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212. Spots of light on the flow of life

Published May 29, 2015 energy , Inner light , Intuition , making art , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , Truth Leave a Comment
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movement infused with feeling good

Spots of light on the flow of life

These are nerves, and the flow of life. The dots are the mysterious spots of light on the flow of life.

If you take those lights away, the nerves will only follow their usual routines for habitual actions. But when you put the spots of happiness in, the nerves and the flow of life become happy too.

This is how the reading came to me.

This view is not scientific for sure. But it comes from being in a meditative state. It is dream-like and feels good. The process that I go through has brought me to a good state.

When we feel good, more unhappy habits float to the surface. They can’t survive in a happy environment. It is a chance to take care of them. This is why we go up and down.

206. So close to the truth

Published February 28, 2015 energy , evolving , healing , making art , MAking it possible , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , The world of thoughts , Truth 2 Comments
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Everything that I used to see as concrete is turning into states of moving energy.

More and more subtle

More and more subtle

I haven’t written for the blog for quite a long time.

The reason is that I am changing and for a while I lost the clear feeling of direction. I would wake up every morning and ask: Where am I? What am I doing here? Where am I going? I’m still doing it.

When I started this blog I was interested in reading my subconscious. I wanted to find everything that stood in the way of the free flow of joy and I wanted to release its hold on the subconscious.

More specifically I wanted to find the thought patterns that created the damage to the nerves of my feet, as you could read in the “about” page.

I thought I had found everything. But the pain is still with me and I know that I am still missing something. Actually I know what I am missing. I need to be in such a sate in which agreeing to suffer is impossible. A state in which word stories are seen through and known to be the illusion that creates illusions.

Some things worked wonderfully. I found some programs in the subconscious that were surprising to me. Again and again I had confirmations to the validity and value of this method that I came up with. I learned to trust it more and more. I explained how the method works a number of times in the blog, and I have written about it more in my book Opening Intuitive Flow Through Artwork. And I wrote about it in different discussion forums. Working so intensely on myself, by using this method, has made me a better therapist. I had a supervision group of art therapists and they learned to use this method too. I did workshops and taught others how to use it. I presented it in conferences and in lectures.

When I decided to stop the public demonstration of the work on the pain, I continued to do the work. I knew that there would be many repetitions as this always happens, and I did not want to describe these in the blog.

But writing the entries to this blog became something that I liked a lot, and I decided to change the purpose of the process that I showed in the blog to seeing how far such work can take me.

I had many glimpses of peace and joy and you could read about them as they happened. After a while my whole perspective has changed. I lost interest in my subconscious blocks. They lost their charm for me. When they come I just release them. The ropes that I saw on my path, and thought that they were snakes, as the Buddhist story tells, turned back into ropes. I still find it interesting to help my clients read their subconscious and release whatever stops them from being free and joyful. But for myself, I am not attracted to these any more.

In time I came to live with another kind of energy. I found myself in awe as I came to be in the presence of infinite peaceful space. It became easier and easier to get there, and my main focus started to be the investigation of this space. Just being there makes you happy without any perceivable reason. I realize that this is what I have to do. I have to be in this presence again and again, as it fixes everything that needs fixing. My clients changed too and nowadays most of them go through experiences that are like mine. They discover their inner voice and inner guidance. They find joy and playfulness when the fears and worries leave them.

Doing this blog, as it follows my adventure of going into myself is still one of the most exciting things for me to do, and you are moving with me to wherever my front line is. I appreciate you very much for being with me on this trip, like old friends.

Some changes have already taken place naturally and I am going on. Please feel comfortable to communicate, if you are moved to do so. Good to have you. Thank you.

205. How can I feel better now?

Published January 22, 2015 energy , evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , making art , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , Truth Leave a Comment
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You are those vibes

You are those vibes

You are swimming in the universe. You ask: How can I feel better now? You sense how the question changes everything in the universe. You gulp it in and swallow the universe completely. You feel how it becomes you. Now you are those vibes. Lick your lips. It was good.

Now, when you start feeling the itch, ask again: How can I feel better now?

204.Everything is of the same importance

Published January 7, 2015 makingart , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , The world of thoughts , Truth Leave a Comment
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Lost in infinity

Lost in infinity

This is about looking up, while meditating or imagining. It is a good idea, and a strange thing too, as in an infinite field, where there cannot be any place that is different from another, there is no middle, no side, no up and no down.

So looking up belongs to the relative world. Some time ago I was advised by inner guidance to look to the sides, when I dive into imaginary spaces, instead of looking straight forwards. It was a smart advice. I discovered a whole now experience. And maybe this is the beginning training of me in getting used to infinity. There is indeed so much more in it, and the way we focus in infinity is totally different. We do not hold a narrow view. We have the view of all.

