Posts Tagged 'intuition'

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
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

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.

P1000273

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.

P1000277

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?

 

237. A city that is a flower

Published June 19, 2016 evolving , healing , identification , Infinite space , Intuition , letting go , making art , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual 19 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

P1000272

Like Italo Calvino, who wrote about cities that never were, I too write. It is about our reality.

Sometimes a living thing appears and it is a miracle that it stands at all.

It stands for a very short time indeed, when there is no wind of course, without too many sets of eyes to look at it, and only a few hearts to flutter breathlessly.

Sound familiar? Maybe not?

Don’t fight, people. There is no real victory. Let your claims fall to empty space.

The city council (in the city that is a flower) is in a meeting. For now there are no results.

The grey cloud examines the degree of truth in what the piece of sky expressed.

The castle is simply pointing up while the ochre looks down with penetrating eyes. The green agrees to disagree.

But there is nobody to listen anyway. The city is too delicate for this. The city is a flower. The city is created by a mind that’s only joy.

Don’t fight, people.

Accept defeat on the level of the argument, because you cannot win.

Hug your doubts about what is possible

And dive into the deeper space

That is right here.

234. Segovia and the quiet spot

Published May 17, 2016 evolving , healing , identification , Infinite space , Inner light , Intuition , letting go , making art , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , Truth 2 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

P1000260

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.)

231. Yes it is

Published April 24, 2016 dream , identification , Infinite space , Intuition , making art , perception , Reading art , Spiritual 5 Comments
Tags: , , , , , ,

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.

 

230. Who is the free one?

Published April 4, 2016 energy , evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , letting go , making art , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , Truth 2 Comments
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

P1000247

It is on the longish side today and a bit psychological.

I started to draw when I had a very strong pain. I held on to the act of drawing as to something that saved me from sinking in a bog of pain. I did not want to loose my humanity. I also held on to drawing because I wanted to have some sort of a backbone, when everything else was breaking apart to meaningless good-for-nothing, directionless pieces.

The top left part, where I started the lines, is a possible visual interpretation of pain, sharply spreading, attacking everything in all directions.

Then I left the stage, so to speak. The first spontaneous burst of drawing calmed me down a little, and my by-now-natural-tendency to go deeper into myself, to allow for a deeper view to emerge took over.

This created, still in the ’lines’ department, a pen-like thing, thin and clumsy, self-guarding like a soldier in uniform, standing straight and holding with one hand this grand explosion, almost as if it is a flower. I did not think this thought when I drew. I just drew what came to me, basically not knowing what I was doing. Or you can say, I was trusting my inner guidance.

This soldier is supported by a complicated and inefficient scaffolding, in yellows and browns. The yellow color does not give a sense of strength to the scaffolding.

This scaffolding has another shape, in green, connected to it on one side. In that shape, there are teeth that are pointing inward, like an aggression that is directed inward.

I can almost say that it feels as if the scaffolding is trying to push this green part away, but can’t get rid of it. (The colors don’t feel good together.)

The color areas create two layers. To say it in a short way, the blue is behind everything else.

The layer of the pink, browns, yellows and reds is like an emotional echo of what the lines do. In the middle there is the aggression in all directions (in pink), and the rest are all the broken parts, including the spectacularly dramatic yellow in the upper left corner. There is drama there, no doubt.

In blue there are bridges above and under each other in what can go on forever without giving a sense of meaning, since it does not seem to matter if you go up or down. This adds to the meaninglessness.

So what did the diving-in bring up?

A big confusion, happening without any clear purpose, destructing something emotional while holding on as much as possible to the figure of the soldier, as the protagonist, who is being propped up somehow by a needlessly complicated scaffolding and showing off its anger as a flower.

Wow.

Or maybe I should say woe.

Isn’t the soldier like the ego? So fearful, so lost and confused, but pretending to be strong, accompanied by self-hatred, and displaying some dramatic fireworks while feeling so limited.

So what good is that for? What did I gain from drawing?

Seeing that this pain event creates such a sorry state requires two participants.

One is the event itself with all that happens. The second is the seer, the one who witnesses. And you have to admit that the seeing is pretty comprehensive, psychologically speaking. The pain has become a richer event, with self-hatred, with the inflexibility and fear of the ego, with all that is constructed to keep the ego in place, with the complexity of what holds the ego in place, and with displaying the drama almost as a way to decorate the ego.

