This time I won’t write a poem, but a description .
At first, when I drew, I thought that the lines represented the pain that I experienced, Relentless and continuous. Then they looked like rain. And in the end they started to look like trees without leaves, shivering in the cold.
Behind the lines there is a landscape.
The lines are like a filter that you have to pass, if you want to go beyond. You can get caught in the filter and you will suffer pain, rain, cold and longing for leaves.
But you can also pass gently, carefully, sensitively, through the spaces between the lines, and then you will find yourself in the place where it is beautiful.
This, in a way, is the essence of spiritual practice.
You can’t eliminate all the obstructions in your personal filter. Usually there are too many of them. But you can teach yourself how to pass in the spaces among them, to arrive at where there is beauty, love, playfulness and joy. The air from the landscape is already here.
And when your practice is through making art, you are already half way there.
In every moment, like when there is an attack of pain that is hard to suffer Ask myself: Where is the “I”? And these days I already see, every time I look, many of my “I”’s in many levels.
It is even possible to choose a direction and look for all the levels of I in that direction. This adds interest.
So now that I see many levels, I can ask: From which level of I do I want to act now? Which level do I want to be for this moment? Which level do I want to choose an action from?
Then this is what I do. And the next question is: What action do I want to choose?
And the deeper I go I find that I am more satisfied already and I do not want to do anything really, because I have everything. I am good. I am done.
And the more outward I go, the more I feel that action is required right now, to fix what is not satisfying yet.
So, instead of fixing the un-fixable I go deeper and find that there is nothing to fix. This is what I do when the pain attacks.
Now comes a Zen question: If there is nothing to fix, and everything is good already what shall I do anyway?
This is an infinite question. and I think the answer may be: to play to be curious to be loving to express love to help to make art to express the truth for everybody and for nobody.
This is the thing. This is why it is so difficult to answer a Zen question. Because you can answer on or from many levels.
This is what they call Skillful Means. To know what level to answer from. (They say so , usually, to explain how come they contradict themselves frequently.)
And what is the better level? To answer from the same level that the question came from? From one level up? Two?
There is no good answer. Maybe to strengthen what is already possible for the one who asks at the moment of asking?
And does not everybody have the same connection as I do to all the levels of I?
Actually, the thing to do is to surrender to intuition.
This is the most surprising and the most beautiful.
Pain has slowed me down quite a bit. But I continue to paint and write every day. It is my best way to connect with the deeper parts of me, and I do not want to miss any opportunity to do so. But instead of putting the results in the blog, I decided to make a book. The last few entries to the blog, with poems that accompany the paintings, are from the collection that started to gather.
At some point I thought that I may have enough for a book, and when I counted, I saw that I had many more than I needed.
I found a painting + poem that seemed like a beginning, and added the 41 next consecutive ones, plus another poem without a painting, and made them into the first book in this series. I wanted to show how you change when you do this kind of process. And the changes are, as you already know from reading this blog, both psychological and spiritual.
The principle is very simple. It is like meditation. You bring yourself, by painting that relies only on your individual sense of beauty, to a higher vibration, or in normal language, you bring yourself to feel better. This better feeling is more aligned with your true self. Gradually you elevate your usual vibration. Then, naturally, anything that is in any of the levels of your being and is of a lower vibrations, starts to float up to the surface of your life, to be released. Its only way to go is through your awareness of it. The awareness is given through the art and the writing, and doing this, you let go of at least some of the weight of this issue that does not fit in your system any more. Also naturally, the less burden you carry, the more open you become to more refined energies, and in this way you go wider and higher in your getting to know who you really are.
The name of the book is PAINTINGS THAT READ MY MIND & POEMS THAT READ MY PAINTINGS.
The book is on Amazon. They show a little of the inside, too little to my mind, and the cover. I am going to ask them to add more pages from the inside. You have seen a few examples here, as I said.
By the time I finished designing the book, editing it and preparing for its printing, I added to my pile many more paintings and poems. I am estimating now that there are some 200 more. So it is easy now to make a second book and make it into a series.
