Posts Tagged 'experience'

310. A delicious drama

And suddenly it was finished.

I was still trying to see more colors in the two upper leaves on the right side, as the knowing that the painting was finished started to occupy some space in my being.

This also was the time when the name came. You cannot give a name to a piece before it is finished. Well, maybe in most cases.

Sometimes you know the name even before you start. It is a strange thing, the name. It is the “what is it about” of the piece. Sometimes it happens when you recognize something special about it. In other times it is an interesting feeling that you have even before you start, and are curious enough to explore it with the art.

In any case, what has given the name immigration to this piece?

For me it is this strange line that crosses through almost everything else. Here you have this plant or whatever is depicted as the main subject, and with no logical reason, in comes this beige line, wrapped in orange, and dares go through the leaves that have color, the thick beige trunk and the empty leaves, as if it has grabbed the right to come in at the level of its choice and disregard the prevailing order.

You could even say that this stranger has cut through the old and established areas and it is aiming at the most vulnerable but alive green. Isn’t that green the best of all places in the plant, where life is experienced in its strongest impulse to grow, and its boldest claim to the adventure of being a body in space? If you had to choose a place to experience life, where would you go?

And yes, the plant was just all right without this beige and orange intrusion. Everything was just working fine. But coming in, as this new line did, has just given the most interesting and the most intense experience to this old plant.

It has introduced drama to the composition. How poor would the composition be with only all that is okay in it? Now something is breaking the routine. Something is happening, sweet, tasty, maybe even spicy.

You really need to look at immigration from a composition point of view, to see what it means to everything that is involved.

A delicious drama, this is what it is about.

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?

290. Who needs a subject?

Birdman

I finished it yesterday and wrote a mistaken date, as you can find in the signature. It should be 050418.

I started it in the night that lead to the forth. I came off bed where I did not sleep and sat down to do a drawing.

The colors will come in the day, I thought. This is indeed what happened.

I had a feeling about how I wanted the language of the painting be. It was a pleasant feeling, like a feeling that I used to get when I would be on my way to the swimming pool, already imagining the sensation of water touching my body everywhere.

I want to write about this language.

But first, it seems there is some form that is being depicted in the picture. Maybe it is some sort of a big man with a bird’s head. Whatever it is, it is made of a flimsy structure of moving lines that hold a strange gathering of soft, mostly translucent shapes.

These shapes of colors; what holds them in place? Are they confined? It does not seem so. It looks as if these shapes can move away and be free of the drawing. Some pieces do radiate away.

Do they want to be together? Maybe their behavior has nothing to do with wanting? Maybe this is just what they do when they are in certain circumstances?

All these details are told with the language of the artwork. You can say, maybe, that the language and the story that is being told cannot be separated.

Just like in any language, when the language and what it describes cannot be separated, the whole thing becomes a poem. Or maybe, since this is a visual art piece, maybe we can say that it gives the feeling of something true. If we experience this feeling, we tend to like the painting and usually it is hard, if at all possible for us, to explain why we like it. The whole experience belongs in a different realm than the one we usually describe successfully with a language.

But is this at all possible to describe any experience in a language?

This is why for some of us the language of numbers feels more capable of describing phenomena or experiences. If it is three, then it is three and nothing else. At least we know this. But do we?

Maybe this is good enough for now, for this discussion?

I want to aim the light of our thinking onto the use of the visual language. I think that the language shares more information than the content.

So the lines here seem as if they are not sure where they are going. They try and fail to describe something. But in their failure, a feeling is created that something is there. We are not sure what exactly the lines do. Do they try to describe a shape, or do they describe the quivering of the energies as they move through the form? Is it a living form, because there is energy moving through it?

How does the form feel? Does it want to be there? Is it wondering about itself and its environment?

Is it just trying to be filled with enough being, so it can experience everything around and in it?

And as such, does it matter at all what the form is? It is a wanting to experience. This is enough.

And let’s take the colored forms.

They come together as different units of being, made of what? Maybe too made of wanting to know or wanting to experience? They touch each other and overlap, where they mix with each other. They accompany the quivering curious delineated shape of lines and they interact with it too.

And all the parts, the lines and the shapes, are free in their nature. They don’t have to be there. They have just come together as a strange occurrence, involving all kinds of being, stories and feelings, out of their common curiosity.

Are they focused on the inner world, so to speak, or the outward one? It seems that there is nothing really substantial in their gathering. Nothing is heavily real in both the inner and the outer world that they create. Only deep, rolling, playing interest in what can be made up and be experienced.

But since there is nothing very substantial in that coming together of these suggestive, wondering lines and the friendly mixing together color shapes, then who is experiencing anyway?

You see? All of this is given or shared through the language of this art.

Who needs a subject then?

Well, we need a subject for this coming together and experiencing. But it is never as substantive as we make it to be in our thoughts.