First came the initial scream. The viewer at that point was the ego himself. Then, with calming down, it became possible to choose a different perspective to look from, by using a different style of consciousness. Instead of the narrow style, of one thought after another, of cause and effect along the same path, the attention started to be given to everything at once, to all the participating shapes and the way they relate to each other.

When there is a strong emotional response, one thing becomes the most important one, while everything else disappears from view. But from the wider view, the relative importance of the pain diminishes, and all the parts and their relationships can be seen at once. So you see the whole structure of the event. It does not have a purpose and it does not have a hero.

How does consciousness change?

Just by making art, in which composition is of the most importance. If you want to make something that has beauty for you, you must pay attention to the composition. When you do that, the diving into a wider (and deeper) state happens on its own. I am talking here about why art is so powerful as the initiator of wellbeing.

With this deeper view and with the associations that arise, you start to know the complete situation, or you see in a more complete way than before.

Being in this relatively deeper state is pleasant. It gives a sense of control, of knowing, of peace and of being strong and unaffected by the suffering. It surely is a better state than the one it depicts.When I came to this stage, I did not feel the pain any more.

Before, when the pain was the most important thing, getting rid of it seemed to be the prerequisite for feeling better.

Now you become interested in changing the situation, not because you do not want to feel the pain but because you want to be in a different state, the state of the viewer. It is a totally different ballgame. You don’t need to have no pain in order to be happy. Happiness is yours by changing your perspective. It is insight. It is wisdom.

It is a big and meaningful change that is right under our noses.

If you do this many times, it becomes a habit. Suffering then leads you deeper and you feel better. You teach yourself to be free.

 

 

 

 

222. Who won’t twitch their feet when they are tickled?

Published February 2, 2016 energy , evolving , Inner light , Intuition , making art , meditation , perception , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , Truth 1 Comment
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
P1000217

Thoughts/things

Maybe it is strange, but these days nothing is more pleasant to me than sitting quietly somewhere and watching the interface with the quiet space that is always there, seeing how a few moving things in my mind calm down, feeling the body relaxing and staying there.

A person passes in the street on his bicycle and I feel this somewhere in my energy field, as if it happens there. I feel a stirring of a little, very pleasant excitement and then it goes away. I see it as if it is a thought.

The quiet space is alive. If I tune in to it, I know, thoughts like the one that is a person on a bicycle, are moving in it. There are stirrings like this in different depths. They all belong to something infinite that lives its inner life in this way, creating interest and feeling it.

I suddenly understand babies, twitching their feet when they get excited. They experience the stir in the infinite space when their wordless thoughts move. They feel as if it is a tickle. And who won’t twitch their feet when they are tickled?

 

190. What is the belief behind the pain?

Published June 1, 2014 energy , evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , making art , meditation , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Sometime during the night and early in the morning I painted the pain. Here it is.

Pain

Pain

Then, in the morning, I heard a program on the radio in which a social psychologist (Ellen Langer) talked about her finding that it is our beliefs that determine the outcome that we experience. For example, if I do some physical work and believe that my work is actually exercise, and of course if I believe that exercise helps me loose weight, then just by doing my work I’ll loose weight. The weight is lost not by the work but by my belief. This indeed is also what I believe and this is the basis for all my work on the pain. (Remember the “About” page?)

I was not satisfied, leaving things as they turned out in the pain drawing, because every time I looked at it I remembered the experience of the pain.

I decided to do another drawing and the idea came to me to ask intuition directly: What is the belief that stands behind and drives the creation of the pain?

I have done this kind of asking many times before. You ask your question and just do an intuitive-flow drawing, in which the thinking process does not participate, and the answer comes through the art.

Here is the painted answer.

The teeth that never bite

The teeth that never bite

The zigzag lines in light and dark blue and in reddish purple look like wild animal teeth that come to bite the little pencil scribble in the upper middle. They look angry and threatening. In the beginning there was no pencil scribble there at all. It was just a small, empty space. I added the scribble in the very end of this drawing. I call it the dust ball. I think the drawing could work without it too, but it is there now.

Every set of teeth has some cloud or layered clouds behind it. The clouds are where the anger is stored and from where it comes to the teeth. And of course the anger is against this little dust ball. Or maybe it is against nothing at all?