And when I looked up at first in meditation, I discovered again a new world. And this is what I started to depict here.

Of course, it is: bringing the relative perspective into the infinite reality.

In my imagination it looked different at first. It looked like a scene into which you could penetrate deeper and deeper, passing bodies of something on the way, going beyond them, passing other bodies, and so on. Here I have some form in the middle, as if it is a three dimensional form. You may get the feeling that it is a kind of a giant. You are looking from the level of the knees and far ahead there is the head. Then it may even look as if this head is looking down at you. As much as I wanted to lose my earthly perspective, it came through. I could not get rid of it. In a way it endears this perspective to me. Like a child that you, impatiently, want to convince to do something that is more comfortable for you to deal with, but the child stubbornly wants to go at that thing from his perspective. At first you get annoyed, but you end up listening. If he insists so strongly, you think, let me listen carefully, because there is something in it for him, and it is important for him so much that he opposes me. Let me see what it is.

So who is the child in this case?

It is the earthly perspective. The way we experience and interpret the world around us. There is always a point in a specific place in the space that I know, from which the view is taken. There is also the issue of bigger and smaller, and the world will compel you to pay attention to these differences, as they have something to do with your safety. If the giant is your friend, then he’d rather be big and strong. But if he is of an unknown orientation…

When you look at the individual spots, some of them seem to be closer to you, and some are farther. This is due to the color and the surrounding colors. If you look at the area of what would be the chest, the dark blue area seems to be an opening into an unknown depth. The purple seems to come toward us. And the green is deep but not so deep as the dark blue. These differences break the solidity of the form, and I wanted this effect to be in the art, to confuse the usual way of relating to forms and background. I wanted you to know that what you are looking at is not what you thought it was.

The white parts can be seen as objects painted in white, as we do sometimes in our reality, but also as areas that were not touched by the power of the colors. They have not been swayed off balance to be close or far, warm or cold, friendly or hostile. So they remained points of reference, like the test groups in scientific experiments that let you know how things will behave without the influence of the foreign element that you introduce.

So you now start to have the feeling of what this painting is about. It is about being uncertain as for where things are, of the integrity of forms, of background and foreground. You are still with a few of the perceptual habits of an earthling, but your trust in your reality starts to falter.

And it is fascinating indeed. The fascination will take you through the unfamiliar. And it will take you to where everything has the same importance. What comes to mind in this context is the music of Schoenberg indeed. The invention of the twelve-tone music did the same service to music that this artwork does to visual perception. In the traditional structure of a scale there are more important tones and less important ones. The home tone is the most important, and it creates the adventure. We go far from it and feel uncomfortable. We come back and relax. This is the relative world. We, humans gave the importance to some of the places, because this was our perception of reality. Places have relative importance and everything else has relative importance as well. In Schoenberg’s music this relativity is lost. You are placed in an unformed space musically, where it is hard to know where you want to be. You can struggle and try to reach something that will resemble the familiar home, but you can’t really find it. So you get used to having no home. And when your worry subsides, you start to play. You try to put things in different orders. And you know that the orders that you create are temporary and not substantial. But they give you pleasure and activate your curiosity to go on trying other combinations.

So now, do you have a better sense of this artwork?

201. The vividness of the present moment

Published October 12, 2014 evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , making art , meditation , Reading art , Spiritual , Truth Leave a Comment
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Radiating

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

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?

199. The painting of the pain

Published September 28, 2014 energy , evolving , healing , Intuition , making art , meditation , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual Leave a Comment
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Make believe pain

Make believe pain

The pain was strong and unrelenting. I decided to paint it.

In the stage in which it was a drawing only, it expressed the craziness and strength of the pain quite effectively. When I added the colors the effect became somewhat weaker. The power of lines to affect the areas that they point at, was hindered by the viscosity of the colors and also by the effect of the colors. A body of color has an effect of its own and when you place different areas of color next to each other they influence each other and create yet another effect. All these added effects weaken, relatively, the effect that the lines had when they did not compete with the colors. Nevertheless, you can still see the craziness of the pain, the way it spreads in all contradicting directions. This contradiction creates a feeling of struggle and chaos. The chosen colors also cry out from the page. They radiate energy that refuses to settle. This adds to the expression of the power of the pain and the chaos. When you hold this picture in your hands you want to drop it or put it quickly in a box and cover it with a black cloth, to stop that radiation and protruding thorns.

Well, this is how I feel when the pain is so strong and persistent. And since I do not have any way to smother it, as I would have liked to do, I have to come to terms with it. And the most important part of coming to terms is to learn that my mood is not dependent on how my body feels. I can have this pain and still be in a good mood. I can even feel thankfulness to the pain for giving me the opportunity to learn that this is possible.

