Posts Tagged 'dream'

292. Parade

Parade

So you still have those monsters… she says.

But I meant this to be a flower. It has some strange dark side to it. It’s true. It gives you a bad look.

And this, I meant it to be a branch, a tree, and a piece of the sky is caught up in it.

And this is some kind of an animal walking with its nose down to the ground.

Something with bad vibes is coming out from the water.

Why is one leg red?

And that long necked creature at the front, why is it looking back? Is it like a member of a gang, making sure he is not breaking a rule?

It does have some monstrous feel to it.

Or is it a colorful parade on the street?

Are they pretending to be bad?

Are they the audience for themselves?

And where am I in all of this?

I am the vibes that invite all this into my experience.

Look at the lines with all the sharp points aiming inward and outward.

Only the monsters are invited to the game today.

And what is the music in the background?

Is it quiet?

Will there be a scream soon?

Why is the sky so pale?

Can a scene like this exist?

It can, if you invite it. Can I invite something else?

Let’s see…

And how come it looks so peaceful and playful suddenly?

Like poor children, playing with dolls that they had made from barbed wire and junk? What do they dream about?

What do you dream about?

285. The dream and the life

White House Dream

4:40, early morning.

I don’t know when it started. From that point on, I had the same dream all through the night, till now.

The White House exploded and burned down.

All the people who worked there came to work in my living room.

There was place for all of them but it was crowded. They rearranged the pillows on my bed and this made it possible for them to sleep there. Trump said to a reporter that they did not need that many people, that all those who left, only made the White House work better. “We don’t need that many people, he said, it is a simple thing to run a country.”

I think this dream touches on my getting rid of a big part of what I kept before, and how having stuff that conflicts with your freedom to be who you are, is slowing you down or even preventing you from being you.

And this connects to having mental habits that don’t support your free flight.

In the last period of my sleep, most of the pains in my feet subsided and if I was careful enough I could keep it that way and get some sleep. Only one pain seemed to stubbornly menace me. It woke me up and I sat up in my bed. The people from the White House were not in my bed any more, but I still was under the spell of the dream. I felt that unpleasantness of having uncomfortable things that fill up all the space.

I tried the stronger ointment on the top of the right foot. This will take care of it, I thought. I cannot use this all the time but now it is okay.

The pain did not stop. I put the ointment again.

The pain started to subside but the parallel place in the other foot started to hurt. I treated the new pain with the stronger ointment too. Now both feet hurt. It was a hard-to-live-with pain.

Nevertheless, sitting in bed, I fell asleep and started to fall. I woke up abruptly and avoided the fall.

This pain too, in the context of this writing, has to do with thought patterns that block flying. Have you ever considered that pain is a thought? We will have to talk about it some other time.

I went to the kitchen to make some coffee.

Long ago in this continuing fight with the pain, I made up my mind that I won’t succumb to suffering. If the pain keeps me awake, I’ll do something pleasant.

On my way to the kitchen, a bit more awake, my mind started to think with some coherence.

The thoughts that came to me were about the trauma. There was that time long ago, when I felt that I was succeeding in becoming like my father. For some reason, habitual most probably, I still consider that little sweet boy to be me, even though the only thing that we truly have in common is this infinite consciousness, who has always witnessed us from inside.

I was three and a half. I climbed all the way to the top of the structure in my new kindergarten. I stood there, at the top, and knew that I had made it. Now I am like him. This kindergarten was my new place. All the kids were older than those in the kindergarten that I left. It is happening, I thought. I am becoming my father.

He was in the war in the Galilee and in that same day he was killed.

My mom was shocked and did things in strange ways. Without talking or hinting at any reason, she brought me back to the baby’s kindergarten that I just left a few days earlier. I talked with her about it many years later and I know that she wanted me to be closer to her workplace so she could come during the work-hours and see me, in case I needed her. But in those days, in a child’s way, I understood it differently: By wanting to take my father’s place and by succeeding in being like him, I killed him. He had to go. There was only a place for one. My mother knew, I thought, even though I did not tell her (I believed that people could see each other’s thoughts), and did not want me to take my father’s place. She wanted him. What a disappointment. She knew I was dangerous and putting myself at danger too. People will know what I did and will come to kill me. I had to be protected against them and prevented from any further success. This was my understanding in those distant days. And indeed I understood it also to be a punishment for following my dream, not to mention the punishment of not having a father any more.

