Archive for June, 2017

267. What is there?

P1000458

Thinking again about the choice of doing the blog as my direction.

It may feel as if I am an ant, crawling on a topographical map, among hills and valleys in brown and green. And it can also be seen as if I am the sky that is getting involved with the hills, the valleys and the ants.

Somehow it seems that doing the blog is the most forgiving occupation. It doesn’t hold you to a verbally defined commitment. You have seen it going in different directions. One day it was centered on poetry as it looks at life in a fluid way, not entrapped in what seems to be reality, but flowing away from boundaries of shape and time.

Another day I looked at my subconscious beliefs, as they could be detected in my artwork. These beliefs are what mask the truth.

Sometimes discussions of artworks spilled over to glimpses of how things are in these ever-changing worlds, yours and mine.

It can go anywhere.

And don’t forget that it started as a description of self-healing, and almost instructional pieces about the method that I came to find, use and share, and you could read how I viewed the sources of illness (In the ’About’ page).

This is why choosing a direction settled quite easily, in the end, into taking this blog-making as my thread, the line in the middle of my path of choosing and doing. It is a direction without a goal, but with a compass. It has no end. And I’m sure that along the way I’ll be healed from the physical ailments and more and more clearly will be living as an expression of the truth, knowingly.

For one year, when I was 21, I worked as a surveyor’s assistant in a copper mine. Two of us, the assistants, were given the geologist’s instructions to the miners about which direction to dig now, and we descended into the dark tunnels with headlights, heavy batteries attached to our belts and the surveying equipment, to mark with little metal pegs that we hammered into the rocks, which are the new directions in the different faces of the mine.

Sometimes we sneaked away to some neglected, dead end tunnel, far from the noise and sweat of the digging machines. We would sit quietly on the damp earth and turn off the lights on our helmets. We would be then in total darkness, such that you cannot find outside of the mine.

The world would disappear and we would hold our breath.

Why do people do things like this?

I think it is to find the truth. What is there, when everything is gone?

What is there?

266. Just reading

Craving roots

There are many ways to read art. This is one of them: Just start writing and see where it takes you.

You can also say: Start to describe what you see. From there you start to be guided by your interests, associations, and yes, the universe supports you, based on your inclination at the time. We are always supported.

The painting is from June 5th and I wrote this on June 6th. Other things came in the way and I did them, but now I want to share this.

The first thing that came to my mind was that it came out alive. It means that the power that was used in order to create it is still in it. And what is the power? It is a thought, expressed in space and time.

When you look at it, your energy field responds to the experience by arranging itself into an energy structure. To you it feels like a feeling that you may have a name for. Then your thought processes become engaged and a new adventure starts in your story of your life. It may be big or small. Maybe you immediately turn away, smile, have a cup of tea and look at birds in the sky?

Here is what I wrote:

It feels like this: a number of shapes in different colors bump into each other in the middle (These are the colored shapes). The feeling is of an argument or at least a disagreement (Purple, orange, brown and blue). But it does not come to fighting.

There are three shapes who are out of the group. They haven’t come into touching relations, like the four others. So maybe they hesitate to join? Maybe the yellow on the left and the pink on upper left were kicked out of this society or could not join in as there was not even the slightest invitation extended to them. Or, maybe they stopped before they came too close, so that they can take a good look at what is happening.  Maybe they want to check it out before they join? And the cloud, the third of the outsiders, is the one who cares the least. He seems to have more power than all the rest. He has his own behavior and his own field of reference, which is the weather system in the area and the world. As such he is much less a participant in the meeting. But because of him, the perspective of other, bigger systems, is added to every part of this picture.

Then there is the earth with an orange border. But this element is cut abruptly on the left, without too much drama.

This tear-off breaks the impression of a stable earth. This earth can shrink to nothing. Don’t rely on me, it says. Look somewhere else for your stability.

Now the purple and the brown seem to connect with the earth, in spite of it being ephemeral. The orange and the blue seem to be okay with just floating in the air. Or maybe they are not so okay with it, and this is why they come to mix with the earthlings.