As you have seen in this blog, I believe in evolving through a deeper and deeper connection with our original energy, and you can call it deep joy, deep interest, deep playfulness. You can also call it creativity. It does not require suffering. But suffering comes in the process, when old stuff comes up to be released. When it appears in your being for the time that it needs to be seen with love, a mirror image of the same vibration shows up in your reality. And yes, in these times it may seem like suffering. or it may cause suffering (My pain is such an appearance). But since the method is to be aware of it through the art and the writing, you end up doing something that makes you feel better.
Here is for your feeling better, in any way that you choose!
It is clear that this painting has in it a problem in the left lower side. Generally there is joy bursting in it. But look at that corner. Yes, it is the corner of my pain in the legs. It is what prevents me from sleeping, it is what causes me to cry sometimes and keeps me away from walking, going to museums and movies, meeting with friends etc.. and I wonder many times how to deal with it. What am I to do when I am tortured. How to respond? This blog started with the intention to heal through my work on myself, using this method with making art intuitively and then reading it. I have released tons of old sad programs from my subconscious. I saw again and again a bigger picture of our life on our different versions of earth. All these came from this work and you were the witnesses. And yesterday, while the pain has gone even stronger than ever, I painted this. The reading this time does not follow everything that showed up in the painting, but instead responds to how come there is joy there at all, when there is that torture in the corner. And it can also be a guidance, telling me to dedicate myself to doing what feels deeply good, and let the pain issue take care of itself. The poem describes the context for this understanding. The painting process shows me where I am and the writing guides me.
All you want to know
If you ask:
What is good now?
You’ll see that
The light in the room
Is good.
The table that you use
Is good
And supportive
Your hand is very good
For writing now
The floor is wonderful
And the earth
Underneath the building
With all the life
That it holds
Is nothing but
The good of goods
And you'll see
That the existence
Of everything
Is crucial
For this moment
to exist
For you to move
See
And do.
If you find this true
Then you now know
That everything is good
And you understand
What the love
Of the universe
Means.
You see
That you live
Inside of love
And whatever happens
To you
Cannot make you
Fall out
Of this.
And if you wonder
What is it
That you are doing here
and can you
Choose something better?
Then you are exercising
Your unique power
To be one
With this love
And you know
Everything that you
Have to know
About you,
Your life
And
What you want to do.
In this painting you can see the pain. It is in the lines, it is in the intensity of the colors, it is in the way the colored areas run away from each other, concentrating in themselves, as if the whole picture is falling apart. And you also see some environment: A horizon with two trees, a part of a cloud and maybe a fruit on a limb.
The drawing is of faces overlapping, worried and separate, in spite of the closeness, pressed into the presence of each other.
The white is like the knuckles of a clenched fist.
At some point I discovered some dirt that was somehow transferred to the paper after my hand touched some food. I erased some of it but could not get rid of it completely. Erasing vigorously leaves marks too. The solution was to place the signature on the stain. It is like placing myself on some mess that I had created, to cover it up. Here is one of the things that life seems to be about sometimes.
My artist friend H observed in my art that even when I speak about torturous pain, the paintings have some cheerfulness to them. He recommended, carefully indeed and lovingly, to express the pain more freely, and maybe there will be a physical relief from it, not to mention the psychological relief. Maybe this is why there is a bit more expression of suffering in this painting than is usually expressed in my art. Or maybe it is because I came to the table at 3 or 4 at night, when the pain made me jump out of bed, and I started to draw right there.
But I can’t escape myself. Even the suffering in my life is viewed from an aware place that is basically calm, curious and loving.
I love my friend for who he is and for how what he is, is being expressed in everything he does. And I also love myself enough to allow what-makes-me-nowadays, to express itself with all the facets that it has.
Maybe it is strange to many people that there is no full expression of the suffering in my art. Instead there is what looks like a distanced or muted expression. How can one not scream about his suffering in his art and indeed tear people’s hearts when they become witnesses to it? But this would be untrue to my experience.
Yes there is some distance when I experience being more than my body. My body shakes with pain many times, but there is the bigger me, to whom this looks like a fantastic, colorful, emotions-full, drama that I had created for myself, not knowing who I am. Yes, it is not the usual life, to have one foot in the body and another in a much freer place.
-And what if I hit you on your toes with a heavy hammer, will ask an imaginary friend?
intuitiveflow 