Things that I drew many times before, appear again in this drawing.
The drawing is dense with shapes, especially on the right half. This drawing asks for colors that will help define the shapes, the background and the background of the background. The first background is the environment. The second is eternity.
What are these things doing together? They are flowing. They come into being and they move on, leaving their place in our awareness for other things to come, with the flow of our thoughts.
When you look at details, you may find that even shapes that seem to block the flow move, together with everything else.
All the things that I love move. They are not now what they were before. Mainly, everything shows to me how everything changes. Like watching a parade, I watch my life passing by. There will always be something to watch. My thoughts will make everything more and more beautiful. The sky will turn into the infinite heart. My home will recline on the back of my cat and both will float as clouds over the land, spotted with things I have not come to know yet. The village of my youth will undulate with little waves, while a simple bug will fly away from the big pine of my youth to its own new perceptions.
Then, when you think of it, only thoughts and perceptions change.
To end, since the drawing begged for colors, I gave them to it.
I thought just now of calling it: birds falling from the sky.
As in many times before, many shapes that I drew, not knowing what I was doing, ended up looking like strange animals. I did not think of any birds and no people were planned. But now there is a man in the left lower corner, doing something and maybe using a second head to look at the biggest falling bird. Maybe it is falling right on him? On the right there is a bra hanging from a tree branch. It seems there is some ground at the bottom. It is not drawn. But several things stand on it. This is why, for me, it feels that an earth must be there. At the top there is a big bird feeding a young, smaller bird, while in flight, as airplanes sometimes do. maybe there is a cat down on the earth, with some unknown creature standing on its back. So what is behind what I draw here? I somewhat like this drawing. I did not add paint to it, to preserve it as it is, in the most alive state, before the power of the colors reduces its strength. Being raw, you can feel the fascination with the shimmering of everything. This is how I see things nowadays. It is not a perfect drawing. The hanging bra and one little bird, alone in the air, at the top left, break the diagonal flow of everything else. The little bird moves at least. But the bra is defying every tendency in the drawing, by hanging vertically, as if nothing is happening around it.
This is not a happy drawing, though the deep curiosity is here, and curiosity is a happy state. So it is a mixed mood.
I love birds, I love rocks (there are two at the lower right corner), I love cats, I love people, I love the sky. There is nothing in the drawing that I do not love.
Maybe the issue of the drawing is the inconsistencies?
Maybe it is the big event of the central big bird falling and the chaos that it creates?
Of course there are always details in life that continue their natural way of behaving, as if nothing happened, as in all cases when some disaster occurs.
This is it! I have caught the essence of the drawing for me.
How do I know?
When I wrote this it felt right.
So:
Disaster happened.
and nature goes on as if everything is okay.
The sky continues to be wonderful.
Painfully, the recognition is being forced on you: the big disastrous event is only in your eyes. Big as it is, it comes and goes without leaving a mark in infinity.
There is joy everywhere.
The universe with no borders is flowing gracefully and lovingly forever.
Everything happens and nothing happens.
It is like all the little waves that you bump into when swimming in the lake. How many of them will you remember when you are already out of the water, lying on your back on a big towel and watching birds in the blue sky?
I invent as I go. The next line always suggests itself. It means that I am in a conversation and allowing the infinite-field draw through me. It always responds to my mood or feeling in the time. And if I allow a description of some energy, an expression of a feeling or any inner experience, come through as well, the energy of the feeling is released at the same time that it comes to be seen on the paper. It is released because it is being seen from the perspective of the flow, which is a higher energy. Higher energy dissolves lower energy.
Then, still in the process, relieved from what I felt before, a new, better feeling arises and is also expressed in its turn. And so on.
At some point I feel good about the way the drawing is now, and this is the sign to stop. It feels complete.
This feeling of completeness is miraculous. Where does it come from? I ask my inner guide and he says: This is your gift.
Do I understand this? Not really. I consider this not-knowing a gift too.
…
I can leave the drawing as it is.
And I can start playing with colors and additional textures or whatever feels good.
I wait for the lines that are done in watercolor to dry out. Then a thought comes to me, to photograph every step, so when I share this text with you, you will have in front of you what was in front of me when I wrote about each of the steps of making the painting. But I get so engrossed in the process that I do not want to stop, and I end up finishing the whole painting, without taking any photograph in the process. So you will have to imagine the steps that I wrote about, when the painting was in progress, while looking at the finished painting.
Now, with the finished drawing in front of me, I already feel so much better than before. Yes, just making these few lines made me feel so much better. All along the way, through the doing of the drawing, I released whatever emotions came up and became freer. Infinity matched my new feeling and brought new ideas for lines or effects that felt better than before.
