron: Brilliant. Did you have a creative family that inherited creativity?
Tomas: Yes. I came from a father who was a professional artist and from a mother who was a thinker, who … very both musically inclined, and so I didn’t pursue the arts professionally, but I feel a lot of creativity in my life.
Aron: Excellent. Was it art? Was it music? What was the creativity?
Tomas: My father was an artist, painter. He’s done murals around the world. He’s done paintings around the world, and so my … I went anti against that growing up as my father. I did some street art with graffiti, and I did writing and also drawings my own.
Aron: Where was your passion? Where did your ideas lie?
Tomas: I think more my ideas lie with creativity with people. I’m good at reading people and working with people, and that’s guided me into where I work now as a social worker with families and children.
Aron: Describe what creativity is.
Tomas: I think creativity is creating your own universe. Creativity is … there’s a set of laws that govern everything, and creativity is learning the law within. Once you learned the law, making it work into your own circumstances that work for you. Everyone is different, and what works for one person doesn’t work necessarily for me. Creativity means being okay with unknowns and creating that forward to create a space that you enjoy, that you like, that allows you to draw upon abundance in universe.
Aron: What are these laws?
Tomas: I think law is different from dimensions and realities, so on earth, we have what we call “a common set of laws.” Gravity, that’s one law, but if you go out, outside of the earth, the laws of gravity change, and so the laws that I’m more familiar with these earthly laws than … for opposite … for an action is opposite an equal reaction. If I punch the wall, it’s going to hurt me back. Those are laws that pertain to me here, but I think in other dimensions, other realities, different laws apply, and perhaps, creativity is tapping into those other laws that exist in different dimensions that aren’t necessarily known to us at this point.
Aron: Watching your father do art and everything through your childhood and in your life, what were you able to observe?
Tomas: I’ve learned a lot through that. Art painting was the number one thing to my father. That was his religion. That was his passion, so what I learned through that is that it’s possible to receive peace in life through different ways, so he was able to receive peace in life through his art. He was able to chase out inner demons of childhood, the pains and struggles of childhood through his art.
I also saw how the art allowed him to relate to people that it was something to bridge a gap with, so it was an instant relationship builder. If someone said, “Oh, you’re an artist? Tell me more,” he could go on for hours about that, and people are interested in him. It was something that was interesting about him. It was something that allowed him to express himself in ways that he couldn’t do verbally or communicate it with another person, but through his art, he was able to share his insight, his mind, and his way of thinking.
I felt like it translated for me into my own life that I could do the same things, but it doesn’t necessarily have to be painting. It could be through relationship building. It could be through public speaking. It could be through working with other people. It could be transmuted into being an author. The people that I see in my life who are successful are happy. It’s the same concept that carries over the passion, following what they feel is right according to that passion, and they often find success and happiness in it, so I think that’s what it really did to me through his art.
Aron: How were you able to implement those observations to your own life?
Tomas: I’m a person who gets down on myself a lot, and I get very easily intimidated of thoughts. When I think of this art that’s been done, it helps me to remember that anything is possible. The only one that stands in the way for me achieving what I want is myself it seems, and my self-doubts, my fears, my inhibitions is what prevents me, and so it helps me to relate that creation is possible at any moment. I don’t have to wait for something to happen to me. I can create something now, and that higher level of thinking is what really energize me and gets me going, but to me, it’s interesting because I don’t know how it is for someone who’s super successful.
You look at a billionaire such as Bill Gates or Zuckerberg. You don’t know the creative thinking that comes and goes. They’re always on the higher elevation of thinking of it. They’re always almost alpha waves or they come from lower down to the lower waves, I think. I find that in my own life, that’s the only one I can really speak upon is that it comes and goes, and so it’s interesting that I’m not always on the alpha wave and why that is, and I think it’s because we need to have a duality. We need to have a contrast of being to where we have almost the angel and the devil on our shoulders always pulling us back and forth. I think that’s maybe the design, the [purpose 00:07:55] of it, to go back and forth between being very creative, and then becoming very destructive, creative and destructive coming to a dance that bring those into harmony with each other.
Aron: I see, and you think with the alpha wave that creates the harmony?
Tomas: Yeah, I do. I think I’m still in the stage of my life where I’m learning to control those. I found with my father and his art … he’s in his mid-70’s, and he’s saying he’s just beginning to understand art. Someone who’s done art for 50 years and just saying they’ve beginning to start to understand art really shows to me that we need to really be humble in our life and not be so closed off to think that we know everything. I think part of the life’s journey is learning to control and wield our mind to reach that higher state of thought.