You may notice that the painting has this air about it of having been done for children. As if fear, danger and threat have been depicted here for a children’s book. Do you get this feeling?

This is due to this distance that I took from the pain, allowing it to be, and taking care of my mood separately. It is still very impressive in its effect, but its power to make me fear is reduced to a make believe fear. It is like a monster in a puppet theater. Even if death will result, it will be a make believe death.

There are two places where the colors that were used are dark and contrast strongly with their immediate environment. One is in the blue that is darker than all the other areas of color and contrasts strongly with the red lines that are touching it. It could have been an opening to the sky and a window to escape through, but the restlessness of the texture is pretty deterring and the strong red lines all around it make it feel dangerous to pass through. So there is no escape.

The other place is in the lower left corner, where the dark violet made the lines stand out so clearly that their drawing character is emphasized. The feeling that these lines give is more like wanting, longing, needing and complaining. Maybe the pain asks for attention, as love was not given at some point to something that wanted to be accepted and loved?

198. The difference that awareness makes

Published September 22, 2014 energy , evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , making art , MAking it possible , meditation , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , Truth Leave a Comment
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Programs in the subconscious

Programs in the subconscious

I prepared many colors that were to go into many shapes. But when the painting got to this point, I knew it was finished.

There is an area where most of the colors are concentrated. From there, spreading to all directions, this pattern of things-added-to-things, where there are no filled-in colors, goes on beyond the area that we see.

It passed through my mind, before I started writing, that the most important thing for me in making the art is to look very precisely at the experience of the moment. This is what intuition does automatically but it does it in different degrees of precision, based on preparedness, openness, concentration and other conditions. This idea came to me some time before, when I saw, in other cases, that when the art was true to what was experienced in the moment to a greater degree, the art looked very beautiful to me. This makes “beautiful” equal to “what is true now.” I have found this to be true not only in regard to my own art but in regard to the art of clients too. When their art looks very beautiful to me, I know that it is a very good description of what is happening with them now. Interesting, isn’t it? But this time I am thinking about other characteristics of this state.

When the description is precise, the looking itself releases the perceived state completely. The state leaves and a new state rises in the field of experience. The new state that will arise is a response to my vibratory state. If I am confused, a confusing state will arise. If I am happier than before, the new state that will appear for me, will be happier.

If you look at the artwork again, and consider the empty shapes as a structure, ready to be filled out, but not yet filled, then it is like looking at the blueprint of my subconscious. Every empty cell is a belief that can be activated. For the time being, I have focused only on those cells in the middle and they have gotten activated.

Now two things can happen.

If I am not aware, then the entity that sees and experiences the thing that appeared in my experience is my blueprint. My blueprint can also be called my autopilot (or the subconscious). It has habitual responses. Most of the autopilot’s responses have to do with a not-so-good feeling. It is not an empowered state. The responses are not inspired or passionate. They are just automatic. Then another response will arise to the new state and it will go on like this automatically, one response after another, strengthening existing tendencies and leaving me a bit more entrenched in my beliefs, or less flexible.

If I am aware, everything becomes different. First, the awareness makes the experience beautiful. Then, if the state that is experienced is less good feeling than the state of awareness with the beauty that it perceives, the not so good state will dissolve into the better feeling state. This new state will be the state that invites the next experience, so the next experience will be better than the one before. It is a big difference, isn’t it?

So we see that being aware changes the course of events toward better feeling states.

Now imagine that the area in the middle of the artwork that has colors in it is experienced by awareness, as it does in this case, through the artwork. In my mind now, the state that awareness looks at is changing into a better feeling state. And now, everything in its environment has to change too, to match the better state in its midst. This area around the middle is the whole blueprint of expectations, all the potential “work orders” for the autopilot to operate from. So, based on the small change in part of it, the whole blueprint becomes different and we have a different person. I am becoming a different being. Only my habitual thoughts believe that I am still the same.

197. Seventy

Published September 16, 2014 evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , making art , MAking it possible , meditation , Physical and non physical , Spiritual , The world of thoughts , Truth 2 Comments
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Transparency

Transparency

One day before, according to the Gregorian calendar, I am 70.

A good friend asked me how does it feel, and I did not have anything special to say.

It feels like something lived in this body, that is never the same body, and this body is almost transparent, it is not real. It floats in endless space, which is full of life and interest. Things happened to it. There are many stories about it and they seem to be lined up in some complete version, but even in this version there are many parts that have been forgotten, or that have been told in different ways over the years.

More and more and more I want to feel the endless.