…
I did the first color area, the dark green. The people at Prismacolor (I used Prismacolor pencils to color) call it Olive Green, but it is not olive green at all. It is more like what is called in other places Forest Green. It has a sense of depth and aliveness. I feel happy about how the drawing jumps above it. The softness of the green and what feels like a positive environment makes the brown of the drawing a bit scary and as it has bad intentions.
Also, suddenly there is a feeling of depth. The green calls you to sink deeper into it and the brown line is jumping closer to us.
…
I had a feeling of what would come after this green spot. I saw in the imagination many colors. I saw a procession of them in the same kind of spots, developing into some jolly dance.
But now, that I see what is appearing, as I am working on the next color area, the ochre, another game suggests itself to me. I feel excitement about what I’ll do. Look at this: another improvement in the level of joy.
…
The second color, the reddish ochre, is in. It feels as if it is under the green, but if you ignore the area where this new color touches the green and look only at how it interacts with the brown lines, it feels to be closer to us than the green. It is under the lines just because I drew it as such. But it is jumping out a little and in other circumstances could be felt to be closer than the brown lines.
I look at what I have now and I feel it is almost enough, but not yet.
The color areas have some stability to them that makes the lines seem more active than before.
Does it feel good now? Yes, it does. But still I feel there is need for more.
…
There is strong pain in my left foot. The foot is hot. This is unpleasant and my automatic thoughts about it take my mood down a bit.
On the other hand, even though I can do something to reduce this pain, the interest in what is happening in the painting keeps me involved in the process.
…
I get tired suddenly and decide to stop and continue the next day.
…
I look at the picture in progress in the next day. The red added a stone like body that is suddenly turning down. The ochre and the green made an effort to go up and this red goes down. It is not a stone really, and the green and ochre aren’t that heavy. They float. They all are light and it is just a meandering of energy, depicted in this way.
Making the red go down is actually following what the drawing does. The following of the drawing is not like making a copy of its movement but a variation that is at play with it. Again, the colors add a sense of depth, a concrete depth. The white background that the drawing played on can represent the infinite space, the boundlessness. The colors come a little closer to the way we experience our reality (This shape is close to me and that one is a bit farther away).
Adding the colors and then more effects is like composing music. You have the leading voice in the drawing. If we do not add anything after this, we have an a-capella performance. Adding the color spots and other things is like adding harmony and maybe a base line and drums. This is the way it is for me. The added color shapes can go along, can highlight the drawing and can contradict it. This creates the composition, and the composition is the most important aspect of the way the whole piece feels. When you play music, it is because you love to hear it. And it is the same here. Everything is done in the painting because I love to experience the way it comes out on the paper.
…
Now I have just done the light, dust-in-the-desert like, cloud under the lines in the left region.
As I was finishing I felt a bit of an alarm. Maybe this is not the best color here? I saw it there before I made it. I always have this soft, trusting, question in me before I make the next step. What will come now? Aug., what do you think? Aug. is August Moon, my inner guide. He is always present for me so lovingly. And he paints with me. We are one, you can say. So I invite him to participate in all that I do here as a human being on this earth.
Usually, as soon as I ask, I see the next step in my imagination and I do it. When I say that I see it, it is still not final. It keeps changing as long as I make it. Ikeep changing throughout the process, and these changes are expressed all the time. This gives a wonderful feeling of wellbeing, of playing joyfully. You can say that it is a way to walk along with awareness. Awareness itself only looks and knows. But I like to express, so I invent ways to make effects in the art that express what awareness sees.
…
At this point I look at the painting again and I start seeing possibilities for a few steps ahead. But when the blue is done, all the other possible additions become unnecessary.
…
I needed to have blue there. It was something I felt very strongly in my body. So now I feel relieved. It is a good feeling, like: Everything is okay now.
But is it? Let me look again.
The addition of the colors has made the painting more dramatic. Especially the addition of the blue has a strong effect. Now the lines are like wind and the way it blows, and the color areas are like a thunder as it moves through the landscape.
The fact that the area with colors is in the middle and is surrounded by white makes the scene harsh. It is almost shocking. Such a drama is happening in the middle, that everything else in the world has become white. The central happening has sucked all the energy from the world.
And me? I feel excited. What a game! Look at what I made!
…
I could stop here. It is like a minimal statement. The string instruments, as I imagine the lines to be, have a meandering tune. They mix with each other to travel along a short musical sentence, from right to left. They go up, they go down like in a wave, they swell again and this is the whole sentence. And in the background you hear the thunder of other instruments rolling, making a big show, but it is a short and colorful one. It all happened quickly and now it has ended. You still tremble with the sound waves.
…
Something deep in me wants more. The picture is not totally true yet. Something is missing. To be satisfied I need to add something else. And I add the screens in several places.
Yes, this is better now. Something deeper wanted to be expressed. August moon is smiling now and this means that I am in a very good state.
