Posts Tagged 'curiosity'

316. Birds in the blue sky

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?

269. On becoming a philosopher

The scream, the understanding and infinity

I just wanted to paint or draw the pain again.

In the past I used to draw the pain many times. The pain was not almost constant, as it is now. It would come every now and then and it would be quite devastating. I found then that I could draw it, the way and shape it was felt in the body, and after becoming stronger at first, the pain would start to get smaller and smaller until it would disappear. This would take some five or six drawings, which I made quite quickly in a little pad that I always had with me.

I thought I had the cat’s pajama. This gave me a way to protect myself from the pain and a way to feel capable and not out of control. But it also helped in establishing the pain. Because I did not want the pain and at least part of the activity of drawing was for the purpose of winning against it. When you think this way many times, you repeat the belief that the pain is bad for you and dangerous and needs to be fought against. This establishes the pain, in your mind, as dangerous and needing to be fought against.

I understood this and stopped this practice. But I also knew that there was a lot of good in making art about the pain. The good is, or at least some of it is in this: In order to draw you actually change your attitude from fear to curiosity. Curiosity is a characteristic of the true you, and it is of a higher vibration than fear. This makes you into a place, in which fear’s lower vibrations cannot stay. So it was beneficial in the emotional realm. And it taught me to automatically change my attitude every time the emotional reaction to the pain arose, from fear to curiosity. And you can add the sense of beauty that easily added itself to the drawing and brought a lot more good vibrations.

I am sure there is more good things to be found in this activity, so I decided to paint my pain again and find out. I wanted to let the painting bring in the thoughts and not the other way around.

All that is done with lines is a description of the pain. I took the liberty to twist appearances, as this helped to express the pain. You can see that it radiates strongly to all directions.

Sometimes when I want to give the feet energy with my hands, good, healing energy, the left hand jumps away. As if the strength of the pain’s energy frightens the left hand away.

After the lines, came the color areas, and this was done with a more relaxed state of mind. There is one line of orange round shapes going from a big shape at the bottom to a small one at the top. This is one story line. And there is a blue line of three rounded shapes going from right to left and crossing the orange story. And there is also a line of same-size round, smaller shapes, as if it is a bit farther, going diagonally through the whole picture.

To me, as I’m looking at the painting now, the orange and the blue describe an inner conflict. Two ideas in my being don’t agree with each other. And it is not shown as a juicy harsh conflict, but as an idea. One thought goes in this direction, another goes in a different direction and they disagree. Maybe it is even possible to see that there is no need for a resolution of this conflict. The two ideas can stay intact. We can get used to having contradictory ideas within us, because we all have plenty of them. Solutions, in any case, are never in the same layer of the conflicts. We have to go deeper.

The yellow line of smaller round shapes feels to me as the experience of a deeper layer of myself, where connection to infinity is felt.

How strange. In one painting you have the screaming of the pain, a more peaceful view of an underlying conflict, and a sense of infinity.

I was not interested in this case in the disappearance of the pain, but in seeing the bigger picture. I have changed.

When I told my Friend Stuart, many years ago, that I was about to separate for my wife, he told me a story. A student came to the Rabi and asked weather marrying was a good idea for him. The Rabi said it was. If you both fit each other, then you are a lucky man, he said. And if you don’t, then you will become a philosopher.

I feel as if I am married to the pain, we don’t fit, and I am becoming a philosopher.

In the end it may turn out that it was good for me…

How?

By forcing me into the deeper view.

260. The art that you are

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As soon as I finished it and I wanted to go to bed, I felt that there was something good in it.

I saw it in passing two more times that night and the feeling was still there.

In the morning it became clear to me that I really like this one very much.

This one does not go anywhere. Yes, you can feel that it is part of a bigger scene, and there are more things beyond the borders of the paper, but there is no feeling of wanting to go out, or of any other struggle. There is only the interest in what is happening here now.

The lines and the areas of color join together in a local play. The main interest for me is in how the different color areas touch each other and blend to a degree, but stay independent too. Like the different tastes in a dish that feel good together and at the same time you can tell exactly what are all the ingredients that were mixed in it.

It’s a delicate pleasure and my heart sings. Even though a whole day has passed, it still sings, and that’s the power of real satisfaction.

The most satisfying feeling that one can have as a human being is to experience the truth of who he is. Maybe it is a strange thing to read now, and I can write about it some time later, to make the idea open to everyone. In my life experience I found this to be true.

When we feel unsatisfied, we try to make the experiences that moved us stronger, longer, more pronounced in some way. But this does not really bring more satisfaction. It brings more wanting and frustration.

To find what is deeply and truly satisfying, find a way to get calm and develop an interest in your own inner responses to what is happening now. In those energy movements that you can detect in your being as responses to what is happening to you now, and in your curiosity about them, you will find the main road to knowing yourself and to the beauty, art and truth that you are.

241.What is psychotherapy for me?

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You choose to be a therapist because you want to see if you can find yourself by going through the filter of another character.

So you spend time with the other character and in the conversation the fences fall. Sooner or later you find yourself through him. And he finds himself through you. Then In the deep place in you that is beyond words, you know that he and you are one.

When you reach this recognition of yourself, through the laughing, the loving, the awakened curiosity that appear, yourself smiles, as if he is a baby that has just been hugged and kissed. And you feel as if you have found a proof of what you have always known, that everything is perfect all the time.

I always knew it, you say.

That’s what psychotherapy is for me.