Aron: When you hear your father say that, how does that feel for you?
Tomas: That was pretty humbling when I heard that. It’s like a football player at their prime saying they’re just learning to understand football or a magician just saying … who’s been doing it for 56 years just saying they’re just now understanding it. It’s very humbling because I’m 36 at this point. I think I got life pretty well-figured out, but to show that someone with the wisdom of double my life to say they’re just beginning to understand delivers a great amount of humility and [inaudible 00:09:23]. It humbles me and teaches me.
Aron: What’s your work at the moment?
Tomas: Currently, I’m an adoption social worker, so I work with children in the foster care system who aren’t able to return home for whatever reason due to abuse and neglect. I help them to get out of the foster care system either through adoption or through guardianship of some sort.
Aron: I see. Through your work, do you feel it suffices you or it creates a humbling effect to help these people find families?
Tomas: Definitely. What I see is that the work of adoption is hardly equated to almost as a doctor who’s helping a baby come into the world. You’re working with a family to receive a child that wasn’t actually born into them, and it’s a work that I’ve seen that is led. Whether you believe in God, whether you believe in universe or higher power, whatever you belief is, I feel it’s a work that is led, and so to that, it shows to me that it has purpose. It has merit.
It’s very hard, and it’s one that I would say I also struggle with going up and down because it has a lot of rewards, but also, you see a lot of pain and suffering that takes place, and that can wear really thin on people. I would say I had to be careful with the balance to make sure I’m not getting too much negativity and not to dwell on the pain and the suffering, but rather, to dwell on healing and on a completion of being in a government system that’s very rigid and very hard to maneuver.
Aron: You being in the system, do you get frustrated with the struggles?
Tomas: Yes, I do. Definitely. It’s hard when you lose control, when you have the ability to not control your destiny. For a child in the system, they’re completely dependent upon who is ever making the decisions, and so the person making the decisions has to be really, really … I guess like we are talking about earlier, humble and that they’d be really humble because there’s a lot of power that it has, and it’s easy to misuse that power unknowingly. I don’t think it happens maliciously, but you have to be very cautious of what you’re doing and really take into account people’s lives and all factors.
You can’t really make a decision based on one moment in the timeline. You have to consider their life from birth until now and possibly, what their life will be in the future. I always say it’d be great if we were fortune tellers in this profession, so we could tell the future. Unfortunately, none of us … none of my coworkers have claimed to be fortune tellers, but I think by being … trying to forecast and predict what may happen in the future, we’re able to help children navigate and find some peace and healing.
Aron: Can you explain the process of how a child becomes … into the adoption program and how they are able to find a family?
Tomas: The children we work with, they come into the foster system due to neglect, or abuse, or something has happened to them that required them to leave their home. When that happens, families have a certain period of time to work to return to their families’ homes, but usually due to substance abuse. That usually prevents the children from returning home. Substance abuse is really difficult to kick. It’s hard to give up that habit, and so it results in, sometimes, the parents losing their children.
At that time, by law, we have to make a plan B to where children have a family because as we know, everyone needs a parent. Someone needs us to raise us. We found that it’s best to be raised by a parent rather than a foster home or rather by the state. The children I work with are those who are unable to return home to their families. Sometimes, they’re already … maybe there’s a relative already who was able to adopt them, but sometimes, if they’re not with a relative and they’re not with a foster parent, we would like to keep them.
When that happens, then we need to find a family who’s interested in adopting the child. There’s agencies that work with them who’s registered an adoption, and we work with those agencies to try to match kids best with their needs, and with their desires, and things of that nature to try to make the best match possible.
Aron: Do you get to integrate with the child, or learn or get to understand who their characteristics are, or is it just … excuse the pun, but passing the parcel in some way?
Tomas: Right. What’s really nice about my job is that it’s very critical job. We really utilize skills. Rather like I said before, we want to know about when you are born, if you were born to substance use in their system. We want to know how they were raised. We’re looking at their attachment style. The first year of life is … that’s a time of changing diapers. It’s a time of feeding. It’s a time of [inaudible 00:14:44], and babies cry when their needs aren’t being met.
The first year of life, when the children’s needs are not met, if a parent is not constantly getting up when a child cries, they learn that the world is not a safe place, and that causes unhealthy attachment or a broken attachment. We really, really look at that part of it. A child who has a really unhealthy or broken attachment is going to be hard … hard for that child to develop a relationship where they are trustful on their parent, and so we really need to consider then our assessment.