I did not talk. I did not feel anything accept for some resistance to this predicament. I accepted my punishment as just. My subconscious was quick to learn that he had to prevent me from succeeding. I also learned to be careful not to anger Mom, as who knows what else she could suddenly do? Every time I had the feeling that I succeeded in something, my subconscious interfered and some form of blocking appeared. I did not feel these blockages, Just as I did not feel anything in the beginning. The whole air around me was making it impossible for me to be able to evolve as I wanted. The air did not let me succeed. I only felt my resistance to the air in my back and the back of the neck, as if I was pushed backward to a wall and wanted to fight my way out of this.

This is how, in my child’s mind, I paved for myself a life of struggles and some significant failures. Today I look at all this as an admirable invention of a very talented mind. But I don’t want to jump far ahead so quickly.

Everything that started to feel like success, the sky stopped. I would discover that something shocking had happened again, only too late, when the failure had already happened, and I would turn to be emotionless. Sometimes when I thought that I succeeded in something, I started to see in my imagination an angry crowd coming after me to shame and punish me violently.

Every time my mother was a little upset, and later, when my wife was in such a mood, I feared that I was about to be punished and blocked.

So when I thought about the dream that continued all through the night, I felt that it was as stubborn as this disaster-bringing-fear that blocked me so many times, and also like the pain that presented similar characteristics.

On the other hand, the insistent dream forced me to experience the discomfort that is felt when you have a blocking thought pattern that takes over the space of your mind.

So what do you do?

The first thing to know is that you cannot change the situation, as long as you remain on the same level of consciousness.

This means that you can’t win against what you understand to be a war against you or against a fear that you have. You have to let go of the whole struggle, even if it feels like losing. Lose. Let the issue rest, no matter which way it falls. It will make you freer.

We need to go to a deeper state and witness the experience from there.

This is usually enough, when you deal with all minor problems. I wrote abut it in the past. But this one here is a major one. At least from the perspective of a normal human being, like you and me (as long as we see ourselves as such).

I wrote in the past about this deeper state as a child-like consciousness. Being flowingly curious without a practical reason, loving everything, playing with the reality about us as a natural expression of who we really are, and more things like these, including of course being in a creative flow. Creative flow includes all of these characteristics together (which is the real value of art making for everyone).

This child-like state feels so much better than the state in which we suffer, that naturally, looking from this state, we choose not to suffer. Yes, suffering turns out to be a choice, when you look at it through a child-like eyes and heart. It just feels bad, and you choose not to go that way. Instead, you choose to do something that feels better. The old habit comes back later several times, but after a while it just dies from disinterest in it.

But this case is more difficult because at the time that the trauma occurred I was in a child-like state. If I get into a similar state now, I won’t be able to see the difference between my good state now and the child that I was when the trauma happened.

So we need to go even deeper than the child’s state. Only from that deeper state it will become clear that this suffering was a choice too, and the deeper state that we are in feels so much better, that we naturally make the choice not to suffer. Then again, it comes back and because we are not interested in it any more it becomes weaker and weaker, and dissolves completely eventually.

What is the state that is deeper than the child-like state?

Being absorbed in who we really are. This state is the basis, out of which the child-like state arises.

We cannot even be aware of our choices if we are in the same state in which the choices were made.

What can I say about this absorption?

When in it, you know beyond doubt that you are deeply and permanently loved. Nothing can ever change this. All your choices are supported and appreciated. All possibilities are open before you and you can choose differently than that choice that you suffer from now.

In a way it looks as if a mixture of different “I”s are involved in what I wrote.

We have the child, The “I” that I am now, and the deeper “I”, the infinite witness from within. It is perplexing, but all these become one, when you choose to live in the physical world with a deeper perspective.

275. Side effects

Everything is changing in my world.

I am dismantling my studio. I am not doing art therapy any more. The studio will be rearranged, to support what I’ll be doing next. The free flow, that is who I am, has discovered at last that it had invented ways to stand in its own way. I hug it now, but who is hugging? My computer, what I need for making art now, what I need for writing, and a few more things will move to a temporary place in the apartment, for a while.

Here is a painting from a few days ago, and what I had written about it.

Changing

The drawing was ready for two days. I did not want to do the next step until I knew I’d have all the time needed to finish the painting.

I looked, and different possibilities ran through my imagination. Something was missing in all of them. The best thing is to do the colored shapes right after the drawing is done, as a continuous event. This did not happen in this case. But I found a way to experience the drawing freshly. I got closer, as I described in the past. I came so close, that my nose almost touched the paper. This did it. A new, trustworthier stream of ideas started to flow and I went along with it till all the shapes were there. The choice of colors came too as a stream, one after the other. Something in me knew what to do. Guess what part it is.

One thing that jumped to my attention is that in this painting the stronger part of the painting finds it easy to go out of the paper to the left side. In the beginning of the blog most or all of the drawings never went out through the left edge. The left side was usually left empty, and there was a lot of tension about this side. And here there is no problem at all. The right side of the painting goes out through the right, but it is the weaker part of the artwork and it feels hesitant.