240. Look back with your eyes closed

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Try this:

Close your eyes.

Sit comfortably somewhere of course.

Find something that your senses detect.

An example: The eyelids touching each other.

Imagine that your whole world is made of transparent clay. This clay makes everything and is not seen. This clay makes everything it wants. The things it makes appear to our senses.

Your clay creates the eyelids, the nerves that sense them touching each other and your same clay is the one who sees it all, from inside of itself.

Let’s say you hear a car on the road. Your clay is making it in this moment. Your clay is making the road. Your clay makes the sound. Your clay is making your ears and all their parts, right now.

What is this clay?

Why does it make these things?

Maybe out of curiosity? Out of the love of experiencing? Out of joy?

Playing like a baby?

Is it you?

Where does this clay come from?

 

Look back, from inside the clay, with your eyes closed.

 

238. A story about idealism and reality

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

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.

 

234. Segovia and the quiet spot

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Mooji showed up in front of me, when I was going through videos to enjoy but I moved on every time. Now I stopped and let him speak. He is like an old friend that I love deeply. So my heart opens. What will he say now?

In everything that he says and in the way he moves, I feel that-infinite-space attending, just like my own one right now. I realize that I came to like the taste of this state. It starts to be familiar.

And he says that when a troublesome event comes up and we have a shock, a fear, or we are being shockingly and fearfully agitated, the thing to do is to find the quiet spot that is always there too, and go into this, stay in this.

 

And this is what this reminds me of:

When both of Segovia’s parents died and he was left alone in his world, he was some six years old, or maybe less. He was very sad, and I am crying for this sadness now because I feel some of it. Somehow there was someone there who knew what to do. He or she put Segovia (little Andre) on the train with all his belongings and sent him to his grandfather in another city.

Grandpa took him from the station and brought him home. For Segovia this was a strange person who he did not know. Grandpa sat Segovia on a chair and sat himself on another chair facing Segovia and in his hands he had his guitar. Segovia did not play guitar yet.

Grandpa made a chord.

Segovia cried.

Grandpa made another cord.

Segovia cried more.

And so they went. Grandpa played chords and Segovia cried, until Segovia smiled.

This was his introduction to his grandpa. And this is what brought the guitar to his life. And it was also his introduction to that different love that comes with insight and cannot be broken.

You see? Whatever life brought, whatever emotional response he had, he went to this direct-no-story effect of the sounds and this became his quiet spot. Maybe at first he did not even perceive the sweetness of the chord. Eventually he fell in love with it.

 

Maybe you do not immediately feel the huge, deeply joyful, childishly curious, absolutely peaceful character of the inner peace. But with many visits it becomes inevitable that the taste will come through. And there will be a sweet love that has just awakened in your heart, that will take you there again and again and it will be your home, the only place where there is no contradiction whatsoever between you and the place. And with no contradiction, you are the place and the place is you. And so it goes for everything.

(As for the story about Segovia, I hope it is close enough to the truth. I heard it on public radio long ago. The details may have been somewhat different but the core is true.)

233. How the “I” moves to a wider view

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Being tired and in pain I became sad. Pain is a simple thing but living with it creates additional problems. Now all of them weighed on me. I thought: I can’t go on like this any more. I did not even paint yesterday and today.

My friend from Germany called. We started to talk and the phone line went dead.

I pulled a new piece of paper onto the table, dipped the brush into the water and into the first paint that my eyes saw in the watercolor box. It was olive green. This is how I choose the first color.

And then there was the drawing. No time. No pain. Brush, water, paint and the composition, the story with no words. The energy of the truth. Everything is good.

The olive green lines and the white of the paper are the best of friends. It is a holy connection. The lines, strikingly, appearing out of the white. The white does not have inside and outside. It is everywhere. It is all-there-is-everywhere. Even the word everywhere does not fit here. Is the green line real? And my eyes that see it: are they real? And my heart that has just become so full and so delighted, what about it?

(The other colors came later.)

 

Now in a different way:

Pain is part of the illusion of life, together with the body, with time, with good and bad.

The true self cannot have pain. Its essence is joy. Its essence is love and playing and being curious. The true self cannot be affected by the illusion.

For the “I” in the illusion pain is real and hard.

The good thing is that everything is connected. All I need to do is to change the way I focus and switch my identity to the true I.

Instead of focusing on the pain and automatically trying to escape it, to fight it, to prevent it, to change it, Instead of these, I find my curiosity and make the olive green lines. I find my playfulness and play with everything that shows itself. I look for the beauty in everything and find it easily. I look for my joy and it is right there. I am joyful. I look for my love and indeed what else do I have? This is how I start to identify with the true self.

And as I do this, I find that I have forgotten the pain. I don’t even feel it. Or if I do, it is not significant. I am in peace. The vibrations of the pain, the waves that streamed through the legs calm down. My hands that clutched one foot fall down, relaxed. The body rests. The energy of creation flows flawlessly everywhere it has to go. The body heals. The specific thinking processes that hold on to the body and its suffering become weaker. I am not so dependent on the body and the world around it. I witness them and I am free. In my mind I am already walking down to town, where the galleries are. I am going to see an exhibition. Right foot, left foot and I dance.

 

232. Come

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Be the light in you

Beyond the clouds of thinking

There are playgrounds

With no words

The sun will speak with you

Of being wild and transparent

Look

The sun has made a boot for you

And on the boot it wrote:

Come.


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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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