Posts Tagged 'relief'

336. The child has stopped crying

I had to carefully compose again after it looked as if I had finished it already.
There was a lot to add. It is so easy with this technique.
And I fixed it. Now it appeals to me. I made it to appeal to me.

When I think what is new about my late paintings, it is that they are more subtle. There is a sense of joy that bubbles up in them. This sense of joy was in my paintings before too. But the feeling was that it had to struggle more in order to express itself. It was beautiful that it did, and there was a sense of drama in every one of those joy expressions.

Now it feels that the joy is comfortable and playful. It does not struggle in order to be.
The dark past is still in the painting. It looks darker than in previous paintings, but it also looks old, weak, dilapidated.

I remember the technique that I developed in healing from far, when I practiced with the group Consciousness Research Institute. I would create a huge dome around myself, full of good energy. Then I’d bring the person to be healed into the dome, to be there with me.
And I would feel the discomfort of having with me in the space of the dome someone whose energy did not match with mine. (Just as the pain in this moment is such energy that does not match mine). And I would let this strange energy be a part of me without resistance. Just like having something in your pocket that you don’t necessarily feel comfortable with, but it is there. So you just get familiar with the feeling of it being there, and you go on with the business of life. Going on being, that now includes this uncomfortable feeling. You let it be until it is a part of you that does not stand out any more. It is not uncomfortable any more, but itself as it is.

Strange how difficult it is to explain this and how natural, spontaneous and simple it was to do it.

So now it starts to feel to me that I am, at last, at this very stage with my past.
I love the little boy who I was, who struggled so hard, with so much pain and fear, and I can’t but admire how courageous he was, how good hearted.
I love him dearly.
And at the same time I get less and less impressed by the traumatic influence of that time. The trauma can be seen in the art. But the joy grows as an expression of freedom. Like a beautiful bird that was caged in darkness and, as it comes out of it, grows and becomes the whole scene.

There are delicate structures that may represent the way I explained things to myself, and they are very fragile. They can fall apart easily or change into something else. And in a way they are irrelevant to the joy.
Joy is the original state. Thinking is a game, happening inside of joy and sometimes becoming too heavy and obscures the joy that it has come from.

So it is a good thing that the thinking, as it appears in the art, has become lighter and less obscuring.

Look at the dark blue and violet shapes at the bottom right. Don’t they look like old remnants of a war that has ended? Do you feel the relief of being joy that is free from those remnants, a joy that does not struggle to be?

I’d say it is still quite moderate. It is just taking stock of the fact it is here. The child has stopped crying and now is becoming interested in everything.

293. Colors that run away from each other

FullSizeRender 4

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?

-It will hurt.

291. Tossing and turning

sleeplessness

I have been going through hard times with the pain, with meds that had terrible side effects, with a disappointment at the inability of medical Marijuana to help and with it own side effects too. I moved from having the pain relieved somewhat but starting to have heart problems, unpleasant changes in the digestive system, struggling with heavy sleepiness for most of the day and so on, to having the pain increased dramatically, when I quit using the meds and started the medical marijuana, still having the heaviness of not being fully awake.

Clearly there was no solution in the physical realm.

In a conversation with my inner guide, he said: You have to do everything with your heart. Let your heart guide.

Aren’t I a heart all through, I asked?

Yes, but there is still some fear, my inner guide said.

Yes.

Hence this night, desperately searching for sleep with no relief.

There is nothing to hold on to in this picture. You come to something and it moves away. The state you hope to be helped by is itself helpless. Round and round everything moves and never stops.

I went to my table. I dipped my brush in the first color that called me. I started to follow the experience of the moment, attending to the lines, the ways in which they came to each other, the way they moved, desperately searching for some calm. I wanted to be true to the experience, so I had to allow the feelings speak through the lines, and I witnessed everything, the feelings, the truth in the lines, the composition, the minute changes in the feelings, and as I was doing these, my lines started to express my new state of being: The witnessing.

Then I knew I had to stop. The decision to stop had to do with a feeling of beauty that I started to follow too. You can say that when you become a witness of your inner workings, you start being aware of beauty. And Beauty is somehow connected to love, to sharing, to playing and to being deeply happy.

And it is the time to leave this text too and move on.

Where is it that I want to move to now?

Where is it that you want to move to now?


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The healing process

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

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