So here is a kind of a summary. There is a little drama here. Like in a country, or any society. People collaborate without agreeing with each other. There are some small areas of overlapping and you can say, some form of compromise and collaboration. The others are in differing degrees of separation, deciding not to get involved. But they are close anyway. They are human too and they don’t want to give up on their belonging to this group.

These are the energy bodies, operating by the hidden assumptions that bring about what seems to appear in reality, which is the drawing in green lines.

The green lines describe little separate forms that together create the pattern of what appear in this world of time and space.

So when you wander in this world and see all these forms around you, know that they come from a deeper, usually unseen, layer of energy bodies, coming into being from thoughts and ideas.

All comes from thoughts.

As in a known Zen story, in which some students, looking at a flag that moved in the wind, argued about what truly moved. Is it the flag? Is it the wind? And the master said: Nothing moves, except for your thoughts.

And how could I forget the red part of the lines, in a little area in the right? There was some drama in the reality of the picture.

This red part is indeed a part of the reality that I created with my thoughts. But I gave it the red color to say that according to my beliefs this is a violation of some sort.

Now imagine that you are an art therapist and this is the first artwork that your new client made. Do you see how much can be learned from just the first painting?

And if every one of us has a such a collection of thoughts with him at every moment, can you see what the fabric of our humanity is made of? If we want to have any measure of freedom, we must come out of this state, in which we are controlled by our assumptions, and look at it from a deeper perspective.

265. My heart has been here already (the door)

You will have to imagine the picture for this entry.

Imagine a few wide horizontal lines, painted with a soft pastel in brown, any brown that you like. The lines overlap and, together, create one thing that travels now and now and now. It travels joyfully, like a dolphin in water. Sometimes one of the lines becomes bigger. At other times another one does it. Sometimes the colors change. Let it be painted by your heart.

Now in words.

The big picture:

I hear a bird outside. I don’t recognize it. But somewhere, in a deep place in me, Of course I know it. And I think: this bird sings from my heart. Then I think: everything that happens in this world comes from my heart. The buildings, the people on my block. There are many of them. I live in New York City. The street here is like a canyon. The precipices on each side are made of some eight floors apartment buildings that are more than a hundred years old. The number of people who live on my block is probably 300 times greater than the number of people who lived in the village of my youth.

And everything, all these people, the dust and soot, the funny and strange cars, the way the sunlight manages to come in and paint parts of the walls, all are coming from my heart.

This is the big picture for our purposes now.

The small picture:

What do I want to do?

For 14 years I was a designer, and changed to an illustrator. Then, after 17 years I changed to an art therapist. Now, 13 years later, I’m changing again. The change happens by itself. Usually people don’t let the change go through, because, logically, it does not make sense to start everything anew, when the old thing is working already and even gets you some recognition and acknowledgement.

But I learned not to stand in the change’s way, because I suffer if I do not follow my heart.

So the new thing was here already and was doing itself. It did not come from any ’sense-making.’ But I did not recognize this clearly yet.

At first I thought I wanted to live like an artist now. The studio was calling me. All the paints were getting excited.

But I also wanted to write and make books and children’s books. My life would be too bad without making them.

And what about living on the path that leads deeper and deeper into the truth of everything?

And what about sharing what I find with others who are interested? This is one of the most beautiful things that I can do. What else is there to do here, on earth?

And I wanted to make music.

And so went my thinking and I did not know what to do.

I’ve learned that when I have such a weighty question, it is best to keep it as a question and since this is after all a matter of the heart, I’ll invite the heart to answer. It always answers in its time. So every time the question came, I gave it to the heart: Here, this is the question I am looking for an answer for.

And one day, when I was in a short meditation, and the question was tickling, the answer came:

The blog.

I ‘work on myself’ all the time and the blog accompanies me as I go. I use artmaking and reading the art as my main method, so I have the art and the writing. It is already like a book. I can, at some point, collect some entries according to a subject that I’ll choose and make a book out of them. Or even more than one book. Sometimes it has illustrations too. Everything that I do from love and interest is already included in the adventure of the blog making. I have a conversation with other people too.

