Archive for the 'The world of thoughts' Category



186. Two paintings

I did so many paintings from the time I wrote about one. I’ll do a summary of two, as I look at them now.

Here is a painting that I called: Birds and Water.

Birds and water

Birds and water

It was done in a daydreaming state, imagining a place I’d like to experience. There are parts of birds in light brown, some green lines and areas, and what looks like a little waterfall and part of a river. The colored areas served, for me, to indicate different colors of the birds in this forest. The whole painting did itself and I was watching as it happened and had my thoughts like the thoughts of a watcher.

This morning, after having my regular call with my friend, I thought: I have a whole day ahead of me without sessions and without calls, And I feel quite good, after having slept a little more than the usual these days. What shall I do with this day?

And now the pain has come and grabbed my left foot quite strongly. It is hard to use both hands now, as the left hand wants to go down to hold the left foot and help alleviate the pain a little. Also, how can you even think? Some crazy creature is tearing at your clothes, pulling your attention, wanting you to do something about its experience of being tortured. This dream of being in a place of birds and water has nothing to do with this. The joy of delicately playing with the stuff of my life through the use of words, feeling the subtle trickle of their energy through my being, all of this is called to run for a shelter now. The bombs are coming down. The siren goes up and down in your head already. I asked what to do with my time today? This is going to take care of it.

Another painting, done in the middle of the night, got this name from me: Night in the Middle of the City. I was very patient when I did this.

The lake of the night

The lake of the night

It looks like a dream place too. A city that is so thin that if you only scratch a little, a hole is bored in the fabric of what seems to be so solid, and the sky, the deep and beautiful sky, is right there. We float in it, creating our cities and lives. We can create them as what we would love to live in.

The phone rings. It is from someone in Washington. Are you Gloria Carmen? Almost, I say. We are going to connect you to Charles Schumer’s office and we want you to tell them that you oppose the big oil companies as they try to rip the system off. OK, I say, connect me. I have something here that rips my system too. Schumer can’t help me with this, I’m sure. There is nobody to enlist since I am in charge. This is the world that I create for my experiences. I made some choices that do not work for me now and I can change them. Maybe I can change the oil companies too. Don’t they want to live where the birds and the water are? Don’t they see how thin is the reality that they fight about?

184. The final acceptance of everything

Beautiful despair

Beautiful despair

I am starting this project. The final acceptance of everything.

It will be like Dzogchen throutgh art.

And I start from this painting, which I did at night, around 1 am, with the experience of this strong and crazy pain that was sharper than the usual, to which I have gotten used already.

I prop the painting up against the basket with the pencils and brushes on my table and the light from above is good to it, emphasizing the texture of the canvas.

My general view is that there is the group of many colors, heavy on the upper right and after some space there is that brown branch, maybe falling away, overwhelmed by the weight of that group and even breaking down .

Then there are two penciled dry and sharp branches and something strange, also penciled on the upper left. And of course there are the shadows, the areas I painted with pencil.

What do these do to each other?

The big multi colored area seems to have a lot of sadness. All the shapes are sending fingers or hands to nowhere, searching for something they already know they won’t find. Presenting again and again the idea of I want but I know I can’t. This creates a very disquiet, nervous cloud. It is beautiful in its sadness. It becomes almost like a tapestry or a physical “thing” and it even has some shadows, to show that it is real, it is three dimensional, and you can touch it. These are thoughts becoming things. There are a few places where a few parts become messy, blending into each other uncontrollably, crying into each other.

The introduction of the penciled branches into this area introduces another distinction into the game, between more real and less real or maybe between soft and hard. The bareness of the penciled branches feels poor, hungry for love, hardened by hard life. It seems that the lower penciled branch supports the whole cloud on its back and keeps it from hitting the brown branch harder. That brown branch is losing in a way. It is falling down, broken, as if escaping the vengeance of the colorful cloud.

The only hope that this falling brown branch has is that it will find something good when it goes up along the left side of the painting, but the place it comes to is empty. There is only darkness there, a tear-drop and an empty shape.

So where is the power in this picture?

The power is in the observation, in the ability to see all of this so clearly with all of its complexity and simplicity. It is like a poem on despair.

In summary the picture says:

I’m searching. I know I’m not going to find. I am beautiful but sad. I am helped by dry and dead sticks, which are searching just like me. But they are already hardened by the experience of not finding and they do not even have hope. Some part of me is afraid of this despair. It is trying to escape, still hoping to find love and fulfillment, but we know already, looking at the picture, that there is none of these in it.

It is funny that what looks in superficial sight beautiful and maybe playful and colorful actually describes sadness and despair.

So was I desperate when I drew this?

No. I was shocked by the intensity and sharpness of the pain that made me jump out from bed and come here, to this table at night, I remember what I wanted to achieve. I wanted to disperse the confusion that I felt and the shock.

It did this to a degree. After that I slept.

The beauty was very important to me. Without feeling the beauty I would be dissatisfied and restless. What does it mean to me?

