This time I won’t write a poem, but a description .
At first, when I drew, I thought that the lines represented the pain that I experienced, Relentless and continuous. Then they looked like rain. And in the end they started to look like trees without leaves, shivering in the cold.
Behind the lines there is a landscape.
The lines are like a filter that you have to pass, if you want to go beyond. You can get caught in the filter and you will suffer pain, rain, cold and longing for leaves.
But you can also pass gently, carefully, sensitively, through the spaces between the lines, and then you will find yourself in the place where it is beautiful.
This, in a way, is the essence of spiritual practice.
You can’t eliminate all the obstructions in your personal filter. Usually there are too many of them. But you can teach yourself how to pass in the spaces among them, to arrive at where there is beauty, love, playfulness and joy. The air from the landscape is already here.
And when your practice is through making art, you are already half way there.
He was hungry When he fell His green was still alive His sun still yearned to shine A little more His joys and sorrows Leaned against the wall The light has started Growing bigger It was beautiful He knew Now where is The unseeable heart That will accept him all Into itself?
I am disappearing In my room Gray light is coming From the window My lungs are still breathing Sky My heart is still beating Red and green Broken as I am I still remember earth.
I came to life With thoughts of up and down. I saw a lot of space above me. I found that I was going flat And soon My face was pointed down Towards my shadow.
The light of what’s to come Is shining-in already Here and now And there is always Plenty loving space In all directions.
The view of up and down means that I had to grow. I had to be better. There was something to grow into. There was also the view of the horizontal of course. Yes, things happen and we are moving from here to there. But up is the direction that I wanted to grow into in my youth. All the idealistic people around me wanted this too.
But there were things, parts of my story, that pulled me to the horizontal view. You have to make a living. You are alone. Your body needs sustenance. There are achievements that you will need to fulfill. Some people will help you, and others will be a danger.
And chasing after achievements, you end up, or I ended up realizing that I had limitations, and these pulled me down. I failed to go up because I had flows in my character. This is what I came to believe.
Now I am old. I am eighty. I have a heart condition. I suffer with tremendous nerve pain in my feet. I know that we do not disappear when we die. I know that we are not who we think we are. There is a change in perspective that has to take place if we want to see this. It is not seeing really. But we can be in a state in which we know it. In order to know we need to switch our attention to a different mode, which is the gateway. And here it is. You can try it out right now.
Usually we give our attention to the objects. In the case of this painting, we give our focus to what is drawn and painted. And this is indeed what my story above spoke about. But try this: Try to let go of the objects, as if they don’t mater for the moment, and allow yourself to experience the space in the painting, that is everywhere. And tune in to yourself as you do it, so that you can feel what it does to you inside. There is a subtle sense of relief. Ahh… Like that. Do you feel it? Focusing on the objects turns out to have been an effort, compared to the experience of tuning in to the the space. This is the point of all of this art and poem.
The art was done without thinking. I was just following my sense of beauty.
The poem is a reading of the art, but it responds to the sense of beauty too. And because it does it, it brings to me this content, that the space inside of my mind wants me to get.
intuitiveflow 