Posts Tagged 'change'

317. Without colors now, with colors now

Published October 10, 2019 evolving , healing , identification , Infinite space , letting go , making art , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , The world of thoughts , Truth 2 Comments
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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.

282. A new beginning, or: What has happened to Giora?

Published December 18, 2017 identification , Intuition , perception , Physical and non physical , Spiritual , The world of thoughts 3 Comments
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I am sitting in the big guestroom and the wall of the other side of our street looks at me as I look at it. Here:

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This ‘other side’, as everything else, is created by thoughts, and thoughts are independent entities, capable of self-reflection, which makes it possible for them to rethink who and what they are and what they are doing here in my experience. When I do self-reflection my experience of everything in my life changes.

Do you want an example?

Wherever you are, ask yourself: Let’s see what can I love now? And see what happens to everything around you.

So things are only a kind of a mirror, reflecting me. And ‘me’ is a constantly changing thing, based on what I think. Basically I am free to change myself, as I wish for different experiences. The only thing that makes me seem like a stable being is the big, mostly ancient collection of previous choices of how to think about things. These old thoughts think themselves so quickly when I am not aware of them that they take over my life. They make it seem that they are my choices now of what I want to be.

I am breaking the stream of thoughts. It is time for some quiet, to let all the thoughts of the previous paragraphs get digested. Maybe I’ll stop this entry here, and you, please make sure to take some digestive enzymes.

You may be thinking: What has happened to Giora? There may be a resistance to accepting my thoughts. Good for you. Don’t accept them. Take them as my opinion. You really don’t have to accept anything. It is just my fun to write them. I am not even trying to convince. I am a thought. I can only convince myself to be a different thought.

But you wouldn’t be reading this if you did not have some invitation to these thoughts in you… I am part of your world, and I am responding to your wish to have different experiences.

Before we close I want to make sure I say this: Being a thought is only a partial state. It is a limited view. The complete me is everything, with no boundaries. You too.

279. What is this?

Published November 8, 2017 energy , evolving , healing , identification , Infinite space , Intuition , making art , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , The world of thoughts , Truth Leave a Comment
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I skipped number 277 by mistake. I’ll keep this number for something in the future. And for now I’ll just continue with this entry.

A man turning his head to me

Describing a body

Of a man, standing

In profile

But turning his head and gaze

To us

He is just passing there

And it is his business

To be there, walking

On his territory

And we are the transgressors

Who should apologize

And leave with the promise

To never do this again

And since there needs

To be some earth

For this story

I tried my hand

At making it

Some dirt

Some grass

A tree

And a passer by

All freshly made.

I really felt there was a person there, before I started to draw. I can show you what he would look like, had I drawn him as I saw in my imagination.

Here, I made a quick sketch of that.

quick sketch of a man

He has on some kind of a raincoat. You can see he’s not dressed up. And of course he wonders what we are doing there.

So how come this view changed to the drawing at the top?

I remember my years at the art academy in Jerusalem in the end of the sixties. Students with easels, standing around a model, and everybody is drawing. I assess the work in front of me, consider the model’s size and placement on my paper, imagine the arrangement of the main lines and volumes, and I start.

From the ear the line goes down through the chin to the collar, to the shoulder, and now comes the long line of the curved back. As I guide my hand to follow that line, there is another voice in me that tells me not to follow that line of the back. Don’t go down, but to the right, this voice says.

It is not a voice really, but a very strong and compelling feeling, like a longing, that almost takes hold of my hand and pushes it to go right.

I did not understand why I had this different voice in me, but I trusted this voice.

Now I know.

The representational drawing describes the experience of the senses. This is how the eyes see. Of course it is influenced by emotions and ideas, but the cementing substance in the drawing is the physical shape, as the eyes perceive it.