When a painting comes out beautiful (For me, as I experience it), I know I have connected to my larger aspect, the non physical part, the real, what we sometimes call “home”. Connecting with the real, all that is not real will start moving. Movement is life, is health, is hope, is everything good. This is the principle of all healing.

I have to give some background.

Everybody believes that what I have is a degenerative disease. People who have this don’t heal. They progressively (what an unfitting word) become more debilitated. Living in this environment, I totally believe that I am healing. Parts of my feet that were totally numb for maybe twenty years are hurting now. All through this healing process they kept hurting more and more. For everybody else this was a sign that things were getting worse. For me it is a sign that life is coming back to where it was blocked. I don’t know why I wanted my healing to hurt. But I know that like everything else, this too is a decision I made at some point. I spoke about this little kid a few entries ago and he may be the source of this idea.

When the pain became too hard for me to take, I looked for some medications and I thought about it as some aid to help me pass these last stages. I needed to sleep. But the medications started to have an effect on my alertness and sensitivity to the subtleties of my perceptions. This was too much for me to give up, and I let the medications go instead. My sharpness of sensitivity is back and I have to deal with the pain without the help of the meds. It will be through the acceptance of my response.

183. When the blue comes in

How the good appeared in the mundane

How the good appeared in the mundane

Can’t sleep. The phenomenon called pain is very active. And in addition there is some energy in me. I don’t now what it is. But it makes me awake. I slept for three hours. I am very awake and clear. I come to the studio and do this drawing. At first, before I put the colors in, it looks like a confused body of energy being intruded by old habitual dark thoughts. But I feel the urge to put colors in. I start with the diagonal horizon. I know that this is how I want it. Then I know where the next area will be and the next and next.

At one point something, maybe the sleeve of my pajamas, touched some wet color and dragged a line into the white. It looks good to me as it is and I let it be.

Sometimes in sessions with others I go into such places, because they are where there is a break from the rules of good behavior of the picture, that offers a glimpse of freedom. On the one hand I did not intend this to happen. But on the other hand there is nothing that appears in my reality that is not called for by some of my vibrations. So it makes a lot of sense to dive into these spots. But in this case, I just like the way it came out and ignore it.

As soon as I finish the blue areas, and it is done in that late night hour with the clarity and patience that I feel, I see the beauty. Somehow the piece changed from being bleak to hopeful. There is enough space in and between the shapes of confusion and habitual nagging, to let the true light come through. The dreams of beauty and goodness came to play and changed everything.

The diagonal horizon takes the stability away from what seems like the reality of my thoughts. The stability that the blue areas give is independent of that reality. It can fill reality up and then reality becomes different altogether.

Yes, we can do that.

179. Can’t describe (For Anita’s birthday)

 

Nature is crazy about you

Nature is crazy about you

The natural world is crazy about you

Your energy responds

By getting warm in places

The wooden deck is growing suns

And acting like a down quilt

I can’t describe in words

How nature loves

Forget the words

And you will know.

178. I am here

 

A bit chaotic as I am

A bit chaotic as I am

I feel that I am falling apart

I look at the mountains

And feel intimate with them

I try to be like trees

And have my wounds to prove it

Then

With amazement

I note

That, a bit chaotic as I am,

And disintegrated

I am also watching all of this

Experiencing touch

And even more than this

I’m making it

Rocks and trees and body

I

Am here.

177. The bird is infinite

She wants to fly up and up and far

She wants to fly up and up ad far

 

The bird is infinite

 

She wants to fly up and up and far

But tears attach her to the sea of sorrow

Her ideas limit her

The rock of pain

Threaten to block her

 

The sea is wide

The angels watch and cannot interfere

Their heart cries out

Come, come, sweet bird

You can

 

And what’s the source of power?

It’s in the knowing

That her mind

navigates

Her thinking

Moves her

 

Think flying on

Think delighting in the life on earth

Think love given and received

 

And if one day

All your ideas will cease

Where will you find yourself?

Sweet bird

Where will you be?

 

And aren’t you already there

Right now?

176. Moving fingers and toes

Microbes

Microbes

In the middle is a package

With a secret

Of unknown consequences

All other things in this picture could be microbes

With a very elaborate social order

And rules of conduct

But in spite of that

They cannot contain their joy

For just being able to move their fingers

And toes

And they keep doing it

Secretly

But since all of them are doing it

They discover each other

In new ways

And through their joyous smiles

Become one

With no beginning

And end

Enfolding endless possibilities

Of love.

174. Opening Intuitive Flow Through Artwork

The cover of my book

The cover of my book

Here is my book.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/1491062207

Every moment of creating it was a blessing to me.

Years of writing, arranging, creating descriptions of individual sessions, showing them to friends, presenting some in conferences, continuously developing my approach that you have glimpsed here on this blog, fashioning the approach to be more clear and simple, using it with people and on myself all the time, teaching it to other therapists, all these went into the book.

And because it all depended on my innate sense of beauty, it was always pleasant.

Then the book was shaped, edited thoroughly, designed very beautifully and published just this weekend.

At times it was hard to wait.