There is a source for all that is experienced now.

193. Excited arising

Published August 13, 2014 energy , evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , making art , MAking it possible , meditation , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , Truth Leave a Comment
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For a few days I did not make many panting in my daily working on myself, as I used to do. It felt that I was doing a lot with each one and needed some space between them.

Excited arising

Excited arising

This is a painting I started very late at night, finished in the morning and wrote about two days later. In between finishing and writing I had a conversation with inner guides, or deeper self, and suddenly realized experientially that the creation of an experience (like, for example, the experience of a friend appearing in front of me) and the experiencing of it are one and the same thing. There is no gap between them. The experiences come out of who-we-are and the experiencing is by that same thing, at the same time. Creating the experience is the experiencing of it.

This may seem meaningless. So what, you’d ask?

It is the realization that we are the infinite. We, as the infinite, create the experience, which is both creating and experiencing. This is how we know ourselves. Every experience reverberates throughout all of what we are.

When I look at this drawing, I see that the moving force in it are the lines in different blues, that build up a movement up and left. It is like an excited arising.

When you make art you dip your brush in the paint and you start making a line on your surface. As you are making the line, you experience the making of the line and its effect on you. So it happens in exactly the same time. Sometimes you change the direction of the line as a result of what comes up in you as you are experiencing it. So it is an activity that is very grounded in the flow of “now.”

And suddenly I know:

I know why it feels so good to make art, and this indeed is true for all the other arts. It is pleasant because being in the flow is becoming one with who we are. And since who-we-are is joyful, loving, curious, peaceful, all these together and more, these are the experiences that we have as we flow. The ideas originate in the non-physical realm, and flow through us to appear in our dream reality. We experience being the creator and experiencing our creation. This is the purpose of life as humans in this dream life.

And this state of flow is also what heals everything that is less than this joy. Healing is making what is not true, true.

Back to the art.

The color areas feel as if they are substances or spaces that have light within them. The light emerges trough the colors. Every one of them is like a little unexpected world, endowed with its own special color. Can you imagine what is inside of them?

They can be things that are “real” like houses, trees, caves, tunnels, but I know that there is no “real”. It is just an experience, created and experienced at the same time.

The end of the discussion about the painting: These color spots don’t really care about being anything. They just enjoy arising excitedly just as the lines in blue.

192. Desire

Published July 13, 2014 energy , evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , making art , meditation , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , The world of thoughts , Truth Leave a Comment
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Yes/no together

Yes/no together

I have been doing a series of drawings about desire. It just came up and I let it be.

Here is one more painting about desire. But desire is becoming more and more beautiful. And here I am starting to know about the way of coming out of addictions, if this is what you want to do. It is through the discovery of the beauty in it. The seeing that it is absolutely beautiful and as good as anything else, so it loses the allure of the rebellion and stays as one possibility out of the infinite number of them.

And then, once it is not a rebellion any more, you choose by your bigger intention or any other consideration, like playfulness, love etc. When your choice starts to be from this love, curiosity, care, playfulness, which are the makeup of who we are, you are OK.

So I am thinking about the people who will look at this drawing/painting, and they may not know on their own that this is about desire. What to do for them?

The first is to say so and they may believe me. Why not?

Then I’d say: Look at how the green and the orange play with each other. They are not completely harmonious or in agreement. There is intensity in each of them but they oppose each other. They push each other away. But they are playing together here, aren’t they?

And this is typical about desire. There is a mixture of wanting and not wanting, a hunger and a chase, a yes/no, yes/no, which fuels the desire. (A yes/no is the energetic source of everything in our world. Maybe I should write about it in the future?) It is a very strange thing indeed, of a suffering and a satisfaction together at the same time. A want more, want more, must have more, which I don’t yet have, which motivates the chase and the pursuit and the activity.

Then look at the ochre, which is a softer version of both the orange and the green. It somehow connects them and softens everything with a sense of being a human being, a friend, a collaborator.

Then look at the brown, which is like the secretive fertile source.

Look at the shapes of the lines all over the painting, which are softly sensual, touching everywhere, almost tickling. And the whole is a like a strange flower that grew by the rules of yes/no on its own from this mud of existence, which is nothing else but the energy of the universe, colored by us as dark, sensual, lack/fulfillment experience.

Has it become clearer?

So, again, I am discovering the infinite richness of what is considered by some as not so good, has to happen but the less the better, etc.

Looking at this and finding that it is nothing but one more of the infinite appearances of the all that is, takes the judgment out from it. With no judgment, you free yourself from the attachment to it, and like everything else it becomes the face of infinity.

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Entries 1-58 show how I use the method of Intuition Through Art to heal myself from Peripheral Neuropathy.

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