The abstract lines in the first drawing describe the experience of the energy. The energy of me and the energies of the things that are described. I don’t see that energy but I feel it. So the lines are a translation of that feeling. I feel different intentions, different emotions, ideas and beliefs that create that person within my infinite field of energy. And in fact, all of these are mine. They are my intentions, my feelings, my ideas and beliefs. I am creating this person in my flow, in response to these experiences in me.

When my ideas and beliefs change, this person will change too.

And, is there anything out there to disprove that this person, these experiences and me are really one thing, experiencing itself?

272. You have never been anything but this

Published August 13, 2017 energy , evolving , identification , Infinite space , Inner light , Intuition , making art , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , The world of thoughts 1 Comment
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Flow in the body

I like the painting more when I get very close to it. So close, that I almost don’t see all of it. This is also how I like to paint. The world around the painting disappears and all I have is the lines, the colors, the shapes, the textures. It is an extremely pleasant world for me. Who knows what’s in it? How deep can we go in it? Does it mirror me? These questions come to me now.

Maybe answers will come if we look at the painting and see what we can learn from it.

The lines in red are the energy in my body or maybe better, in my being. I know, because this is what I wanted to draw. The energy goes up, it feels to me, like fire, but not that fast. The energy does not stop. It goes and goes and goes. It is a good feeling, basically, of wellbeing.

Yes, you can detect some hesitation and doubts here and there, by the direction of the lines. But it flows on. This is the life as it comes together from so many shallow and deeper layers of thoughts. Thought after thought and Choice after choice, I determined how this flow of the energy of my now-life will go.

Take a little distance now and see those thoughts, those choices that build the flow.

They look like leaves here, with different emotional charges (colors). And their movement is not so unlike the movement of the energy. They represent all the same directions that appear in the flow of energy. This is expected. In some places the leaves seem to get entangled and almost become a blockage. But once their influences come together in the flow, they seem to move more in agreement.

How can it happen? There must be some other influences. And these are the yellow and orange shapes. Two of them, those with the straight lines, look like big bodies of light, or I can imagine them to be knowledge that is bigger than the stories in the leaves. And we have the rounded orange cloud that also contains that light in it. I won’t escape, I realize, without saying the word love.

And if you look at the general composition you can see that there is a lot of white space in the picture. This makes whatever happens in the picture, all that we talked about before, less significant. The forms may break apart, become brittle and dissipate in the white space. There is drama in the forms but the stronger presence is that of the white, into which all of the dramas may disappear.

And there are the three pencil lines. They seem to be some spontaneous excited declarations, while the more quiet curious shapes and the murmuring energy do their parts.

Now we can go back to the questions I asked in the beginning.

What is in it? It is not a question any more. Or, indeed, it could have been something else.

Does it mirror me? Of course, and probably mirrors every one else, in different variations.

How deep can we go into it?

The thoughts and choices belong to what we did throughout life or lives, so even if we go deeper than we ever thought possible, we will still encounter the same situation in which some kind of believed stories create flows of lives. The possibilities are infinite, and limited at the same time.

If we go into the white, we know it has no end. Every time we go a little or much into the white, we cause a change in our stories and in the flow. Our ’now’ changes. It can become more or less beautiful, more or less heroic, more or less of anything.

The ‘now’ is where our frontier is. This is where we come with all the stories that we have created and the ways that they have interacted and built flows, and with these we face and touch the white. The white can only touched in the now. Maybe we will step a little more into it, and all that we are, will change again.

Now the white laughs and says, between rolls on the ground and back flips: you have never been anything but white.

So what will a painter do?

265. My heart has been here already (the door)

Published June 12, 2017 evolving , healing , Intuition , making art , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , The world of thoughts , Truth 2 Comments
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You will have to imagine the picture for this entry.

Imagine a few wide horizontal lines, painted with a soft pastel in brown, any brown that you like. The lines overlap and, together, create one thing that travels now and now and now. It travels joyfully, like a dolphin in water. Sometimes one of the lines becomes bigger. At other times another one does it. Sometimes the colors change. Let it be painted by your heart.

Now in words.

