
I just stopped at some point
There was no point in going on
The message was in how it could go on
Forever.
Healing and growth through intuitive art

I’m reading this picture, based on its composition. This will be a preliminary reading. I’ll point out a few obvious things and see what I can gather from this. It is possible to read much more in the picture, and maybe I’ll do this in the next entry.
It has two layers, as many of my paintings lately. The drawing layer has three areas. The right side has many architectural shapes. It is organized in mostly perpendicular and horizontal directions, with a few diagonals, that you can find in architecture too.
The left side has shapes that are more organic. The shapes are free from the straight angles of the right side and they grow into each other. The third area is where there is no drawing, or only little short lines that seem to float in space. That’s where there is less density and more freedom.
The pencil lines, those that define the colored areas, go on top of the watercolor lines. In this way they create some confusion, because the colors inside of the pencil lines are all underneath the ochre lines of the drawing. This contradictory message creates a strong connection of the background shapes and the drawing, indicating that the two layers are very close to each other and depend on each other to tell the story of the picture. And it is hard to decide what is more important or primary.
The color shapes in the right side go along with the feeling of architecture or a city. The color shapes on the left go along with the feeling of an organic shape, something that is alive and moving. It is like a person in a sitting position. His two hands are extended to the far left, and it seems that he is doing something outside of the picture.
And there is indeed space around the person and the part of the city that we see. Some smaller shapes float there, breaking the density of the city and the man and giving the picture some places with less tension to rest in.
So the focus of the man is in the more spacious area. That’s what he is interested in.
Basically we have a transition from an area that is densely full of visual events, through more relaxed shapes, that break the straight lines rule, to the beginning of space, into which the smaller pieces of the reality that’s on the right are falling or spreading.
In a shorter way, the picture shows the shift from eventful and intense reality to more peacefulness and freedom.
This is an experience of the now-life that we can read in the basic features of the composition.
If I ask myself where would I want to be, in this picture, the answer is “In all three places.”
I’d like to experience the peace that is outside of the objects, I’d like to experience the richness of the city, and I’d like to experience my body, alive and feeling.
And as I have all three of them at the same time, I can say that I am fulfilled. In this fulfillment there is peace too, till the next interest will catch me.
Isn’t this amazing that from so little you can say so much already?
I do not know what name to give this new chapter. Everything is different for me, and the same. I decide to let the chapter grow and deserve a name, and then it will have it.

And today it happened. Today I understood how you can love everything in your earth life, including the suffering. Because you see the beauty of the game that you, the bigger you, has and is still creating.
You are lead into a blind alley that you create and the keys are handed to you. And don’t worry. This is not a contest. The doors will keep appearing. The smells will cross the barriers of the ends of reality. The sun will rise in you, unstoppable. So don’t worry. Take it all in, as this is what you are here for: To take it in and to crack the walls at the same time. And you cannot even say that this reality does not exist.
What becomes clear is the reality of your experiencing and the opening of your expression of the truth.
Maybe this is a nice place to end this part of the blog, and to start a new part. Let’s see where it will go…

Discovering who you are is the main issue of life on earth.
You can find yourself in many ways and in many places and things. Actually, in every thing.
The best way is through doing what you love to do and taking this way as a trip to the depth of who you are.
You will change along the way, and maybe what you love doing more than anything else will change too. You have to always choose to do what you most love at the moment.
You will start finding yourself in small steps or maybe big. And every time you find yourself, you will feel satisfied. Finding yourself is the source of satisfaction. I want to say the only source, but I’m not sure yet. All this knowledge comes to me as a surprise, and at the same time as something that I have known before.
After the satisfaction periods you will start being curious again, and you will again use doing what you most love at that time to move on towards the depths of yourself.
All of the trip happens between you and eternity, which is you too.

You choose to be a therapist because you want to see if you can find yourself by going through the filter of another character.
So you spend time with the other character and in the conversation the fences fall. Sooner or later you find yourself through him. And he finds himself through you. Then In the deep place in you that is beyond words, you know that he and you are one.
When you reach this recognition of yourself, through the laughing, the loving, the awakened curiosity that appear, yourself smiles, as if he is a baby that has just been hugged and kissed. And you feel as if you have found a proof of what you have always known, that everything is perfect all the time.
I always knew it, you say.
That’s what psychotherapy is for me.

I looked at painting 7/3/16/A.
I started to read it again. Yesterday I read it psychologically (which you didn’t see), and the reading shifted to a bigger view of all psychology, as I’ve been doing lately. Obviously I am in a stage, in which I notice more and more the superficiality of the psychological realm altogether. I understand my meditation teacher’s belittling attitude towards everything psychological. I was, at the time he was doing this, studying psychology as part of becoming an art therapist.
For most people the psychological view widens and deepens their understanding of the human being. It was so for me too. How amazed and thankful I was when I realized that I could read all this hidden treasure in people’s art. And I played in this field for quite a while, enjoying my ability to easily see what is hiding there, and my resultant ability to help people see their own subconscious activity and release its powerful control over them.
Then, very quickly I saw that if you release a lot, you will experience how it is to live with less inhibiting ideas blocking you from being free. The psychological relief became a path of spiritual growth. I tasted the joy that becomes unleashed. I lived the love that streams freely unburdened.
And at some point it became clear to me that those psychological features, the killers of joy and freedom, are the building blocks of the personality. Just a small dip in the non-physical aspect of life makes it totally transparent that this character, this personality, is just a bunch of habits. You look from a deeper place and see the inflexibility of these personality traits as they inevitably cause people to bump into each other quite blindly, respond to each other uncontrollably and create all the unpleasant situations that we know.
Then you realize that what is left in you once these psychological features are let go of, is so much better than these.
What can be better than love?
What is wrong with joy that does not depend on circumstances, but is your inherent essence?
The whole psychological realm starts to look like a veil or a filter that you can look through. At first the view is dim and then it starts brightening. The veil looses all its previous power. Your personal veil becomes just one of the infinite number of empty energetic shapes, that you create in your imagined thought-world. And because you love the characteristics of your essence so much more than the personality’s character, your world starts to reflect back to you what you already experience, the beauty, the creativity, the joy and love. These are what the world is becoming for you.
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.

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.

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?

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.

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?