Archive for the 'Infinite space' Category

393. The filter

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.

392. Dream

It used to be a mountain
Full of rocks
And now it is a dream
That dreams itself
To be.

391. To the sun

The poem describes a trip from left to right in the picture.

I am running rhythmically
Down a tree covered hill
Becoming breathless suddenly
As I see the omen in the air.

The landscape sends me
Through the fields
Toward a tree that welcomes me
Into a spot
from which I’ll have to leap
Across the empty sky
To meet the sun
That hides behind a cloud.

And I wonder:
How will I make the leap
after having lost my name?

390. How?

Wanting
And the want dissolves

Fluttering once more
In the wordless void,

How can anything
Not wholly beautiful
exist?

389. When he fell

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?

384. A visit with August Moon

I brought my attention to the heart, which is the heart of all.

The sun started to shine from the heart. The energy of it started to grow all around me as a balloon.

I made myself comfortable inside of it. 

I counted slowly to ten and the balloon disconnected from where it was and started to fly, without my control.

I came to a big door and looked at it.

I had a key in my hand and I observed the key.

I placed the key in the key-hole and opened the door.

I went in.

Beyond the door, there was a beautiful landscape, like one of those that sometimes come to me on their own.

There was a stick on the ground and I took it in my hand.

I drew with it another door in the air. I drew a handle on the door

I thought for a moment what I wanted to find on the other side.

It was August Moon. I wanted to meet with August Moon.

I drew on the front of the door an interpretation of him. It was a little bit like the drawing that I have here next to me, on the door of the closet. Many lines in the air.

I went to my heart and brought out my feelings about him.

I put them in the drawing and spent some time looking at the energy of my lines.

I opened the door and went in.

August was all the air around me and had no end in all directions. There was nothing to see, and yet I knew that he was there.

I felt my love to him and his love to me.

A question came to me: Why am I here, in my life, in America, with Anita, with all the people that are in my life, and with all the things that I know? What is the purpose of my being here?

You are here to see how beautiful everything is, and to love everything, was the answer.

August, I said, I don’t want to be alone.

You are the most together that anybody can be, was the answer.

It was time to leave.

I turned around and walked back through the drawn doorway. 

I was in the balloon of energy. 

I counted back from ten to one and came back to my body.

I breathed and felt my body. I looked around at all the objects in my room.

I knew that I am always with August. He is inside of the undefinable me, and I am inside of undefinable him.

383. As I am

As I am

From the ground of all
I yearned to move.
Many excitements allured me.

I moved
And this inventive act
Has made the man with the thousand faces.

Some faces cry
While others laugh.
I took to watching all of them.

And seeing that they always change
I found
That I am the unchanging.

Among the many faces and allures
I am the simple joy
Of being as I am.

381. Space in all directions

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.

And here lies the power of art. Of all the arts.

380. A chord

The earth
Displays
All that grow
And live on it
Like a chord
That is played
In silence.

378. Maybe and maybe not?

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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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