Archive for April, 2012

111.The principle of growth

It is 3 AM.

The strength of the pain came back after a lot of walking on Governors Island and downtown Manhattan, drunk with city views, drunk with walking.

The pain, the body’s shaking, the murmur along the nerve-ways make it impossible to sleep. I go to the studio.

Like fires

Like fires

The words come pouring easily and without a break all the way to the end. I am too tired to read what I wrote. I leave them as they are and go back to bed. I come back to them in the afternoon. I add words between the lines, to make things connected and this happens easily too:

It grows

It is like fire

And like a kick-starter

For what will come

The different fires

Are close to each other

And supportive

Your duty is

To just allow it to grow

Your tool is

The atmosphere

Within which it appears

This is the main thing that you can make

It is tangible

It is like wilderness

The fire burns and disappears

But the principle of growth

Stays on as the invisible guide

It is right here

And it is wonderful.

110. Bad thoughts

There are three ways that I know of, to change reality for the better for you. All of them depend on changing yourself. All of them depend on becoming more and more happy, regardless of circumstances.

One way is to clear subconscious material. Every subconscious hindering or blocking belief that you clear out opens your energy system to a flow of intuition, which is a happier way to live. So the happier you become, the even happier you become. And this can happen, regardless of the circumstances of your life. All three ways are an equal opportunity for all. As you become happier, even in a small measure, you reality starts changing to fit your new inner condition.

The second way is to just decide what is the change that you want to create and imagine living it. This also has to be a change into a better state. You can change to a worse state, but why would anyone choose that. The more vivid and continuous your imagination is, the closer you get to change your subconscious beliefs. There comes a point when the power of the imagination is stronger than the power of the subconscious beliefs, and at that moment the subconscious beliefs change to what you imagined. Now the world around you changes to fit the new belief. But the truth is that at that state you feel so good already that it is all right with you whichever way reality turns out to be.

In both ways you will encounter resistance to change. Some of the beliefs we have in the subconscious are very strong in resisting change. Some give way easier. If you use the first way, you are already exercised in releasing everything that shows up, and you do this with the resistance. But if you use the second way, you may not be ready for the resistance, and especially if it is very strong. So you have to learn how to release blockages, and then you have the tools that you need. When you imagine a better state for your life and a resistance comes up, you use a releasing method to clear the way, and when the way is open, you go back to imagining.

And there is a third way.

It is to always interfere with your thoughts when you catch yourself becoming less happy, and think other thoughts that create a better feeling. This way also generates resistance sometimes, especially when your change of thoughts involves resisting the thoughts that you do not want to have. This can happen pretty easily and everything that you resist in your thought-world, becomes stronger and will fight back, so you have to learn how to release resistances, instead of resisting them.

And here is an example of what had happened to me.

I have been employing the second and third method for about two months.

Changing my thinking to always think thoughts that create better feelings, I caused the negative thoughts to rebel. I remembered the effectiveness of releasing everything that comes up, which is what I did before, and got upset, because this third and second way raised a lot of resistance. Last night I drew and this morning I read my drawing and found that the beliefs in bad luck were fighting back. Here are the drawing and the words.

Falling

Falling

Trying to go right or left

You can’t escape the mud blobs

Jumping at you

Whether you sit or walk

The earth breaks under you

You get in the sled to go uphill

You find it broken

And you are too heavily clothed.

Reading this I knew that I fell.

I always journal, writing without any restriction whatever comes to my mind, and in all cases this has always helped me see what I was feeling, and, seeing it, the feeling would dissolve. This is a good way for me to release. But I tried lately to not have any negative thoughts. The negative thoughts, instead of being nice to me and getting weaker, got stronger.  So this morning I went back to my usual way and wrote about all that is bad and hard and difficult, and very easily my mood changed for the better.

When I was in the bad state I thought:  I have suffered enough. I don’t know if mu body can take it much longer. If you, the All, have anything to say, please do it now.