But here it is.

There are two versions, Paperback and Kindle.

The paper book has 172 full color pages, 82 color plates, several session descriptions with pictures and dialogue, a large section about the importance of intuition in everyone’s life, explained with pictures and text. Indeed it also has the teaching of how to make an intuitive painting and how to read it.

The Kindle version is free for five days, from Wednesday, Jan. 29 to Sunday, Feb. 2nd. It is in color too. (Amazon has free Kindle apps for every smart phone, tablet and computer.)

I’ll be thankful for any review in Amazon or elsewhere.

Love,

Giora

173. Before I was born

I discovered a pattern in a series of drawings that I made lately. These drawings were made during a period of three days. They are not all the drawings that I made. They are just a sampling. The pattern is of a layered history. I had this pattern in many other drawings that I did before. You can see many of them here on this blog. I even noted the layers when I wrote about the drawings. But these days, suddenly something rebelled in me. It was not a rebellion with fighting and blood. It was the feeling that this is a fixed perception, something which is inflexible in a world that I find more and more to be endlessly flexible. It does not have to be this way, I thought somewhere within the wholeness of my mind. This historical understanding of life, in which first there was this and from this came that, a perception that explains the condition now, based on what past events led to it, this perception is a thought in the present.

I have seen again and again that I can choose to change my thoughts in the present. I mean, a thought that occurred already occurred, but the next thought does not have to go in the same direction. I can choose a different thrust and I have done it many times. So do I have to continue keeping the belief in this historical stratification of my life? This is what was churning in me and it was different than just noting it as I did before. I was questioning its necessity and validity now.

Just this questioning, without any effort to come to an answer or to force a conclusion, has moved things in the mind and in the last drawing you will see that the order has turned upside down. What was the order before? From troubled beginning came, through a slow development, light, health and joy.

Wild roots

Wild roots

 You can see in the drawing

that the roots are wild

And that they lead to a growth

that is more peaceful and joyful.

On a rocky ground an airy city stands

On a rocky ground an airy city stands

 In this drawing too

you can see that 

turmoil and pain are the basis

from which

a rocky landscape emerges

with a transparent city on its top.

In the last one a healthy beginning is being attacked by trouble.

Trouble

Trouble

The blue and green and yellow

are the good beginning.

The trouble is easy to see.

I can say that I did not create this shift willingly. It is the awareness and wondering that weakened the old perception. Awareness and wondering made the shift possible. But the shift happened without the willful “I” of every day. Something deeper has done the work here. My intuition, or the infinite inner love, has come into the personality and moved my focus one step backward. Instead of looking at my history, looking back from now, and seeing how I came from a troubled beginning to a good state, the last drawing shows instead how I was before the trouble came into my life and how the trouble came.

From this I learn that the idea of layering is OK but it has to have three layers. The first is the innocent, fresh, joyful beginning. Then trouble comes and makes war with this beginning, and eventually things change again for the better and happier state.

I could see other things in the drawings and especially in the last one, just as you can. But this is what came to me.

Why is this meaningful?

Every change in my history was a choice. I chose to come into this world and get into trouble. Then I chose again to change the patterns of troubled living into joyful living.  But without seeing myself from before the troubles began, I only see myself as one who started from trouble, and because of this, there is always a sense that the troubled state is my natural state. It is where I come from. Something was wrong with me, right from the beginning. It is hard to get rid of this feeling that right from the beginning something was wrong with me. So even if I managed to change patterns of thought into more joyful ones, there is still somewhere in me the belief that something is wrong with me. Because of this, I don’t have the necessary energy to move to happiness. The joy that I want to experience requires some work that has to be done, to overcome this nagging feeling of worthlessness. But if I manage to go farther into the past than this life and see the way I was before I came here, I get to experience the joy in myself in the true, natural state, and this gives me the necessary energy to choose happiness. You have to choose your happiness.

I have seen it with others in my work. Especially I have seen it with those who were born into loveless families with mental illnesses, anger and neglect. No matter how much we tried to understand how these environments contributed to the current suffering, the understanding was not strong enough to make a change. My clients still felt worthless. But when we came together to the time before they were born, they saw that  they really were joyful in the beginning and understood that they had made the choice to suffer. This, somehow, leads quite easily and without a conscious effort, to choosing again and this time the choice is to be happy. The most important part of the transformation is the experience of the joy that we really are. And in this way, with surprising ease, people change their lives.

As for me, I find that many times I start new things with my clients. Wanting to help them find the power to change, I discover that we need to go deeper than we went before and come to the point where they can experience how joyful they were before the choice to suffer was made. Once they come back to the point of choice, they choose to change without any effort. And now I find that I am going through the same process.

Thank you, my clients. You are so good in being a mirror for me.

 

171. So light

Mountains and valleys dance

Mountains and valleys dance

The mountains have wings

Just here now they fly

They flow

The creek

And the banks

Dance

Rocks green and river

Go light

And up in the air

Fly to nowhere really

Just here now

Mountains

With little towns on top of them

Dance.


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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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