Archive for September, 2014

199. The painting of the pain

Make believe pain

Make believe pain

The pain was strong and unrelenting. I decided to paint it.

In the stage in which it was a drawing only, it expressed the craziness and strength of the pain quite effectively. When I added the colors the effect became somewhat weaker. The power of lines to affect the areas that they point at, was hindered by the viscosity of the colors and also by the effect of the colors. A body of color has an effect of its own and when you place different areas of color next to each other they influence each other and create yet another effect. All these added effects weaken, relatively, the effect that the lines had when they did not compete with the colors. Nevertheless, you can still see the craziness of the pain, the way it spreads in all contradicting directions. This contradiction creates a feeling of struggle and chaos. The chosen colors also cry out from the page. They radiate energy that refuses to settle. This adds to the expression of the power of the pain and the chaos. When you hold this picture in your hands you want to drop it or put it quickly in a box and cover it with a black cloth, to stop that radiation and protruding thorns.

Well, this is how I feel when the pain is so strong and persistent. And since I do not have any way to smother it, as I would have liked to do, I have to come to terms with it. And the most important part of coming to terms is to learn that my mood is not dependent on how my body feels. I can have this pain and still be in a good mood. I can even feel thankfulness to the pain for giving me the opportunity to learn that this is possible.

You may notice that the painting has this air about it of having been done for children. As if fear, danger and threat have been depicted here for a children’s book. Do you get this feeling?

This is due to this distance that I took from the pain, allowing it to be, and taking care of my mood separately. It is still very impressive in its effect, but its power to make me fear is reduced to a make believe fear. It is like a monster in a puppet theater. Even if death will result, it will be a make believe death.

There are two places where the colors that were used are dark and contrast strongly with their immediate environment. One is in the blue that is darker than all the other areas of color and contrasts strongly with the red lines that are touching it. It could have been an opening to the sky and a window to escape through, but the restlessness of the texture is pretty deterring and the strong red lines all around it make it feel dangerous to pass through. So there is no escape.

The other place is in the lower left corner, where the dark violet made the lines stand out so clearly that their drawing character is emphasized. The feeling that these lines give is more like wanting, longing, needing and complaining. Maybe the pain asks for attention, as love was not given at some point to something that wanted to be accepted and loved?

198. The difference that awareness makes

Programs in the subconscious

Programs in the subconscious

I prepared many colors that were to go into many shapes. But when the painting got to this point, I knew it was finished.

There is an area where most of the colors are concentrated. From there, spreading to all directions, this pattern of things-added-to-things, where there are no filled-in colors, goes on beyond the area that we see.

It passed through my mind, before I started writing, that the most important thing for me in making the art is to look very precisely at the experience of the moment. This is what intuition does automatically but it does it in different degrees of precision, based on preparedness, openness, concentration and other conditions. This idea came to me some time before, when I saw, in other cases, that when the art was true to what was experienced in the moment to a greater degree, the art looked very beautiful to me. This makes “beautiful” equal to “what is true now.” I have found this to be true not only in regard to my own art but in regard to the art of clients too. When their art looks very beautiful to me, I know that it is a very good description of what is happening with them now. Interesting, isn’t it? But this time I am thinking about other characteristics of this state.

When the description is precise, the looking itself releases the perceived state completely. The state leaves and a new state rises in the field of experience. The new state that will arise is a response to my vibratory state. If I am confused, a confusing state will arise. If I am happier than before, the new state that will appear for me, will be happier.

If you look at the artwork again, and consider the empty shapes as a structure, ready to be filled out, but not yet filled, then it is like looking at the blueprint of my subconscious. Every empty cell is a belief that can be activated. For the time being, I have focused only on those cells in the middle and they have gotten activated.

Now two things can happen.

If I am not aware, then the entity that sees and experiences the thing that appeared in my experience is my blueprint. My blueprint can also be called my autopilot (or the subconscious). It has habitual responses. Most of the autopilot’s responses have to do with a not-so-good feeling. It is not an empowered state. The responses are not inspired or passionate. They are just automatic. Then another response will arise to the new state and it will go on like this automatically, one response after another, strengthening existing tendencies and leaving me a bit more entrenched in my beliefs, or less flexible.

If I am aware, everything becomes different. First, the awareness makes the experience beautiful. Then, if the state that is experienced is less good feeling than the state of awareness with the beauty that it perceives, the not so good state will dissolve into the better feeling state. This new state will be the state that invites the next experience, so the next experience will be better than the one before. It is a big difference, isn’t it?

So we see that being aware changes the course of events toward better feeling states.

Now imagine that the area in the middle of the artwork that has colors in it is experienced by awareness, as it does in this case, through the artwork. In my mind now, the state that awareness looks at is changing into a better feeling state. And now, everything in its environment has to change too, to match the better state in its midst. This area around the middle is the whole blueprint of expectations, all the potential “work orders” for the autopilot to operate from. So, based on the small change in part of it, the whole blueprint becomes different and we have a different person. I am becoming a different being. Only my habitual thoughts believe that I am still the same.

197. Seventy

Transparency

Transparency

One day before, according to the Gregorian calendar, I am 70.

A good friend asked me how does it feel, and I did not have anything special to say.

It feels like something lived in this body, that is never the same body, and this body is almost transparent, it is not real. It floats in endless space, which is full of life and interest. Things happened to it. There are many stories about it and they seem to be lined up in some complete version, but even in this version there are many parts that have been forgotten, or that have been told in different ways over the years.

More and more and more I want to feel the endless.

There is a source for all that is experienced now.

196. The Family

The Family

The Family

I called it “The Family.”

This is what I thought when I made it. I started with the figure in black, which is the man. Then the child in brown, leaning at the man and I felt then that I wanted to add the woman in pink. The man is frightening. He wears a gown, like a king or a lord. He is very proud and intense and angry.

The woman seems to be powerless, supposed to support the man but to always be too weak to stand in his way, if this becomes necessary. But she has independence in the area of softness and subtleties. This, actually, gives her true power. Not the power to fight but the power to be happy, if she chooses.

The boy admires his father, wants his support and protection. Maybe wants to be like the father, but he is soft too, like the mother. He makes an intense face like the father, but in his stomach he is soft. His points of power are in his connections to nature, where there is a potential for growth and unexpected strength. He may become free of both his parents with their tendencies. But at this moment that the drawing describes, he does not know yet what he can do, and he takes on the roles that his family and society expect him to take. But the knowing that is already in him, already gives him power that he is not aware of. A small spur of growth would shake the balance in the family, but his growth is not of the kind that competes. It is the kind that is kind and loving, and that says yes to all. Yes, be that. Yes be this. Yes, as your free will gives you the opportunity to be.

Yes..

Is there a dance in this? Yes, the dance of subtle potentialities, already communicating with each other, already allowing each other to be as they want. Already seeing the big and deep picture in which everything is alright and even perfect. Living the pretend life that the autopilots dictate, but unable to stop the flow of uniqueness.

All is good, in the midst of conflicts and obscuration. Clarity steps silently forward to be itself. You don’t have to wait and see. It is already in its best.

A note: I do not agree with the roles that society assigns the genders. If every one fulfills their true potential, they are happy, regardless of gender roles. This drawing describes the gender roles as society sees them, but also the clarity that invites what is unique and true, to come in and be lived.


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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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