Archive for the 'The world of thoughts' Category



202. Up or down

Up or down?

Up or down?

What do we see?

One complexity is flying up in the sky, above another complexity. Maybe the second one is the ground? Maybe it also floats in space?

Maybe the ground is floating in space?

If it does, then this goes along with what I started to experience more and more, that our reality is not so real as we think it is.

In our referential world there is a ground under everything. And if what appears above the ground is floating and does not even touch the ground, does it mean that it is floating really? Is it happy and jumping with joy?

One thing I can tell for sure is that both the ground and the thing that floats above it continue beyond the canvas to the left and to the right.

It seems in both of them that the left side is close to the end or to the beginning. There is less and less, as we approach the left side. So we can guess that if we go a little more to the left there will be the end of the shapes there.

Is this significant? Well yes. We don’t know yet how, but it is something clear.

When we look at the right side, things both in the floating part and in the ground are becoming more spacious.

This state of events leaves the middle area heavier and therefore it attracts our attention to it. We do not pay much attention to the left and the right. But I am used to looking for the bigger context, so I saw it.

The shapes in the floating part seem to be standing, dancing, running and moving. They seem to be moving to the right. That’s because everything is slightly heavier on the right side of the middle.

The shapes in the ground seem to be horizontal. They seem to be holding on to the rest of the shapes, as if trying to avoid being left behind, when everything else moves. If you look at where in this group the weight is, you realize that they even seem to be pulling to the left, back to the beginning.

Now the difference between the sides helps us understand. To the right there is the progress toward the unknown. In the left was the beginning. One group dances to the future and the other group holds on to where they are, afraid to move.

So it is like two worlds, living very close to each other. One is light and happy, and it is going to the future. The other is depressed and lonely and afraid to move. The two worlds don’t touch each other. Maybe they do not want to pay attention to each other. It is only us, the painter and the watchers of the painting, who can see this strange phenomenon.

In the upper part there are the adventurers, the ones who take risks, those who are not afraid to live life to the full.

In the lower part the figures are afraid and in distress.

Within each group the figures collaborate and are of the same three colors, red, orange and purple. So maybe this shows that basically these are of the same kind, those in the upper and the lower parts. But their experience is totally different.

Where would you choose to be?

You see? Suddenly the drawing changed. Before, maybe it was undecipherable and did not speak much to us. Now it is a challenge, pressing you to decide about your life.

It is nice and looks full of wisdom when I speak about this as if these figures represent some other people. But I drew this. Both the upper and the lower parts came from my imagination. So they represent me.

Which of the groups is me? Both.

If I give up on the upper, I’ll be only depressed and suffering. If I let go of the lower part, who knows what will happen? I may expand. I may explode. Everything is possible. We never know until we decide to be that upper part.

But for now I want to tell you that even though these two groups seem to be of different spirit, they actually belong in the same layer of understanding. They belong to where things are different, separate and competing.

So where is the wisdom here?

In the watcher. You and me. Let’s watch.

And if we let go of wanting to be either the upper or the lower parts, who are we? what do we belong to?

197. Seventy

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.

196. The Family

The Family

The Family

I called it “The Family.”

This is what I thought when I made it. I started with the figure in black, which is the man. Then the child in brown, leaning at the man and I felt then that I wanted to add the woman in pink. The man is frightening. He wears a gown, like a king or a lord. He is very proud and intense and angry.

The woman seems to be powerless, supposed to support the man but to always be too weak to stand in his way, if this becomes necessary. But she has independence in the area of softness and subtleties. This, actually, gives her true power. Not the power to fight but the power to be happy, if she chooses.

The boy admires his father, wants his support and protection. Maybe wants to be like the father, but he is soft too, like the mother. He makes an intense face like the father, but in his stomach he is soft. His points of power are in his connections to nature, where there is a potential for growth and unexpected strength. He may become free of both his parents with their tendencies. But at this moment that the drawing describes, he does not know yet what he can do, and he takes on the roles that his family and society expect him to take. But the knowing that is already in him, already gives him power that he is not aware of. A small spur of growth would shake the balance in the family, but his growth is not of the kind that competes. It is the kind that is kind and loving, and that says yes to all. Yes, be that. Yes be this. Yes, as your free will gives you the opportunity to be.

Yes..

Is there a dance in this? Yes, the dance of subtle potentialities, already communicating with each other, already allowing each other to be as they want. Already seeing the big and deep picture in which everything is alright and even perfect. Living the pretend life that the autopilots dictate, but unable to stop the flow of uniqueness.

All is good, in the midst of conflicts and obscuration. Clarity steps silently forward to be itself. You don’t have to wait and see. It is already in its best.

A note: I do not agree with the roles that society assigns the genders. If every one fulfills their true potential, they are happy, regardless of gender roles. This drawing describes the gender roles as society sees them, but also the clarity that invites what is unique and true, to come in and be lived.

195. The screeching is terrible

Old clunky machine

Old clunky machine

The drawing was done at 10pm, the painting – in the morning after.

It is like a very big puppet. The head is too big and heavy in the composition. The mechanism is old. It stood outside in the rain and plants started growing on it in some places. You can almost hear the clunking of its mechanism, the screeching of its rusty metal, in friction with other rusty parts. It used to be very beautiful. Some of the paint is still there.