If we’re working with a family who wants to adopt and their needs are for the child to fulfill their happiness and to love them, we often times see that’s not going to be a successful match because it’s more about the parents’ needs rather than the child’s needs, so when we find a family who puts the child first and their needs first, we find them to be more successful with the child who is in need of reassurance, who’s in need of healing their broken attachment.
Those are the things that we really try to look at, and so what’s nice when we have that information and when the children are a little bit older, it might seem weird, but they’re a little bit to match in the sense that we understand them better. We have a better history to look at. Whereas a newborn, it’s just starting life, and so there’s not a lot of predictors that we can predict. Of course, everyone wants a younger child, but with the older child, you get a little bit better picture of what you’re getting in the future.
Aron: In working in this environment, you must find a strain. How do you personally deal with the strain of your work both physically, emotionally, and mentally?
Tomas: Man, that’s a great question. There’s a high turnover of social workers in our business, and I think a lot of that has to deal with … they call it the “secondary trauma.” As social workers, we’re not the ones experiencing first hand this trauma that occurs to these children. We’re hearing the stories. We’re seeing the outcomes. We’re seeing what happens later on in life through abuse and neglect, and so like we’re saying, what’s really important is to deal with those situations.
For me, what I do, I find that the creativity is the thing that heals me the most. When I’m being creative, when I’m working on projects, when I’m working on articles, when I’m working on [both of my friends 00:17:16]. If I’m working on stories, connecting with my friend, that’s when I find I’m able to overcome those hurdles, and so that’s why I feel myself really drawn to creativity. I also like to spend time with my family. That’s who I spend a significant amount of time with, and it’s really refreshing to see my children. They are wonderful, they’re awesome, and they really cheer me up. There’s nothing better than coming home and having all 3 kids run up to you right away, “Daddy,” and that almost lets me forget work for a little bit, but I do find that it pops up when I … after that. I’ll be home, and I’ll get frustrated because of something that happened at work.
I really have to be mindful of that. Otherwise, I get reactive in my reactions with people. Instead of being thoughtful, I’ll just … I get in the lower response of mind, the lower brain of the reactive mind. I think just being thoughtful and mindful at all times is what really helps me deal with that because when I just let my mind run loose in reactive mode, that’s when I’m unable to deal with those issues that come up from work. Talking. I think talking with those who understand what I’m going through is very beneficial, so my coworkers and I, we try to go out at least one time per day of work, and then really brief each other and support each other because not many people understand what it’s like to do that work.
Aron: I see. You wrote a book about your father. Was it a collection of art? Explain a bit about that to us.
Tomas: Sure. In 2013, I got to work with my best friend, Ariel Martinez, who helped me produce the book. My father, like I said, he’s been painting for over 55 years as professional, and I’ve seen the magical creations he’s done. I’ve seen the amount of people who have respect [for it 00:19:19]. I’ve seen him travel to Russia, Guatemala, New Mexico, and to murals in different venues. To me, my father who I consider maestro, he’s the master of the arts.
Unfortunately, it’s really hard to get recognized in arts, and so I really wanted to help my father to have in his life come … have some success and recognition, so I asked my friend if there was a way we could create a book about someone’s art, and my friend who studied new media, and that was his profession, that’s his passion, he’s very creative as well, said, “Yeah, let’s do this,” and so we spent about 3 months gathering several art pieces.
The book contains maybe about 50 different pieces of art. He has thousands of paintings, so it’s just a small sample of his paintings, but we just organized it into a book, and we asked my father to make some quotes, and I did some quotes as well. We put it together, and it allowed him to have something intangible that you can give to someone real quick. We found it to be really successful, not monetarily, but more to where we actually have a creation on our hands that we can give to someone as most people aren’t able to purchase this one due to the cost of it, but this is something simple that we could give away for free, we can … someone can purchase which allows them to take a small piece of my father’s life into their life.
Aron: How did it feel to look at his entire collection and compress it into 50 pieces?
Tomas: Most of his art is … people have bought it through the years. It’s in museums and galleries, and so the easiest access that we have was going to be the pieces that he had done within the 5-year period of 2013. Basically, what we asked is for my father to pick out 50 pieces that he wanted to highlight in there, and so the ones he had access to and the ones that were recently painted, so he selected those that were in his studio, and we were able to do it that way. He had about maybe 200 in his studio, and so it came from really those 200 … 50 of them.