The big picture:

I hear a bird outside. I don’t recognize it. But somewhere, in a deep place in me, Of course I know it. And I think: this bird sings from my heart. Then I think: everything that happens in this world comes from my heart. The buildings, the people on my block. There are many of them. I live in New York City. The street here is like a canyon. The precipices on each side are made of some eight floors apartment buildings that are more than a hundred years old. The number of people who live on my block is probably 300 times greater than the number of people who lived in the village of my youth.

And everything, all these people, the dust and soot, the funny and strange cars, the way the sunlight manages to come in and paint parts of the walls, all are coming from my heart.

This is the big picture for our purposes now.

The small picture:

What do I want to do?

For 14 years I was a designer, and changed to an illustrator. Then, after 17 years I changed to an art therapist. Now, 13 years later, I’m changing again. The change happens by itself. Usually people don’t let the change go through, because, logically, it does not make sense to start everything anew, when the old thing is working already and even gets you some recognition and acknowledgement.

But I learned not to stand in the change’s way, because I suffer if I do not follow my heart.

So the new thing was here already and was doing itself. It did not come from any ’sense-making.’ But I did not recognize this clearly yet.

At first I thought I wanted to live like an artist now. The studio was calling me. All the paints were getting excited.

But I also wanted to write and make books and children’s books. My life would be too bad without making them.

And what about living on the path that leads deeper and deeper into the truth of everything?

And what about sharing what I find with others who are interested? This is one of the most beautiful things that I can do. What else is there to do here, on earth?

And I wanted to make music.

And so went my thinking and I did not know what to do.

I’ve learned that when I have such a weighty question, it is best to keep it as a question and since this is after all a matter of the heart, I’ll invite the heart to answer. It always answers in its time. So every time the question came, I gave it to the heart: Here, this is the question I am looking for an answer for.

And one day, when I was in a short meditation, and the question was tickling, the answer came:

The blog.

I ‘work on myself’ all the time and the blog accompanies me as I go. I use artmaking and reading the art as my main method, so I have the art and the writing. It is already like a book. I can, at some point, collect some entries according to a subject that I’ll choose and make a book out of them. Or even more than one book. Sometimes it has illustrations too. Everything that I do from love and interest is already included in the adventure of the blog making. I have a conversation with other people too.

Everything that I did in my life was always about these same things, about development, freedom, beauty, living meaningfully. It is as if I have been doing this blog all my life.

And for income I can exchange the art that is created along the way with money that will pay for my life. It’s all very flexible. Things can be added, directions can change.

And in this way, with all these thoughts coming in very fast and quietly, everything fell into place.

When this clicked into place I felt a huge relief. I knew that everything was okay. And there was no need to change anything, as I was already there. For a while i made sure that I did only what I wanted to do. Tis opened the door for my heart to choose for me, and I was already where I wanted to be.

In my meditation when this knowing appeared, I saw an image in my imagination. I saw a few wide lines made with a dark brown soft pastel. The lines overlapped, just as the colors usually overlap in my paintings, and became one expression. This is the essence of this blog.

So I answered, for those who were interested. And now, back to life.

254. Inviting beauty to look at pain

Published January 27, 2017 evolving , healing , Infinite space , Intuition , making art , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual 2 Comments
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As you see

The areas overlap

And struggle with each other

For control of the same space

And what if they knew

That the same space

Is open and given to every one of them

With no limitations

All with love and joy and acceptance

Be they as they want to be

And the radiating hurt

Is like roots

Trying to hold on

With fingernails

To a piece of ground with no water

Or food

Bt they can change their experience

And feel blessed

In being able to dance that dance

And infinite number of others

For all eternity

With nothing to loose

Nothing to gain

Just joy.

243. (re)Discovering

Published October 10, 2016 evolving , healing , identification , Infinite space , Intuition , letting go , making art , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , Truth 1 Comment
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Discovering who you are is the main issue of life on earth.

You can find yourself in many ways and in many places and things. Actually, in every thing.