But now, after writing in my journal I was in a better mood. I had to move my car for parking regulations and went, as always, to the Hungarian Pastry Shop, where I can leave my car nearby unattended for that period of time. Sitting there I asked Intuition: Do you have any answer? And I drew. (As you know, I always have drawing materials with me.)

Bigger systems at work

Bigger systems at work

Then I read, and the words just came to me as follows:

There are bigger patterns at work. Continue and it will clear up.

Well, that’s settled, I thought. And there was nothing else to do about it.

Then the question came:

So who am I?

I drew:

You are al

You are all

And went in with words:

You are many

Intermixed.

You are stable, real-like things

Flowing.

You are thinking landscapes

clear river waters

And mountains in meditation.

You are ancient and intricate

Having all emotions

Riding on peace.

109. Event

In two drawings that I did one after the other, though, with a day in between, there was a yellow part that seemed to be pushed away by the other colors. It was as if the yellow wanted to dance, but the other colors danced there and pushed the yellow away. Do you see that?

Yellow being pushed away

Yellow being pushed away

Yellow being pushed away again

Yellow being pushed away again

I wondered what was going on there? Who is the yellow and why is he being pushed away?

In the next drawing they were all mixed together but not with a comfortable feeling. I am not relating to everything in the drawing. Just to the fact that they are mixed and do not feel comfortable together. Do you see the density and the feeling that they are all going against each other?

Uncomfortable density

Uncomfortable density

I went back and looked at the first drawing in this series and asked: Who are you, the yellow? And made a drawing.

A man with conflicted thoughts

A man with conflicted thoughts

The first association that came to me, as I looked at this was: It looks like a man, walking from the left to the right, slightly leaning forward, with his legs hurting and his head caught up in a conflict. Since this was the first idea that came to my mind, I trusted it.

Then I asked: Well, Yellow, what do you want? And made a drawing.

This is what came:

I want to break through and flourish

I want to break through and flourish

It wants to flourish, to grow and flourish. But it has a problem where it starts. Things don’t go well there. Or maybe this was in the past and now this thing is beyond that.

Then I felt that what I drew did not really cover everything that was there and there was more that wanted to come, so I drew again.

Anger

Anger

This looks like anger. The yellow was upset at being stopped.

But there was something unique about this anger that burst out suddenly. I was not involved with it. It just happened there in front of me and I felt playful.

I wondered if I needed to draw again and let this anger go out all the way, so nothing will be left. This was a thought. But in terms of feeling I did not feel I wanted to draw. There was no emotional need wanting to see the light. I left the process and did not feel anything pressing.

When I drew again, later, everything worked together in the drawing, and it even expressed the experience of not being too involved in what was happening.

The appearance of the watcher

The appearance of the watcher

The brown shape is there, doing something different than all the other shapes. It points up and the other shapes mostly go to the left, and go past the brown, through it. It is a bit affected, but still doing what it does. You can see that the last green shape starts identifying with the brown. So these are two systems that live at the same place in a parallel way, each doing its thing. The greens and the orange are the system of all the things that happened before. I’ll call it “The Story.” It shows the way this system changed and how it looks now. Was the conflict in the story resolved? Maybe partially yes and partially not. The second system is the brown, being there in the same place, watching and allowing the greens and orange do what they do.

When I looked at this drawing I felt wonderful. I knew that an emotional event ended in the most wonderful way. Not in the way in which one side won and the other lost, but in the way that it became not important and left to be as it was, as my identification went to a deeper place.

And I remember now something that happened many years ago. I lived in a village in Israel. I had three kids. The eldest was out somewhere and the two younger ones, between the ages of four and six, quarreled, which was rare, and came to me to complain. Look at what she did to me, said one. Look at what he did to me, said the other. I told them that since both of them are my children, I love them the same, and I cannot be good to one and bad to the other, so they will have to solve their conflict on their own. The conflict ended right there.

There is something in this to learn from about what healing really means. You can say that I had an inner conflict and I needed to heal from it. Had I not healed from it, It would have created more and more problems, which in their turn would have cause my energy to not flow fluently throughout my system and this might have lead to illness.

