Radiating
This time I’m not going to write about this painting and the other one down the page. I added them here to decorate. Maybe they are connected?
These words came to me:
As long as you send out, you do not receive.
The elaboration is below.
I am doing short meditations during the day, of relaxing all the focuses. I look inside and find where I am focused and let it go. When I first came to a state without focusing, it felt a little frightening, because as it turns out all or most of our habitual focusing is about wanting to be safe. We are afraid all the time and watch out for whatever might happen. This is why, when I relaxed the focuses, I felt the fear from which they came.
After some time of doing this, I suddenly felt the vividness of the present moment, in a way I have never felt before. I felt how much it is alive. I can’t describe this in words but it is wonderful. So now I understand what it means to be in the moment.
It means first to let go of the fears and trust that you are okay without being on guard. And when the experience of the vividness comes, you know experientially that you are much more than okay. You are in wonderland.
Connect it to your intuitive flow method, says my inner guide.
So I do.
Being in the now happens on its own when you follow only your sense of beauty while making art. It is much easier to be in the moment through artmaking, than to do it mentally. When we do this, we also feel that it is okay to be without our fear focus. Instead we go to our interest, curiosity and love. This is a good way to let go of the fears. You can’t act out of curiosity and out of fear at the same time. If you act out of curiosity, you are not afraid.
And as we go on following the sense of beauty, we stay in this state of experiencing the vividness of the moment for the duration of the artmaking.
When we read the art, we do this while being-in-the-now for a second time, and experience the vividness of our artwork. This is experiencing how it felt to be present a few minutes ago. But the experience of this happens in the present, because it is based on looking at the art now.
Another issue that arises is the idea of “the present.” This idea belongs to the way of understanding that thinks that there is time, there are past, present and future. But what is meant by saying “to be in the present” is not to be in the middle of that line of time. It is about being in a different, deeper state, in which the understanding that there is time does not happen. When we look at it at first we think that this is a strange way of understanding, and that we need to shut off some important capacities in order to imagine that such a state, in which we do not know about time can exist. Eventually this strange state, we come to realize, is the truth of how things are. And the thinking process that we developed as humans, and that has the idea of time in it, is one ingredient of the state of affairs and not the basis of everything else.
Now I think that it is a very good idea to read the art, to find the fears or any other unhappy feelings, and paint them.
As we paint them, we release them. And I have written about this a lot.
In this way there is a complete practice: Draw what is going on inside of you now. Be guided by your sense of beauty only. Read the art, also from the state of awareness and flow, as I teach in many other places, including the book “Opening Intuitive Flow Through Artwork.” Find fears and draw them to release them.
End with a new drawing of “what is happening now” so that you can see that you have changed. When you know that you have changed, the change stays.
Floating landscape
Curiosity, as it turns out, is openness to receive. It is a burning desire to receive experiences from the universe. Being open like this and receiving experiences is abundance. This is what abundance boils down to. We want to be rich so that we can be unafraid and open up to experience the present moment. We don’t know that this is what we want but it is so. Experiencing the present moment with all its richness and depth is happiness. We do not have to wait until we are rich or until something that we believe will make us experience joy will happen. We just have to release our fears and open up now.
The fear and the caution are defensive activity aimed at what we perceive as outward. It is a pushing away activity. As long as there is this pushing away, there cannot be a receiving.
The trust in the truth of now starts when we discover experientially that the truth has to do with love, with acceptance, with fun, with fulfillment. When we discover this, our attitude starts to change from fear to a desire to have more of the truth. So if you want to help people change their attitude toward the truth, you have to bring them to experience the love, the fun and the acceptance that are in the truth of the moment.
By making art from your sense of beauty, you yourself become the accepting and the curious entity. You experience being awareness in action. You don’t make art from the feeling of wanting to push things away, but from the openness that wants to experience.
So the question now is: How do you bring people to realize that what they do in the artmaking, as they work from their sense of beauty, is the expression of the truth. And how can you bring them to the knowledge that they can become that entity that acts out of the sense of beauty all the time? How can you bring people to relax their judging, and let themselves be this eager and accepting curiosity?
intuitiveflow 