So we have a change.

Lets take another issue. There seem to be two people in the painting. Both have a blue body. And around or close to their heads there are circles of colors that can be felt as light. It just came to me, as everything else came, as parts of the flow. My reaction to having the impulse to draw these halos was to avoid doing it and find something else to draw instead of them. But my dedication is to trust what comes. So I went ahead and did the circles of light.

When I was on my first meditation retreat in 1990, I had a dream, in which I saw myself meditating on the top of a mountain. The mountain and I were shown as silhouettes. Behind us was an orange light that became more and more intense. I woke up in the middle of the night and discovered that I could make my mind go totally quiet just by telling it to do so. I said: Enough! And it calmed down.

I have a feeling that both the people in the art are monks. They walk their path alone. They may be versions of the same person. The one on the right embodies an idea that has been let go of, and the bigger one on the left is acting now with a new choice. The word pilgrimage comes to mind. The direction towards which this figure is moving is the true ’I’, which moves all the time, so you cannot really reach it. But you certainly can be it.

There is a story in the bible, the Hebrew bible, about Saul. He is the one who would become King Saul later. At the time of the story he worked as a herder of donkeys. Today it would be like a parking garage attendant, who takes all the cars to the gas station every day. All the donkeys ran away from Saul that day. He ran after them in vein. But on his way he met with the prophet Samuel. Samuel was there because God had sent him with some oil to find Saul, pour the oil on his head and let him know that he was chosen by God to be the king of Israel. Politics was messy then too. To Saul this was quite a shock, I believe. But for the people who told the story, this was a chance to invent a saying: He looked for donkeys and found a kingdom.

Aren’t we all like Saul? We always aim for the less important things and the best happens to us as if it was side effects. Luckily, we pay attention one day to that part of us that is true and always awake, and eventually get it.

251. This too will be

p1000395

You can probably tell

From my vibes

I see the reality in my dream

Collapsing

And there is something interesting

About the space that opens

Maybe you can see that too

It feels alive

Maybe more alive than it usually was

It almost has a face

And you can feel it

You can almost touch it

With your finger

Will it laugh when you do?

It may laugh

And you will recognize yourself in it

Even though

It is me

And if all that will be left

After everything else had gone

Are these three little birds on a line

This too will be

An expression of love.

231. Yes it is

P1000255

I look at my last drawing. The shape in the middle feels like a heavy package with several parts, almost floating heavily in a space that seems to be organized like a room on stilts. There is night in the window and a warm light is reflected from the floor. There is something that looks like a toy on the floor.

Let’s look at the package.

I know there is a man sitting, his back supported by a few things.

There is something with a door on the lower right side.

I’ll leave it up to you.

Maybe the man who sits is asleep?

It is night as we can see through the window. There is a sense of being wrapped in a blanket. The room feels like a dream flying above the space that is underneath.

Not real, heavily asleep while sitting, a lot of air comes in through the walls. A river of light breaks through what should have been solid. Isn’t it like a dream?

 

 

And when he dreams

The room collapses.

The sky and the earth

Open up

Space that goes to no end

Starts here.

You have to dream

To enter the space

Don’t make an effort

The essence

Of the space

Will carry you

If you have no opinion

You’ll become like the essence

Of the space

Is it good?

Yes it is.

You are already there.

Do you have any more questions?

No.

All the answers come to me.

I know all.

I am all.

 

182. Father came to visit in a dream

For some time, faces wanted to come into my abstract drawings. It took me some time to let them in. They were persistent.

Someone appears

Someone appears

An eye and a nose

An eye and a nose

Almost a face

Almost a face

A face

A face

Late at night, which is already the next day’s morning, on 4/2/14 I came to my table to write:

I see now and admire the child, the little child, furious and angry, and taking upon himself to punish himself forever for his belief that he killed his father. He came to my drawings too.

 

The furious child

The furious child

I love him so much and admire him for his undertaking. If I had to choose the child that I could be, this is the one I would choose.

But he is punishing me now.

And even now, when I am almost 70, I am not sure yet: Have I killed my father?

I feel the child’s presence in me or in the same space that I occupy, being some form of energy like me. I am him and he is me.

How do I solve this?

My father came to me this night in a dream, very close. I felt his unshaved beard on my cheek, maybe as I did experience in my childhood. He came to show me that he loves me.  I know he does not carry anger from that time. I met him before.

I wake up and come to my studio to write.

Father, did I kill you as a child? Did you die because I thought that I wanted you to die?

No kid. I died because I had it in my own mind that I would die. You cannot kill anybody really. Every one of us determines his own life experiences.