Such a big anger against such a small and insignificant thing does not make sense. And why don’t the teeth come all the way in and eliminate this little dust ball? They can. But the fact that they do not do it shows that they consider the dust ball to be much stronger than the way it looks. If it provokes such a big anger, it must have a lot of power. Does it make sense to you?

The clouds and the teeth believe that this little dust ball has done something that is enraging and it deserves to be punished. But they stop short and don’t even touch it. The little dot feels all that anger turned directly at him and he turns into a dust ball, ashamed and guilty. That’s why I called him a dust ball. He agrees with them.

And this is how things are for years and years, for ages and ages. How come?

To help us there are a few more details in the artwork. There is some open space where there is no anger. The dust ball cannot go there because there are a few zigzag lines in the way. But this area is quiet. There is no struggle there. And there is a figure there. This figure was the one before the last element that I placed in the drawing. I felt there was someone there, watching and being unaffected. It feels like someone with a childlike curiosity and playfulness. This figure is a result of having developed identification with awareness. There is always, in all situations, a knowing that all that happens is being witnessed with clarity. This clarity is the real me.

So what does the witness see and understand?

The conflicted situation in which there is a dust ball that provokes so much anger, that he feels afraid and ashamed, while the endangering teeth never bite, this is the formula of the game that I am playing this life, or at least a part of my game. It has to stay like this, if I want the game to continue. If the teeth bite, the game will end. If the dust ball blows up the teeth and the clouds, the game will end too. So to keep the game going, they keep this dance. Of course, the dust ball is me. The angry teeth and clouds are me too. It is all an invention of a conflict. It is a choice that creates experiences. The figure in the open space knows this.

But there is another way. I can change the rules. I can smile at the teeth, for example. What will happen then? See how you feel when you read this, and you will know what will happen. It will be a different game, won’t it?

173. Before I was born

Published January 23, 2014 evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , making art , MAking it possible , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , The world of thoughts , Truth 1 Comment
Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

I discovered a pattern in a series of drawings that I made lately. These drawings were made during a period of three days. They are not all the drawings that I made. They are just a sampling. The pattern is of a layered history. I had this pattern in many other drawings that I did before. You can see many of them here on this blog. I even noted the layers when I wrote about the drawings. But these days, suddenly something rebelled in me. It was not a rebellion with fighting and blood. It was the feeling that this is a fixed perception, something which is inflexible in a world that I find more and more to be endlessly flexible. It does not have to be this way, I thought somewhere within the wholeness of my mind. This historical understanding of life, in which first there was this and from this came that, a perception that explains the condition now, based on what past events led to it, this perception is a thought in the present.

I have seen again and again that I can choose to change my thoughts in the present. I mean, a thought that occurred already occurred, but the next thought does not have to go in the same direction. I can choose a different thrust and I have done it many times. So do I have to continue keeping the belief in this historical stratification of my life? This is what was churning in me and it was different than just noting it as I did before. I was questioning its necessity and validity now.

Just this questioning, without any effort to come to an answer or to force a conclusion, has moved things in the mind and in the last drawing you will see that the order has turned upside down. What was the order before? From troubled beginning came, through a slow development, light, health and joy.

Wild roots

Wild roots

 You can see in the drawing

that the roots are wild

And that they lead to a growth

that is more peaceful and joyful.

On a rocky ground an airy city stands

On a rocky ground an airy city stands

 In this drawing too

you can see that 

turmoil and pain are the basis

from which

a rocky landscape emerges

with a transparent city on its top.

In the last one a healthy beginning is being attacked by trouble.

Trouble

Trouble

The blue and green and yellow

are the good beginning.

The trouble is easy to see.

I can say that I did not create this shift willingly. It is the awareness and wondering that weakened the old perception. Awareness and wondering made the shift possible. But the shift happened without the willful “I” of every day. Something deeper has done the work here. My intuition, or the infinite inner love, has come into the personality and moved my focus one step backward. Instead of looking at my history, looking back from now, and seeing how I came from a troubled beginning to a good state, the last drawing shows instead how I was before the trouble came into my life and how the trouble came.

From this I learn that the idea of layering is OK but it has to have three layers. The first is the innocent, fresh, joyful beginning. Then trouble comes and makes war with this beginning, and eventually things change again for the better and happier state.

I could see other things in the drawings and especially in the last one, just as you can. But this is what came to me.

Why is this meaningful?