Aron: We talked about creativity and we talked about how the brain functions to creativity, but how do you like … do you meditate, or do you go through the source or through divine? What is your … who do you read, or who …? Explain a bit of like …
Tomas: Sure, that’s a great question. I have an interesting background. I grew up as a Mormon in San Francisco, California, and San Francisco, California I would say is pretty opposite of the Mormon lifestyle. My father was not … or he is a Mormon, but he doesn’t attend church. His religion was more of universe, the Maya thinking, the Maya Indian thinking, and his art, and so I had 2 different opposing ways of thinking relating to creativity and source. Then, growing up in San Francisco, which was very anti-religion or very nonreligious, so I had 3 different things pulling in me growing up.
What was great about that is I had a traditional religion, I had a new way of thinking through painting, and then I had the San Francisco culture, [all teaching 00:22:52], and so my upbringing was very, very weird you can say, very eclectic, exposure to many different things, which really allowed me to have a … I guess what I perceive or my friend, [Michael Angeline 00:23:08], says is a unique perspective that he hasn’t really met in that situation.
For me, I pray, I pray to God. I also think of art, so I’ll think in my mind, perceive something that I want to see and wanted to happen, and I also use the [life’s methods 00:23:29]. I really enjoy the book “Think and Grow Rich.” It talks really a lot about the power of intention, and I think that whether you believe in God or not, it doesn’t matter because I think the intention is the same power when we talk about the mind and the brain, and the health or whatever it is, the higher level of thinking. It’s when you really focus and put that intention. You can call it “pray,” and you can call it “meditation.” You can call it “pondering.” You can call it “thinking.” I think those all achieve the same result.
I spend time reading. I like to read different books. Recently, I’ve read some books on … just different quotes of thinkers, and then praying, and then also just consulting with my mother who also is very philosophy-minded. She likes to read sources from India, from The Dao, and from the bible, and the book of Mormon, and also Easter philosophy, and try and mix Eastern and Western philosophy together as one.
Aron: Is your family open to have this kind of conversations, or are they narrow?
Tomas: They’re pretty open. They’re pretty open, so we discuss a lot of like the dichotomy that exists in the world, in religion, in politics, the dichotomy. There’s no just one way of being. There can’t be, and so it gets really interesting when you start thinking of the possibilities that way ahead. If you get really into one mind and one focus, you’re really living yourself to one way of being, but if you look at the universe, there is so many different infinite possibilities. If you think about the stars, the planets, the moons [inaudible 00:25:26], and so I don’t think there’s just one way to achieve an answer. I think all methods can lead to the same answer if that make sense.
Aron: In exploring this area, do you take it piece by piece and add it to your work, or is it separate?
Tomas: I think I consider it in my work that I view … is that what you mean like with my professional work?
Aron: Yes.
Tomas: Yeah. I utilize that in my work because there’s so many different personalities, so many different needs of each child. Each child is so completely different. If you look at child development, there’s a lot of similarities between children, so if I look at my own son who’s 10 months old and I look at a foster child who’s 10 months old, they are doing similar things, and that makes you think that, “Well, if they’re doing similar things, then maybe we’re all the same.”
I think there is a similarity that we all share, but I also think that even though we have a lot of similarities, the one … that one, the difference that makes us all unique, whether it’s a different strand in the DNA or a different neural network, whatever it may be, even that just one difference makes us all completely unique and our experiences unique.
Sometimes, if you look at that movie that James … I think it was James Cameron. Look at the blue people who walk around and look into the trees. I can’t think of the … Avatar. Sometimes, I wonder if our existence is like that in the sense that we’re all plugged into one great neural network perhaps, and we all are in need of different experiences to be able to grow the universe’s or God’s understanding, and so by us, all have uniquely different experiences. It almost builds like you can say an encyclopedia of all the different ways of living and learning.
I hope that I will be able to tap into that experience in the future. Maybe it’s after death or the future. I don’t know when that would be, but I’ll be able to tap into you and see the world through your eyes and from that ladder. It’s almost equivalent to reading a book and really learning the author’s mind, learning what they’re thinking, what they’re doing. I’ll be able to do that with you or with someone else and have a whole new perspective because based on where I was born, when I was born, the money my family had or didn’t have, my gender, whatever it may be, that experience is going to be so unique and so rich in knowledge that it … it’s no wonder that the amount of abundance [inaudible 00:28:24] universe based on all those different experiences.
I didn’t answer [how I plan 00:28:31] my work, but … so I really value where my family has been, where the children have been, and that that makes me very unique, and so I’m seeing the uniqueness and I’m able to see [the best people around 00:28:44] a case and work with them to try to find them the best possible outcome.
