Some years ago, I was working on a mural project that incorporated references to the great painter of the late Renaissance, Annibale Carracci (1560-1609).

As I gathered pictorial reference, I also started reading about Carracci’s life and his sad ending. The artist was commissioned to paint the ceiling of the Palazzo Farnese, the palace of the powerful Cardinal Odoardo Farnese. It was a vast undertaking, and even with the help of assistants, it took years for Carracci to accomplish. Despite the fact that the ceiling was a masterpiece and the inspiration for much of the later Baroque ceilings, the cardinal woefully underpaid Carracci. The artist was a modest and shy man, and he never recovered from this mistreatment, falling into a deep depression, and dying soon thereafter.

I asked my guides, “Is there some way, if all time is in the Now, that I can effect love, peace and joy for Annibale Carracci by going back to the end of his Renaissance incarnation, and helping him at that moment?”

A profound question, and the answer is yes. You can pray for the well-being of an individual or even the state of the planet at any of its stages, and to do so is to acknowledge that consciousness itself is multidimensional and eternal.