The best way is through doing what you love to do and taking this way as a trip to the depth of who you are.

You will change along the way, and maybe what you love doing more than anything else will change too. You have to always choose to do what you most love at the moment.

You will start finding yourself in small steps or maybe big. And every time you find yourself, you will feel satisfied. Finding yourself is the source of satisfaction. I want to say the only source, but I’m not sure yet. All this knowledge comes to me as a surprise, and at the same time as something that I have known before.

After the satisfaction periods you will start being curious again, and you will again use doing what you most love at that time to move on towards the depths of yourself.

All of the trip happens between you and eternity, which is you too.

 

238. A story about idealism and reality

Published June 28, 2016 energy , evolving , healing , identification , Infinite space , Inner light , Intuition , making art , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual 5 Comments
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I was born in Israel and my parents were idealistic pioneers. They built Israel from nothing, with all the others there of course. They wanted social justice, a place to live and grow their food, a place where they could have a country and a piece of land and they wanted their children to be born in a country with a house and a field. I drank idealism with my mother’s milk. (This was long ago. Now it is a bit more complicated there.)

I was an artist from young age. I went to study graphic design. In Graphic Design you make art that is used immediately. Then I was an illustrator. As an illustrator you illustrate children’s books, for children to grow up with good stories, with knowledge and love of the world about them, with a good taste in art, as it makes for a better life. And you illustrate for adults so that they will think in a different way and they will laugh…

Then I got involved with Buddhist meditation, and the idea was to know what I am, so that I’ll live my true life.

And indeed, once you start to know something you start teaching. What can be more important than helping others know what they are, so that their lives will be good, and truthful? And that they will be good people, help each other and create a wonderful world for all of us, and our offspring…

Then I went to study art therapy, so I would be able to help people get rid of what held them back from being what they were. To show them how to become free of inhibiting ideas and thrive, so that they can live happily and lovingly etc.

And I did all these. I was idealistic and practical.

Then I started to know that every one of us has his own world, created by his own consciousness. We do not live in the same world. Our worlds meet with each other and it looks as if it is one world, but it is not so.

You can’t create a meaningful change in any part of the reality that is around you in your world. If you want this reality to change, you have to change yourself. The new thoughts and beliefs that you will have will bring to you everything that fits this new state of mind. So I cannot change or help change the people who come to do therapy with me. In one view, they are part of my outside world. I have to change myself, and as a result another version of that person will appear in my world, which will be a match to the way I have become. From another view, the patient is in another world, where he is the only one who can make changes in his world, by changing himself.

I always thought that we all lived in the same world. That there was one person in front of me, who suffered, and I helped him release the suffering and live a better life. But no.

And I thought that making art was a good thing for other people, to widen and deepen their experience, to give them the experience of beauty that will help them live a more beautiful life, with love, with collaboration, with understanding…

Now I felt there was no sense in doing anything. I always had a purpose for doing things and I missed it.

It felt like depression.

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Then I decided to ask August Moon about it.

August Moon is my inner guide. I have been connected with him for a while. He always answers. He is always there.

I asked and made a drawing, as I like to get the answers through the art. Sometimes I know through words, but if it is a big thing, I make art and read the answer in it. I just like it this way.

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And as soon as I started making the art, I knew the answer. The lines in the drawing spoke to me with the energy that is in them:

The reason to do anything, to do all that you want to do, is not that there is a need for it. You are not doing it for any idealistic purpose. You do it because it is your nature to be interested in doing things. It is your nature to love. It is your nature to be curious, playful, peaceful, capable and creative. This nature is what you are and it is expressed by what you do. So you do, just because you are a natural expresser of yourself.

So, you see? There is no outside reason for me to be happy. I am happiness.

And how can this be depressed?

 

236.The energy is left with no job

Published June 10, 2016 energy , evolving , healing , Infinite space , Inner light , Intuition , letting go , making art , MAking it possible , meditation , Reading art , Spiritual , The world of thoughts 1 Comment
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All the colors stand around me, in bottles, tubes and pencils. They are looking quietly at what I do. What will I say? They are my audience now.