Think about it if you wish, or maybe it will become a poem?

 

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

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:

IMG_1940

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.

281. The beauty of the cloud of anger

A vague Anger

I have learned so much. I have painted so many paintings and read them. But I’m going to skip all of that and be current. I don’t like going back.

The last two paintings are about being fascinated by things that block the mind, the imagination and the openness. I am showing here one of them.

They tried hard to teach us this kind of attention in the meditation retreats. They would say: If you experience being blocked (which is what the subconscious does sometimes, to protect itself against change), do not fight it. Instead, become interested in what is in front of you. Look at that blockage. See what it is made of. Examine. Touch, smell, and experience without language.

It is not easy to do, when you feel being blocked. All you want is to break trough and this cloud is in your way, obscuring everything.

But how about using art?

In this painting I described a vague anger that I felt. I was taking some medication against the pain, so I could meditate (so I could sleep too). It was not a first solution. I meditated and worked with the pain without medications for many years until it became too strong to bear. The medication made me dull and vague. I could not dive deep. I did not feel the subtleties of the energies. And I was frustrated in this vague way, as everything was vague. Painting this anger became my way of coming out of vagueness. It is not that it is important to know exactly how the anger is experienced. It is the state of being interested itself that made the difference. To be interested, to be curious, is to participate in a characteristic of the true self, and this is what made me feel better and this is what opened a window in that inner blocking cloud, to let some fresh air blow in. Now I became aware of the space. I had a chance to make it my home again and what was in front of me became beautiful to me.

What is important in the painting is how the movement goes. It is slow and sticky. It does not burst out but bends and looses power by having parts fall off it.

 

260. The art that you are

the 29th day (1)

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.

258. I am

P1000443

I am.

I think of A.

I make A out of myself.

In order for A to be A, it needs B all around it.

So B is created too just as I create A.

Now A, a part of me who is different from everything else, and B, also a part of me who is different, interact with each other. The interaction is an experience. I feel how the energy of the experience moves inside of me. I can feel it because it is different from the calm me.

Now, if I give A the ability to change at will, the result will be that different B’s will be created around the different A’s. And every pair of A and B will create a different experience in me.

When you are the only being in existence, you need to be innovative, if you want to somehow know that you are, or to know your potential.

Without creating you don’t know yourself.

Creating is the way to self-knowledge (and self-love).

If you ever have the question “Who am I?” Create, and you will know at least one way that you can be.

You will know much more. You will know yourself in a deeper way.

You will know satisfaction. You will know flexibility, you will know that magic is how things are always done, and you will know that there is no final knowledge. You will also know that there is no truth. There is only the now experience.

257. Layers

P1000426

Yesterday and today I did two new paintings. I did them small. You finish faster this way and are able to see what you made immediately.

I look at the second one now, the one I just finished.

The first one is also interesting to share and maybe it will be in the next entry.

I wonder again about the function of the second layer, the layer of the colors.

The way it looks in this painting is that the line-work is the story, rich in details, like reality itself. It also means that it has in it all the stories that I have used to create this reality. That’s just another way to say it.

And the colors layer with the simplified shapes is a second way to tell that same story. Only it is devoid of the dramas of the first layer and loaded with (my) sense of beauty, which is a characteristic of the language of the real.

These two layers/languages work together through me to create my experience of everything. I experience all the busy details with all the contrasts, difficulties, hesitations, scares and daringness. And I also experience the deeper play of the energies that reveal more beautiful mixtures as steps occur. Again, when I write ‘beautiful,’ I mean my experience of beauty. In the deeper layer there is a sense of peace that is not in the story level.

The lines can be irritating, worrisome, too fast to attend to in a full way, but the existence of the deeper view at the same time and in the same place gives the calm feeling of: everything is okay. We are moving from one beautiful thing to another. Things work together. It is a good world, hiding right under the busy illusion.

You choose to go out (into reality) and you become more worried and more irritated. You choose to step in and you heal. You find the freedom and the satisfaction of meeting with your true self.

What is your true self?

It is a moving target. It is always in the deepest place that you can access now. Tomorrow it may be even deeper.

254. Inviting beauty to look at pain

p1000407

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.

244.Closing the door of this chapter and opening the door of the next one.

p1000375

And today it happened. Today I understood how you can love everything in your earth life, including the suffering. Because you see the beauty of the game that you, the bigger you, has and is still creating.

You are lead into a blind alley that you create and the keys are handed to you. And don’t worry. This is not a contest. The doors will keep appearing. The smells will cross the barriers of the ends of reality. The sun will rise in you, unstoppable. So don’t worry. Take it all in, as this is what you are here for: To take it in and to crack the walls at the same time. And you cannot even say that this reality does not exist.

What becomes clear is the reality of your experiencing and the opening of your expression of the truth.

Maybe this is a nice place to end this part of the blog, and to start a new part. Let’s see where it will go…


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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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