The face is stubborn. Even though parts of it have fallen off, it still insists on moving forward. It works without an operator. It used to be the fascination of the community. Now it only walks alone, with much effort and nobody is watching. It is hard for it to move. The screeching is terrible.

It thinks.

Thinking is the essence of its engine, the oil and the fuel.

And now I know who it is: It is my autopilot.

192. Desire

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.

191. Dont worry, go with the energy

This is who we are

This is who we are

I am moved

Because it is beautiful for me

Meaning, Something from home

Love coming through

There is an external story

Of shapes doing

Like, maybe, a tree grows on a rock

Maybe it is turning into a monster

Doing strange things

But inside

In a one two three rhythm

We go from total darkness

To the blue sky

Or a lake

It is ancient

It has always been here

And we have been looking

The outside has muscles

The inside is a whispering light

Of love

This is how we are

And this is how everything comes to us

To see the dark of night

And the blue of the sky

This is how we are.

 

 

Author’s note:

 

Words float on energy

Like colorful mosaic stones

On the concrete

Of a wall

The wall holds everything

The concrete flows from floor to ceiling

The stones don’t have to hold the wall

That’s the way I write

Spontaneously

The words

Float in energy

The energy connects all

The words don’t have

To do the same job

That’s why

My text is skipping

Don’t worry

Go with the energy.

189. And do they really not know?

They have lights inside

They have lights inside

At first they were ghost like

Moving in a haze

With intricate

Stories holding stories

 

Now with the colors

Every one of them

Has a light inside

 

And the ghost like walkers

Have a mission

That they blindly fulfill

 

They are blind in the thinking portion

Of themselves

But awake in a hidden place

From which they operate

Unknowingly

 

And do they really not know?

187. Fear all over

Fear

Fear

It is a key drawing in the process of my relief from major programs in the subconscious. It describes fear. There is a body there and it is full of small waves of fear. The fear goes everywhere, the head, the chest, the hands the muscular stomach and the pelvis. There are three places where, it so happens, the lines in light brown are darker. These places are the head, the stomach and the crotch. These are the places where I feel fear, when it is clearer. Sometimes I also feel it in the heart and in the legs. But the fear I am talking about here covers the whole body and beyond. It is not strong, it is hardly felt, but it is there always, ready to be provoked.

It is a bit shocking for me to see that after all I have lived and done there is still fear somewhere in me at all. But it is so. This is what is discovered suddenly in this drawing that I did at around 4 in the morning. This is the way my body feels when it perceives being attacked so viciously by the pain. I did not know that it would come out in the drawing when I did it. I was just tuned in to my inner guidance.

When I finished the main structure in light brown it felt good to add pink in some places. These pink lines created the sense of fear. The brown lines described the tension.

I considered adding other colors inside of some shapes, but there was a strong feeling, when I thought about it, that the drawing did not need these. It could have changed the feeling in the drawing and this is exactly what I did not want to happen. I wanted to read the drawing as it was, without changes.

And this led to this discovery. There is so much fear in me when the pain comes. There is so much habitual creation of fear even before the pain comes. Mostly, it is very delicate and hard to catch. There is an expectation in me, somewhere in the big system of my being, for something bad and painful to happen soon. Life is dangerous for you, the fear says, and it arises, to prepare me for the approaching calamity. The expectation that something full of suffering is on its way is so strong that now, as my feet are healing, this fear prepares me for some other way of suffering that will soon appear. It already weaves stories that will explain why and how. I catch these swift, very quiet thoughts that predict that something else is starting to go wrong in my body. I catch them because I am aware. I catch everything that makes an inner noise. But this fear did not stand out because it was very delicate, encompassing all and always there. I never experienced my life without it. There is a tension that I feel in the back of my neck. Every time I become quiet, this tension is created. I was aware of this tension for years but never knew what it was an expression of. Now I know: It is this fear. Every time I got quiet something in me said: Wait, be careful, because something bad and painful is coming at you.

Now I know that this fear is what prevented me from enjoying playing music in front of others. When I was six years old I studied piano. In the end of the year came the concert for all the parents and fellow students. I learned a very modern piece, which was an Israeli song, arranged with very modern dissonance. I fell in love with the way the song sounded and it was a revelation to me. I still love dissonance today. My first beloved classical composer was Schoenberg. But when it came time to play the Israeli song before the audience I got frozen with fear. I lost the sense of beauty in the piece and the interest I had in it. I only felt extremely scared. This was this fear, the fear of being true to myself in front of others, the fear that something horrible will happen as soon as I relax into who I am.

I think this is the key to a lot of suffering that people have, where it seems very hard to detect the source of the suffering. It is something that these people were born with and never had experienced life without it. They are used to live with this feeling in them and therefore it is very hard for them to feel it. But there is a way to find and release it, as you see. It is by getting into a deeper state, which is what I did by drawing intuitively, and witnessing the fear from that state. How come I have only found it now? I have been practicing being aware of how I feel and choosing to feel better. My vibrations rose, and the fear stood out as being of lower vibrations.

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.


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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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