I love them. They can do infinite things. They do not really look. I know. It is the whole who looks. The infinite listening-with-the-heart. The heart-of-listening. His name is I.

When the light of seeing is bright and strong, everything that is non-transparent burns into non-existence. Its energy is left with no job. It gives itself back to be used for creation.

The name of the creator is I too.

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It seems the light in the middle of the painting (the yellow and orange) is marred. It has been hit on the head.

Darkness (on the left) makes a threat. But the little child-who-flies is not afraid. He flies into the darkness to repair his past. He will find his love that he rejected in those old times. It is like the soul-retrieval that shamans do.

The goodness and the freedom-filled-joy, which is the lost part of him, will be found where it went to hide when it was not permitted to act in the world. It will be invited back and respected, loved, accepted, joined.

Again the lines tell the stories. The color shapes tell the emotions. The composition says that all is blessed, with all its tiniest details.

The white always looks with endless love and curiosity, with awe, with pride and marvel.

There is confusion there too, on the right, projecting a yes-no feeling.

Everything is okay.

 

The big yellow mother would like to say: Be careful!

But she knows that daring requires love and trust, and not carefulness. So she does not say a word. She admires her child.

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Yesterday in the morning I sat on the window seat and meditated. With all the lack of sleep that I collected, because of the pain, I fell asleep. I lost my balance and fell. I opened my eyes in the middle of the fall and saw the world turning around. But I was still asleep when my forehead hit the floor.

Then I woke up.

I felt fear and this conjured up memories from an event in my childhood, that now I saw more fully than before. Doors that were closed before, opened.

Fear cannot come if there is no story behind it. Falling cannot happen without a belief or a few beliefs that invite it. I know this is strange for some.

 

After some time I did this painting.

 

235. Take the inner world out

Published June 7, 2016 evolving , healing , identification , Intuition , letting go , making art , perception , Reading art , Spiritual Leave a Comment
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There are the lines and there are the color shapes. They seem to describe the same thing but they have very different perspectives.

Sometimes, in other paintings, the lines and the shapes do not necessarily describe the shame thing. If we compare this to music, then those paintings are like counterpoint. The lines have a tune and the color shapes have a different tune. But when they are placed on top of each other, the music makes sense. The music becomes richer by the working together of different tunes.

This painting is more like a tune with chords. The chords accompany the tune that the lines make.

If we look at the lines, trying to see the character of the tune, in my opinion, it is hesitant, even afraid somewhat. It tries to describe something but we cannot identify what it is. In a way it is like what toddlers do sometimes, when they pretend to be writing words and sentences but they don’t yet know how to write. So the lines only looks as if they are describing shapes. There is humor in that.

Now if we look at the color shapes, they don’t seem to be worried at all. They seem to be happy. They come together to share an activity and while playing together they keep their independence and individual identities. They seem to be playful and enjoying the game that they play.

If we describe the music here, it may be something like this: on the background of freely moving pleasant chords, the tune is hesitant. Its parts hold on to each other as if they are afraid to fall apart. There is no sense of freedom in the tune. It seems to be working hard, trying to fulfill some duty or necessity. It is a bit ridiculous in its efforts to describe everything in detail while it is impossible to decipher what it describes.

The chords in this piece of music are strange. They are a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant feelings.

I actually like that kind of music.

But if this were the description of a person, what would you want to tell him?

Maybe it will be, to let go of some of the seriousness with which it takes the story line, and give some attention to the deeper layer of himself, where the playfulness, freedom and maybe even the beauty of life’s experiences can be felt. This layer is so close…

But the story won’t stop. And we are here for the story, aren’t we?

So maybe it is possible to take some of the character of the inner layers of who we are and bring it with us outside, when we create the lines of our stories. Maybe we will then make lines that are a bit freer and happier than before?

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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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