Aron: Looking back in everything you’ve done so far, would you change anything, or you’re happy enough with this?
Tomas: That’s a question I have pondered a lot. There’s things I’ve done that I greatly regret in my life. There’s things that I love, and that’s something that I actually think about a lot because I think if one thing would have been different that I would’ve done at any place of my life, I probably would be in a different spot where I’m at. I’m very fortunate, very blessed to have the family that I have. There were some decisions I made in my past that if I hadn’t made, perhaps my outcome would be different now, and I really can’t imagine my life being different.
I grew up with the philosophy that things go the way they’re meant to go, and so I don’t see you could’ve gone any different, but when I do it again, it comes the dichotomy where I struggle too where I’m like, “Okay. I know things go the way they’re meant to go,” but at the same time, “I wish I would’ve done this because I would be rich or I would be powerful.” You get those greedy thoughts in your mind. When I’m [high on a plane 00:30:05], oh man, it’s great. I’m like, “Wow, this is great. I wouldn’t change anything.” That’s why I’m really saying that I’m a really dichotomous person that I go back and forth so much.
Whether I want to raise my kids in San Francisco? I’m not really sure, but for me, growing up in San Francisco, and experiencing the violence, experiencing sexual things, experiencing all sorts of different ways of being have really shaped who I am and have really given me a lot to draw on in the world and to share that with people. Whereas some people haven’t experienced those things.
Aron: Everything you experienced, and everything you read, and everything you learned, is there something that you could share to myself and the audience that is valuable to you?
Tomas: Yes. Thank you. That’s a great question. I’m privileged to answer that. I think what has really served me the best, when I’m able to read people that is nonjudgmental, when I’m able to look at someone based on their whole life, and react to them on their whole life rather than on the current moment, but I mean, someone who’s short with me, or upset with me, or very rude to me. It’s really easy to judge them in that moment to say they’re a horrible person, or their a B-word, or whatever it may be, but there’s a reason that that’s happening, and when that’s happening, they’re in their lower brain. They’re in the reaction state. They’re in the flight-or-fight mode. They’re not being rude to you. They’re just reacting to you rather.
If you think of that reaction compared to thought, there’s no wonder why there’s crime. There’s no wonder why there’s … those are all reactionary states almost. We’re not excused in the behavior by saying that, but it helps to understand … and that you can come to … I talked to a murderer in a prison, and the conversation we had was a very nice pleasant conversation. You’re looking at them. You’re looking at … “Why did this person kill this child?” But at the same time, on the phone, they’re very pleasant. It seemed like just a normal person you would meet on the street, and so we have to be very careful to not get into that reactionary state.
We have to be very cautious of that and to use our mind to overcome that to be strong, and so when we meet with people, rather than take it personal or out of context, we look at them for who they are and where they come from, and that will help alleviate a lot of the problems we have with war and a lot of the problems we have with anger, a lot of the problems we have with self-doubt because when we know that someone is acting the best that they know how and they’re acting on [somewhat various 00:32:58] experiences through their life, it allows us to give a lot of forgiveness, a lot of allowing to be okay. I think that’s helped me a lot in my work that I’m able to just treat people the way I don’t want to be treated and to help them and allow them to grow. It’s not something that comes overnight, and I still work on it myself, but I found that to be very helpful.
Creativity. I think we all have creativity in us. Whenever I talk to people about art and creativity, they [inaudible 00:33:31], “I can’t draw,” but I don’t think painting, sculpting, music is the only way of being creative. I look at people on the street who are homeless who create these tent cities who were able to make these bicycle car apparatuses that allow them to transport cans and bottles to the recycling center for money. It’s very creative.
No one sees that as art, and you can see … you can debate if that’s art or not, but just the fact that you see them creating, that they have this intellect, and they’re often … we often think of homeless people as not very smart, scary, or criminals, but they too have creative outlets. Business owners have creative outlets. Teachers. It’s all creation. It’s all creativity. I allude creation and creativity as the same thing. Whatever you want out of life, you could create, and be creative. I really want people to remember to be creative in their own lives.
Aron: That is fantastic piece of knowledge shared to us. Tomas, I want to say thank you for coming on to the show and sharing. I would love to learn more and hear more from you, but the time is … as you know, we’re all compressed into a certain length of time.
Tomas: Sure. Thank you very much. It was quite a pleasure, and I’m very honored to be on your show, and I thank you for your time.
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