The last addition of the screens softens the harshness of the event. It says that this was a little occurrence in infinity. There was a concentration, some contrast, some rumbling of a passing energy, and now it is dispersing and about to disappear into the infinite peace.
…
Time to sign
I can add or align my signature with the edge of the picture. But then it will be like saying that I add my power to the tendency to confine, to frame and limit the view. So instead I decide to be close to the movement and to align myself with the infinite ebb and flow in the ocean of energy. Not to feel protected by holding on to a defined place. Not to say that my power comes from having a point of view. Instead, I am everything. Everything happens within me, is made of me and disappears in me.
…
This turned out to have been a meditation about the nature of our reality. It lead me from expressing feelings as they were detected by the awareness, which is the background to all of our excitements, going along with the experiences of how the feelings kept changing from involvement to detachment and from the narrow view of: Oh, what is happening to me, to awe.
It is a healing trip, like a pilgrimage that sends you walking in the mud step after step to disentanglement and to the bigger view of the truth that opens up.
It is based on listening to one’s heart and doing what comes from there.
This is one possibility of becoming free. There are innumerable ways and this one is my favorite.
I was still trying to see more colors in the
two upper leaves on the right side, as the knowing that the painting was
finished started to occupy some space in my being.
This also was the time when the name came. You
cannot give a name to a piece before it is finished. Well, maybe in most cases.
Sometimes you know the name even before you start. It is a strange thing, the name. It is the “what is it about” of the piece. Sometimes it happens when you recognize something special about it. In other times it is an interesting feeling that you have even before you start, and are curious enough to explore it with the art.
In any case, what has given the name immigration to this piece?
For me it is this strange line that crosses through almost everything else. Here you have this plant or whatever is depicted as the main subject, and with no logical reason, in comes this beige line, wrapped in orange, and dares go through the leaves that have color, the thick beige trunk and the empty leaves, as if it has grabbed the right to come in at the level of its choice and disregard the prevailing order.
You could even say that this stranger has cut
through the old and established areas and it is aiming at the most vulnerable
but alive green. Isn’t that green the best of all places in the plant, where
life is experienced in its strongest impulse to grow, and its boldest claim to
the adventure of being a body in space? If you had to choose a place to experience
life, where would you go?
And yes, the plant was just all right without
this beige and orange intrusion. Everything was just working fine. But coming
in, as this new line did, has just given the most interesting and the most
intense experience to this old plant.
It has introduced drama to the composition.
How poor would the composition be with only all that is okay in it? Now
something is breaking the routine. Something is happening, sweet, tasty, maybe even
spicy.
You really need to look at immigration from a composition point of view, to see what it means to everything that is involved.
Maybe you wonder who is this little line in the picture that I called, in entry #301, the baby with the orange light?
He represents, for me, awareness, which is always newly born. Right now it is looking at the rest of the painting in 301, where there is some struggle. But he is from endlessness, which is free from the difficulties.
Just the fact that he looks heals what he is looking at, because he looks in a way that only awareness can. He lives inside of every one of us. But we need to bring his view to our normal consciousness, so that it too will heal.
………………………………………
Why drawing and painting are good ways to dip in our larger aspect, which is usually called awareness?
Other art forms are also good for this. But drawing and painting leave marks on paper or other materials that we can look at after they have been done.
This gives us the opportunity to understand (by reading the art) with our narrow style of consciousness, what our aware state has already known.
…………………………………..
Let’s look at why we are not in the deeper state all the time.
Our consciousness is made in such a way that we are very focused. We think only one thought at a time. We concentrate on only one thing at a time. For us this is the way things are, and we do not even consider a different way of experiencing.
We never see a wider picture of our experiences (unless we shift into awareness, which we actually do, spontaneously, many times).
While we live with this narrow way of observing, there is something that keeps making the choices for us about what we are going to concentrate on.
It is what we call the subconscious.
Based on our experiences of the past we have taught the subconscious what is important to us. Now it brings to our attention only those parts of the whole picture that it knows are important to us.
Of course it is a wonderful thing, not to have to examine our experiences whenever they emerge, and decide again what, among all of them, is important. On the other hand, because this is how the human mechanism works, we are prevented from experiencing a wider version of our experiences.
What is so good about the wider version?
When we observe with a wider, more inclusive perspective, we become relieved from the worries of the narrower view.
The subconscious still gives us its usual alarms that were created with the narrow view. But since we are in a more comfortable place, we don’t care about these alarms that much.
This is just one benefit. Observing with the wider view is so different from observing with the narrow view that it is really impossible to explain it while using the narrow view.
We can only talk about one aspect at a time. But awareness is a multi aspects thing.
So I’ll point at a few characteristics of awareness, but remember: It really does not do justice to it.
The wider view is the only way we can experience beauty. Beauty has to do with a complex relationship of many parts. We all can experience beauty in our unique ways. It is different for each one. But we all can experience what is beauty to us.
