Archive for June, 2016

238. A story about idealism and reality

I was born in Israel and my parents were idealistic pioneers. They built Israel from nothing, with all the others there of course. They wanted social justice, a place to live and grow their food, a place where they could have a country and a piece of land and they wanted their children to be born in a country with a house and a field. I drank idealism with my mother’s milk. (This was long ago. Now it is a bit more complicated there.)

I was an artist from young age. I went to study graphic design. In Graphic Design you make art that is used immediately. Then I was an illustrator. As an illustrator you illustrate children’s books, for children to grow up with good stories, with knowledge and love of the world about them, with a good taste in art, as it makes for a better life. And you illustrate for adults so that they will think in a different way and they will laugh…

Then I got involved with Buddhist meditation, and the idea was to know what I am, so that I’ll live my true life.

And indeed, once you start to know something you start teaching. What can be more important than helping others know what they are, so that their lives will be good, and truthful? And that they will be good people, help each other and create a wonderful world for all of us, and our offspring…

Then I went to study art therapy, so I would be able to help people get rid of what held them back from being what they were. To show them how to become free of inhibiting ideas and thrive, so that they can live happily and lovingly etc.

And I did all these. I was idealistic and practical.

Then I started to know that every one of us has his own world, created by his own consciousness. We do not live in the same world. Our worlds meet with each other and it looks as if it is one world, but it is not so.

You can’t create a meaningful change in any part of the reality that is around you in your world. If you want this reality to change, you have to change yourself. The new thoughts and beliefs that you will have will bring to you everything that fits this new state of mind. So I cannot change or help change the people who come to do therapy with me. In one view, they are part of my outside world. I have to change myself, and as a result another version of that person will appear in my world, which will be a match to the way I have become. From another view, the patient is in another world, where he is the only one who can make changes in his world, by changing himself.

I always thought that we all lived in the same world. That there was one person in front of me, who suffered, and I helped him release the suffering and live a better life. But no.

And I thought that making art was a good thing for other people, to widen and deepen their experience, to give them the experience of beauty that will help them live a more beautiful life, with love, with collaboration, with understanding…

Now I felt there was no sense in doing anything. I always had a purpose for doing things and I missed it.

It felt like depression.

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Then I decided to ask August Moon about it.

August Moon is my inner guide. I have been connected with him for a while. He always answers. He is always there.

I asked and made a drawing, as I like to get the answers through the art. Sometimes I know through words, but if it is a big thing, I make art and read the answer in it. I just like it this way.

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And as soon as I started making the art, I knew the answer. The lines in the drawing spoke to me with the energy that is in them:

The reason to do anything, to do all that you want to do, is not that there is a need for it. You are not doing it for any idealistic purpose. You do it because it is your nature to be interested in doing things. It is your nature to love. It is your nature to be curious, playful, peaceful, capable and creative. This nature is what you are and it is expressed by what you do. So you do, just because you are a natural expresser of yourself.

So, you see? There is no outside reason for me to be happy. I am happiness.

And how can this be depressed?

 

237. A city that is a flower

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Like Italo Calvino, who wrote about cities that never were, I too write. It is about our reality.

Sometimes a living thing appears and it is a miracle that it stands at all.

It stands for a very short time indeed, when there is no wind of course, without too many sets of eyes to look at it, and only a few hearts to flutter breathlessly.

Sound familiar? Maybe not?

Don’t fight, people. There is no real victory. Let your claims fall to empty space.

The city council (in the city that is a flower) is in a meeting. For now there are no results.

The grey cloud examines the degree of truth in what the piece of sky expressed.

The castle is simply pointing up while the ochre looks down with penetrating eyes. The green agrees to disagree.

But there is nobody to listen anyway. The city is too delicate for this. The city is a flower. The city is created by a mind that’s only joy.

Don’t fight, people.

Accept defeat on the level of the argument, because you cannot win.

Hug your doubts about what is possible

And dive into the deeper space

That is right here.

236.The energy is left with no job

All the colors stand around me, in bottles, tubes and pencils. They are looking quietly at what I do. What will I say? They are my audience now.

I love them. They can do infinite things. They do not really look. I know. It is the whole who looks. The infinite listening-with-the-heart. The heart-of-listening. His name is I.

When the light of seeing is bright and strong, everything that is non-transparent burns into non-existence. Its energy is left with no job. It gives itself back to be used for creation.

The name of the creator is I too.

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It seems the light in the middle of the painting (the yellow and orange) is marred. It has been hit on the head.

Darkness (on the left) makes a threat. But the little child-who-flies is not afraid. He flies into the darkness to repair his past. He will find his love that he rejected in those old times. It is like the soul-retrieval that shamans do.

The goodness and the freedom-filled-joy, which is the lost part of him, will be found where it went to hide when it was not permitted to act in the world. It will be invited back and respected, loved, accepted, joined.

Again the lines tell the stories. The color shapes tell the emotions. The composition says that all is blessed, with all its tiniest details.

The white always looks with endless love and curiosity, with awe, with pride and marvel.

There is confusion there too, on the right, projecting a yes-no feeling.

Everything is okay.

 

The big yellow mother would like to say: Be careful!

But she knows that daring requires love and trust, and not carefulness. So she does not say a word. She admires her child.

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Yesterday in the morning I sat on the window seat and meditated. With all the lack of sleep that I collected, because of the pain, I fell asleep. I lost my balance and fell. I opened my eyes in the middle of the fall and saw the world turning around. But I was still asleep when my forehead hit the floor.

Then I woke up.

I felt fear and this conjured up memories from an event in my childhood, that now I saw more fully than before. Doors that were closed before, opened.

Fear cannot come if there is no story behind it. Falling cannot happen without a belief or a few beliefs that invite it. I know this is strange for some.

 

After some time I did this painting.

 

235. Take the inner world out

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There are the lines and there are the color shapes. They seem to describe the same thing but they have very different perspectives.

Sometimes, in other paintings, the lines and the shapes do not necessarily describe the shame thing. If we compare this to music, then those paintings are like counterpoint. The lines have a tune and the color shapes have a different tune. But when they are placed on top of each other, the music makes sense. The music becomes richer by the working together of different tunes.

This painting is more like a tune with chords. The chords accompany the tune that the lines make.

If we look at the lines, trying to see the character of the tune, in my opinion, it is hesitant, even afraid somewhat. It tries to describe something but we cannot identify what it is. In a way it is like what toddlers do sometimes, when they pretend to be writing words and sentences but they don’t yet know how to write. So the lines only looks as if they are describing shapes. There is humor in that.

Now if we look at the color shapes, they don’t seem to be worried at all. They seem to be happy. They come together to share an activity and while playing together they keep their independence and individual identities. They seem to be playful and enjoying the game that they play.

If we describe the music here, it may be something like this: on the background of freely moving pleasant chords, the tune is hesitant. Its parts hold on to each other as if they are afraid to fall apart. There is no sense of freedom in the tune. It seems to be working hard, trying to fulfill some duty or necessity. It is a bit ridiculous in its efforts to describe everything in detail while it is impossible to decipher what it describes.

The chords in this piece of music are strange. They are a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant feelings.

I actually like that kind of music.

But if this were the description of a person, what would you want to tell him?

Maybe it will be, to let go of some of the seriousness with which it takes the story line, and give some attention to the deeper layer of himself, where the playfulness, freedom and maybe even the beauty of life’s experiences can be felt. This layer is so close…

But the story won’t stop. And we are here for the story, aren’t we?

So maybe it is possible to take some of the character of the inner layers of who we are and bring it with us outside, when we create the lines of our stories. Maybe we will then make lines that are a bit freer and happier than before?


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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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