But what I want to point out here is the way the healing of the conflict happened. It did not happen by having one side win. This would not have healed anything, because the losing side would not die but gather force again, which would lead to the next conflict. This kind of resolution always leads to turning the conflict into a perpetual thing. Maybe one encounter ends in “A” winning and the next with “B” winning. But the conflict stays. The only real solution is when we find that there is a condition of wellbeing beyond the conflict. For this wellbeing it does not matter which way the conflict ends, because it knows clearly that the conflict cannot even touch this state of wellbeing. It is the love, which is the essence of this condition, which both sides of the conflict seek. That’s why they dissolve in its presence. This is what healing means.

108. OK my friends

Little Buddha, ready for bath

Little Buddha, ready for bath

OK, my friends. I know it is strange. I started this blog a year ago, promising to show you how I heal my body from a terrible nerve pain, resulting from a certain neuropathy, a condition that modern medicine does not know how to heal.

I went from number one to number fifty-eight and before the pain was healed, stopped the process, saying that this part finished itself and I had to agree with it.

Then I started investigating if it was possible to become free by doing this method. I found after a short time that there is nothing to do in order to be free, and the whole notion of doing something for this purpose is ridiculous. All you have to do is find out that this is true. It does take some doing though, mainly in the area of changing subconscious beliefs or releasing them. Releasing them is the best way. It starts as a doing and ends up doing itself.

I stopped for some time and then came back to add entries to what I now called Blog 3. I just loved the process too much. Today I have 107 entries, 108 with this one. It seems to not be going anywhere. I still have the pain. I have not become free. And everything I say is not true. How can anybody be not free? How can a thing like pain exist at all? I know I am not speaking clearly and I’d rather not speak at all. Then what am I doing with these words?

Why am I doing this, not going anywhere?

In about 1998 I wrote a story, coming back from a winter retreat with pneumonia, about a man who lost his insides, became different and could not decide what to do with his life, as it was not any more the way he knew it beforehand. He still wanted to put everything back in himself. But it did not work and he remained between full and empty. A few years later I studied art therapy and met with prisoners and crazy people who knew about life more than their doctors. Then I showed a nine years old boy, who chewed all his wooden furniture, and was taken to a mental hospital, how to feel the energy of anger. In 2004 I spent four years making intuitive art with teenagers who did not agree to be what their society wanted them to be. I supported it. And in 2011 I started this blog.

There is a book that I read about ten years ago. It is in Hebrew. It is called Tokyo Back and Forth, by Yaacov Raz. He was a Zen student in Japan and now I don’t know what he is. Or maybe I know and do not tell. When I read it then, I laughed all the time. I started to read it again today and I cry all the time. Not because I am sad, but because I feel like being home.

This blog is telling a story. I don’t know where the story goes and what will be in the end. I’ll let the story make itself, because it is the most loving and joyful thing that I can do with it.

107. Minnie Mouse

Fluffily flowing

Fluffily flowing

Climbing with ease

Changing colors

Pretending to be a woman

Or maybe a scarf

Maybe a flower after the party

And maybe it is Minnie Mouse

And she is just looking at you

Before she leaves the screen

With everything fluffily flowing

Behind her

And maybe when she leaves

The joy will stay

And then leave too

As everything does here

On earth

And can an even greater joy

Come after that?

106. different and evading

Different and evading

Different and evading

I look at the sea that responds to my thoughts

And see mysterious clouds arising

A purple painted fingernail comes out

To point

At a candle holder

On a table with an unkempt tablecloth

It all feels like flying uncertainties to me

And like apparitions of old thoughts

Including the repetition of the idea of a hole in a thing

I eat my Sunny-side-up

But it is different

And evading.

105. A simple drawing with a lot to tell

At 4 AM once more, something tells me to go to the studio to draw.

What comes out surprises me, as other drawings did. Even though many of the shapes I use in my drawings remind of plants I usually do not draw flowers as the subject of the drawing. But here the shapes are clearly flowers. This is what wanted to come.

Four flowers

Four flowers

It looks simple. Four flowers grow next to each other. I leave them alone in the night and go back to bed.