So it means that we all are making use of our awareness.
When we are in nature, for example, which is so filled with details and multiple kinds of relationships, the subconscious does not, usually, have any special instructions about the view.
It may have some warnings about snakes, crocodiles, bears, tick-bites, etc. But just looking, when there is no immediate specific danger, does not, usually, come with instructions.
This allows us to slip into the deeper, wider, relaxed view. We see beauty. We feel good. We become activated in a much fuller, more rewarding way.
So being in awareness feels good. Holding a narrow awareness is stressful in comparison.
When we feel good, instead of being weary of others, we love them spontaneously.
Instead of feeling pressed to fix this or that, we feel like playing. We feel like children. We laugh easily, we imagine whatever we want and we can even feel being taken care of.
All these are healing states.
So now imagine making art by following your individual sense of beauty as your only guide in the art making.
As soon as we give our attention to our sense of beauty, to watch whether what we make is beautiful for us or not, we slip into the state of awareness. There is no escape for us from using a wider attention, to perceive beauty.
This is (awareness is) the fundamental condition that is the only one that can heal our emotional and even physical suffering. There is no way to heal us without entering awareness.
So this is the instruction: Make art just by choosing, step after step, to do only what makes your art more beautiful to you. Stop when you feel that adding anything to your art will not feel beautiful any more.
Be loyal to this and see how it makes you feel.
This is an easy access to what all the meditation teachers call awareness.
I’ll end here with something that my Chinese meditation teacher said once (not precisely in these words): Keep being aware and awareness will keep you.
If you want to have one practice that is simple and will make you freer and freer, this is it. Develop the habit of awareness (in whichever way you choose to reach that state).
I almost decided to draw a face in a way that can be recognized. I started in this way and as I went along I answered impulses from the heart and distorted the face beyond recognition.
Then I started drawing a little house. I thought about a tree and then thought that I always go for trees, so I decided to draw something else. A house came to me. I knew it was my house, where I lived with my wife and children in Israel. Then the tree had to be there, as we did have a huge pine tree next to the house.
And I remembered the swing with my first daughter in it, swaying extremely long sways.
Then there was no place for anything else, even though I entertained the idea of going on, adding more things. But the swinging child faced the open space and this was a complete cycle. There was no need for anything else.
First was the experiencing of a twisted flow, which means that the infinite emptiness flowed through preconceived ideas (the face). Then the drawing came closer to love, by touching on the home and the tree, and indeed my first daughter. And with this closeness to the heart, the swing swayed a long way and we came back to be face to face with the endlessness.
This one drawing has a whole process of healing.
Then came the exercise: Find the spot that feels the best and dive into it with a second drawing. I chose the space that my daughter faced.
This was the motivation behind the second drawing.
The drawing shows expansion. The heart opens. The language changes from the language we usually use, like in this writing for example, into an energetic way of experiencing and communicating. You cannot satisfactorily describe this experience with any word language. But if you feel anything when you look at this drawing, it is because you too can experience things that cannot be described in one of our languages.
And what is the dot in the middle?
Maybe the feeling of being a local spot around which there is endlessness? Erase this spot and there is no time and space. And maybe the dot comes from a sense of something very far that the ‘I’ wants to reach, out of curiosity? Maybe the dot comes from the feeling that there is always more?
Then again: looking for the place in this drawing that felt the best, I chose the object at the top middle that looks somewhat like eyelashes or a line of cypresses on a far horizon.
Diving into this, I drew the group of what may look like trees that feel very good with each other, or maybe like a group of angels playing together in the sky, like babies.
Then it came to me to indicate some ground, to show that the first group was up somewhere, and as I did it, it became plants and ground and the plants look somewhat like the angels.
Now when I asked myself where is the place in this last drawing that feels the best, the answer that came to me was: The space between the ground and the angels.
So I see this space as the place that feels like home. From it emerge objects of fascination. They feel good too in another way. But once I entertain this fascination with the objects, I long again to the home space.
And maybe I should simply choose, for the best feeling place, everything. Just everything.
They are dancing and I want to dance too. You see, it is about being together, loving and loved. Somehow this protects you from sliding into the fire.
But I am isolated. My skin is screaming. My mood rolls into itself and as a stone on the road it lets the little monsters play on its top.
This is all okay indeed. It’s just a story among the multitudes, except for the light inside, the light who does not care about a thing, and the light who cares about everything.
“They” are the brown and the ochre
“I” am the blue line with yellow inside
“Sliding”: Everything slides, the whole story. All the characters are in the same story and they all are about to fall. The light of the fire is already seen on the edges of things. It is also a part of the story.
“My mood”: the purple
“The little monsters”: Fear ideas
“The light inside”: You know what it is. It is the only thing that you cannot invent.