Every change in my history was a choice. I chose to come into this world and get into trouble. Then I chose again to change the patterns of troubled living into joyful living.  But without seeing myself from before the troubles began, I only see myself as one who started from trouble, and because of this, there is always a sense that the troubled state is my natural state. It is where I come from. Something was wrong with me, right from the beginning. It is hard to get rid of this feeling that right from the beginning something was wrong with me. So even if I managed to change patterns of thought into more joyful ones, there is still somewhere in me the belief that something is wrong with me. Because of this, I don’t have the necessary energy to move to happiness. The joy that I want to experience requires some work that has to be done, to overcome this nagging feeling of worthlessness. But if I manage to go farther into the past than this life and see the way I was before I came here, I get to experience the joy in myself in the true, natural state, and this gives me the necessary energy to choose happiness. You have to choose your happiness.

I have seen it with others in my work. Especially I have seen it with those who were born into loveless families with mental illnesses, anger and neglect. No matter how much we tried to understand how these environments contributed to the current suffering, the understanding was not strong enough to make a change. My clients still felt worthless. But when we came together to the time before they were born, they saw that  they really were joyful in the beginning and understood that they had made the choice to suffer. This, somehow, leads quite easily and without a conscious effort, to choosing again and this time the choice is to be happy. The most important part of the transformation is the experience of the joy that we really are. And in this way, with surprising ease, people change their lives.

As for me, I find that many times I start new things with my clients. Wanting to help them find the power to change, I discover that we need to go deeper than we went before and come to the point where they can experience how joyful they were before the choice to suffer was made. Once they come back to the point of choice, they choose to change without any effort. And now I find that I am going through the same process.

Thank you, my clients. You are so good in being a mirror for me.

 

139. Walking in the rain is the right thing to do

Published January 5, 2013 energy , evolving , healing , Inner light , Intuition , making art , MAking it possible , Physical and non physical , Reading art , Spiritual , The world of thoughts , Truth 1 Comment
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

I sat at my desk at 5 in the morning. I slept well till then and it made a big difference.

As I made the lines in this drawing I knew that I was very patient and that I listened to every line as it was made. There was no decision about where the line would go until it went, and I would change direction in the middle of a movement if I felt that this was the truth of the moment. I felt very clearly when it was time to end and I did not touch the drawing any more after that.

I looked at every color and collected the sentences that came to me when I looked at them. I mixed the sentences and fixed them a little until they made sense.

This is not new. I just wanted to say these things to those who came late to this blog. It is a process of looking in and connecting with intuition, to see what is going on in my subconscious or the dream state. The dream state always goes on, even when we do not dream consciously. It has a mixture of programs that are active now in the subconscious and can be released, plus ideas in support of our growth and expansion. If we listen to it, we always benefit. It is the place where our life is being created, the factory of manifesting. Everything that we see there while being in this deeper, intuitive state that enables the seeing is being released, just by having been seen. Its power to create ends. We create less and become simpler.

Being simpler means that we have less filters in our subconscious and allow the truth to come to us both from the word and from within. When it comes from within, this is intuition.

Here is the drawing I made:

Trees upside down in th rain

Trees upside down in the rain

And these are the words, after some playing with them:

Though forms of the non physical

Argue very softly and transparently

That nothing is real

Blood pouring softly as curtains

Is just a story

That does not want to leave

The fact that the trees went upside down

And the sun is coming as showers

Shows that every thing

Comes to bless

Everything else

Memories of wet mud

Are just eternity speaking

Walking in the rain

Is the right thing to do.

120. What do I have to feel?

Published July 1, 2012 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

There is a lot of habitual readiness to continue living with pain, when your pain has been with you for years. There is even fear. How can I live without pain? What will my life be like? What was the protection that the pain gave me that now I will be without? There are many questions like this. But I do not want to go into them today. I have done it in the past. Today I am asking intuition: What do I have to feel, so that I can live without pain? How does life without pain look like, from feeling point of view?

And this is the answer in a drawing.

Bubbling

Bubbling

I am not even collecting words. The words are useful to discover stories and experience feelings. But this is feeling already. I am ready to feel it. In time it will create new stories that will fit this feeling.

I am hanging this drawing in a place where I can look at it a lot of times and every time I’ll see it, I’ll feel how I have to feel so that I can live without that old phenomena that I am letting go of now. I am moving from one illusion to another one that I choose now.

Awards

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

Join 371 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