In the morning I see the drawing on the table and start thinking. But it is not really thinking. It is a way to be sensitive to what I see with words. I call this process, whether it is done with pictures or with texts, LISTEN/DO. This process, on its own, starts pulling in knowledge I did not know were there. This process starts to show that there is a lot of information in this simple drawing that could have been missed.

Here is what I see:

Starting in the left and ending in the right, as was the order of doing, it started with red that is changing moods or intensities. It went on to green and blue, flailing and sending long limbs or flowers in different directions. This may be surprisingly accurate in describing my life, flourishing early, and breaking off to two directions.  One is trying to fix my childhood traumas. The other is going deeper and deeper into knowing the truth of all.

The two flowers that come next are less physical but more straight, and they flourish with more ease and normality.

After that there are no more flowers.

The one on the extreme right is the tallest and the most straight, and it goes all the way to the top and a bit out of the paper, to bear its flower there.

What feels a little strange is that the colors in the right side are less vivid. They go from ochre, which is less vivid than the red and the green but still alive (It feels as if it is a bit farther away and somewhat transparent), to the slightly darker last one, which looks as if it is a shadow and not a real flower. Nevertheless it has vitality in its shape and maybe it feels spiritual.

So the process goes from what can be felt as pain in a big show-off, through growth that is unsure of its direction, to transparency and, in the last one, to unreal.  Maybe the last flower says that the physical life that we have here is not real, but a shadow of the images in our mind. And if this is so, then the image I am creating now, as the life I am about to live, will be more alive but I will clearly know that it is not real in the way we usually think it is.

104. Expand

It is 4 AM. My body trembles from soles to neck. All the nervous system trembles everywhere: In the heart, in the feet, in the stomach, in the neck. As if I am sitting in a truck while the strong engine is working. I had this happen before but this is stronger. I don’t know what it is. On one hand it is frightening, but not much. I have gone through things like this so many times already. On the other hand I have been asking for so long to be guided and to be supported in my being who-I-am to the fullest degree possible. I know I need to do a drawing. I don’t want to get up from my bed and walk to the studio, but I have to do a drawing.

Surprisingly, when I start, I am very calm and the movements of the brush are very easy. I do a second color and a third and I know that this is it. I have finished.

Life bubbling

Life bubbling

I find in me the energy to do the going-in-with-words. I make a list. I scramble. In the new order of the words I insert a few more words that help to connect the lines and here it is, all done with ease and flow:

Expand

Go go go

Connect

Life is bubbling in you

It makes a lot of noise

And sometimes it hurts

Build

Say yes yes yes

Heart and all

Going far, going far

And about to dance

Expand

Work together

Expand.

103. Yesterday and today (Straight talk)

Yesterday

Three bodies in the sky

Three bodies in the sky

 Deep under the surface

Are talking rocks

Telling stories

And elbowing each other.

In the sky

Three main bodies float

One is the way some parts of the whole

Stick together

Awaiting resolution

Another is the collection of cans and can’ts

The third is an angel

Who promises that the legs are good.

In the vast landscape

The rocks, the fields

And the hazy horizon

Consider everything they see

As the higher sky above it all

Smiles.

Today

Like teeth i an x-ray

Like teeth in an x-ray

Like teeth in an x-ray

With the roots that they send

Into the jaw

Like bubbles of air

Caught in pockets

Like doctors in white gowns

Or maybe angels

Arranging everything in the best way

With love and laughter

Like warmth

Like kindness

Like the way it has to be

And it is.

Like countries with wars and complications

And borders everywhere

Like lakes and yellow sands

And the big sea

Marred

But still blue

And deep.

Like maps

For the shapes of clothing

That will move in the air

While being held by our bodies

Walking on this earth

Talking with each other

Knowing that nothing has ever moved

But the mind.

102. I am a tree

I am a tree

I am a tree

I am a tree

With a thinking eye

I wrinkle my forehead

I can’t control my hair

I shut my mouth into a straight line

And you can lean on me.


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The healing process

Entries 1-58 show how I use the method of Intuition Through Art to heal myself from Peripheral Neuropathy.

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