But I wanted you to die so that I’d have Mom for myself. And indeed you died. So from my perspective I killed you.

You are not real, Giora. “You” is an illusion. All the stories that you create are illusions. No one can ever die in truth, because he does not really exist. So it is like a movie, where one actor shoots another actor and nothing happens except for the illusion that it did.

Do I have to be angry at myself? Do I have to punish myself?

No. You are god playing. And what a story you have created! Your pain is an illusion too. In truth, nothing can ever happen to you. So you had created this horrific story. Now you know it is not real. And you know that you are pure love, still playing in this illusion of life on earth. You can choose differently. You can choose to live happily and healthily. You can change the whole story from its beginning to its end. It is like one of your children’s books. You are in control. Change the story. Make it so that your father lived for many years after the war. Make it so that you have lived with a father who loved you every day. Make it so that you are still loving and laughing together about all the stories that you participated in together. It is my deeper aspect who is talking now.

Look at the whole universe that you have created and keep creating all the time. You can change a little detail in this huge thing. You can understand that it was just a choice of the plot line.

But if it is only a story and not real, why would I want to change it?

For the same reason that you keep changing your story all the time. To make it feel better. To experience other experiences in this illusion game. Don’t you want to see how it is to live without that guilt, without withholding love?

It is up to you of course. But we (My deeper aspect talks as “we” sometimes) want you to feel better, so that you will create better places and lives. Your character does not need to suffer at all.

This child that you were in your story was indeed admirable. You can love him still. And you can give him a better life. Let him learn how to be healthy, how to live without guilt and self-punishment. Let him soar.

156. One poem with three names

1. The Green

2. The Habits and the Flow

3. The Human Condition 

The reds go to the green

The reds go to the green

But he is overwhelmed and afloat

The river flows rigorously by him

And everywhere else

He remembers the river from a dream

 

The browns are curious, supportive and showing the way

Just as the lines of his drawings are

And the Green welcomes them

 

There are golden drops all over the place

I told you he is overwhelmed

I did not tell you it is joy

 

The reds are riding in dutifully

Hoping they are in the right direction

Reminding of biblical tribes of nomads

Who always go to where the green goes. 

A few notes: 

The nomads who follow the green are the subconscious habits that we have. Of course I did not think this when I wrote the poem. You try to escape them by changing your life and there they are with you again.

This is a description of my life at the moment. Of course I did not think so when I wrote it. The lines help me a lot to see clearly.

The joy is all over the place, in the curiosity, in the creativity, in the love, in the beauty, in itself.

The poem has power because it speaks in pre-language. You put words to it but it is the pre-language that speaks.

The river was seen sharply and clearly in a deep state, showing me that the flow of real life is always right here with us, strong and eternal.

Why is the green the hero?

About satisfaction: 

When beauty is created through you there is satisfaction.

It is the beauty that came through, that puts you in wonder, provoking deep appreciation and thankfulness, that you can also call satisfaction.

You feel you did something that is meaningful. You expanded, surprisingly. You have more love now. This is satisfaction.

Do you need anything? No. Thanks. Everything is OK.

152. The shadow

Flying in her/his dream

Flying in her/his dream

He/She

Is flying in

Her/his

Dream

The pillow

Is a man that he/she forgot

A man of peace

And of all ages

The darkness of the sky

Is like a guard

Who says “No” with one finger

The body

Is the secret

 

In this world

There is always a horizon

And when you are flying in the air

Your shadow cuts itself

On the rocks.

143. How things are formed

How things are formed

How things are formed

How things are formed

In the All

With a dance

With a dream

With roots

And with connections.

 

121. Quite here but disappearing

Woken up around 3:30 at night, with the whole body trembling. I feel as if a different energy than my usual is entering my body. Maybe it is a dream and I am only half awake. I want to stay with it and allow the process to happen. After a while it is so uncomfortable that I get up and come to the studio. I turn on the light above the table.

I have been meditating a lot in bed at night. When the pain wakes me up I meditate. I connect with the feeling of “I.” I can experience how the body happens with all that happens in it. It is being manifested into being all the time. And I am watching everything. Then I fall asleep. The drawing is also about moving back and forth between the physical and the non physical.

Quite here but disappearing

Quite here but disappearing

Look

It is light blue outside now

Quite here but disappearing

And that’s the way it goes

The fruit that you are waiting for

Looks like leaves

But it is not

It is the body of the dream

In this cool air

Quite here

But disappearing.


Awards

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 372 other subscribers

My Pages

The healing process

Entries 1-58 show how I use the method of Intuition Through Art to heal myself from Peripheral Neuropathy.

Archives