Everything that I did in my life was always about these same things, about development, freedom, beauty, living meaningfully. It is as if I have been doing this blog all my life.

And for income I can exchange the art that is created along the way with money that will pay for my life. It’s all very flexible. Things can be added, directions can change.

And in this way, with all these thoughts coming in very fast and quietly, everything fell into place.

When this clicked into place I felt a huge relief. I knew that everything was okay. And there was no need to change anything, as I was already there. For a while i made sure that I did only what I wanted to do. Tis opened the door for my heart to choose for me, and I was already where I wanted to be.

In my meditation when this knowing appeared, I saw an image in my imagination. I saw a few wide lines made with a dark brown soft pastel. The lines overlapped, just as the colors usually overlap in my paintings, and became one expression. This is the essence of this blog.

So I answered, for those who were interested. And now, back to life.

264. What is not expressed

Interrupted with excitement

I started this painting in the afternoon after a day of revelations. I was satisfied. A door has opened for me into where all the questions about what I wanted to do came to rest. I’ll write about this sometime later.

In the painting, the drawing in grayish green came into the paper from above and started to create some form but then decided to go farther, guided by its own curiosity, into the white space. This indeed is not true. It is my curiosity. But sometimes you feel as if the line is someone with a life of its own.

Suddenly a friend called and I stopped painting. As in many other times, I had the thought that later I’d be able to pick up the drawing  where I left it.

We talked for a long time.

Looking again at the drawing later, I decided that it stopped just where it had to stop, and I switched myself to the color mode. In all that I do, I never just stick to a plan, regardless of circumstances. I see circumstances as signs from a deeper place in me that wants to be recognized. So I always take the challenge.

The painting progressed smoothly, with ideas coming to my imagination and being placed on the paper without any hesitation. I finished before I went to bed.

In all that time I did not really look at the painting as an observer. I was a participator, allowing the inner flow to be expressed on the paper. I left the painting for the night and planned to have a good look at it in the morning. But an impression was already in my mind.

The drawing gives the impression of something that was abruptly stopped. The colors show that something dramatic is happening, like fire. There is also a sense of some kind of steady rhythm, out of which the bursting of the fire happened. In the lower left, an uninviting lump of heaviness and sadness feels to be turning away from what is happening.

I could not sleep for some time. It was not the pain alone. There was some unsettledness in me. This unsettledness is what did not let me rest.

I got up and made a small drawing, asking: Let’s see what is happening in my mind.

Shock

It was strange this time when I wanted to read the drawing. I did not feel anything about any of the lines or shapes.

My work with others came to my mind. Many times when people had blank areas in their art where it felt as if something had to be, we found that these places actually contained something very meaningful that the ones who did the drawings did not want to experience again. A trauma is an example.

And remembering this, suddenly something came through. There is a feeling of shock in this drawing of mine. As if everything that was in motion froze in place, and all emotions were blocked. Or something in the field of my beliefs, that I invested much effort in building and sustaining, broke to pieces, and all reference points of my life lost their place. It is as if my world, the way I knew it, collapsed and disappeared. There was no way to know what was what and how to relate to it.

That’s trauma.

The pink shape adds a feeling of a soft body and blood that somehow are related to the experience.

So you see? When it seems that there is nothing to say, there is actually a lot to say.

The minute I discovered this, all my unrest disappeared, and I discovered my tiredness, which lead me to bed.

Also important to note that just knowing what is going on in the mind is enough for dismantling it. There is no need for doing anything else. Just to know. But the knowing must not be an intellectual knowing. It must be experiential, which can only happen when our vibration aligns with a deeper state that can also be called the true self. This state is accessed by how I do the drawing and how I do the reading. I mean, by allowing intuition do the art and the reading. There is more to it, and I wrote about this in the past and in my book (Opening Intuitive Flow Through Artwork).

This process that I just did is a spiritual path. It moves your identification to a deeper layer of yourself.  When you change yourself like this, the subconscious throws to the surface everything that does not fit to the new you, because it is of a lower vibes. You have a chance to become aware of it, and by doing this it leaves you. In most cases you have to do it many times.

Now I drew again, used some paint and you can see that I did calm down.

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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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