Posts Tagged 'story'

257. Layers

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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.

238. A story about idealism and reality

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.

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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.

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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?

 

236.The energy is left with no job

All the colors stand around me, in bottles, tubes and pencils. They are looking quietly at what I do. What will I say? They are my audience now.

I love them. They can do infinite things. They do not really look. I know. It is the whole who looks. The infinite listening-with-the-heart. The heart-of-listening. His name is I.

When the light of seeing is bright and strong, everything that is non-transparent burns into non-existence. Its energy is left with no job. It gives itself back to be used for creation.

The name of the creator is I too.

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It seems the light in the middle of the painting (the yellow and orange) is marred. It has been hit on the head.

Darkness (on the left) makes a threat. But the little child-who-flies is not afraid. He flies into the darkness to repair his past. He will find his love that he rejected in those old times. It is like the soul-retrieval that shamans do.

The goodness and the freedom-filled-joy, which is the lost part of him, will be found where it went to hide when it was not permitted to act in the world. It will be invited back and respected, loved, accepted, joined.

Again the lines tell the stories. The color shapes tell the emotions. The composition says that all is blessed, with all its tiniest details.

The white always looks with endless love and curiosity, with awe, with pride and marvel.

There is confusion there too, on the right, projecting a yes-no feeling.

Everything is okay.

 

The big yellow mother would like to say: Be careful!

But she knows that daring requires love and trust, and not carefulness. So she does not say a word. She admires her child.

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Yesterday in the morning I sat on the window seat and meditated. With all the lack of sleep that I collected, because of the pain, I fell asleep. I lost my balance and fell. I opened my eyes in the middle of the fall and saw the world turning around. But I was still asleep when my forehead hit the floor.

Then I woke up.

I felt fear and this conjured up memories from an event in my childhood, that now I saw more fully than before. Doors that were closed before, opened.

Fear cannot come if there is no story behind it. Falling cannot happen without a belief or a few beliefs that invite it. I know this is strange for some.

 

After some time I did this painting.

 

235. Take the inner world out

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There are the lines and there are the color shapes. They seem to describe the same thing but they have very different perspectives.

Sometimes, in other paintings, the lines and the shapes do not necessarily describe the shame thing. If we compare this to music, then those paintings are like counterpoint. The lines have a tune and the color shapes have a different tune. But when they are placed on top of each other, the music makes sense. The music becomes richer by the working together of different tunes.

This painting is more like a tune with chords. The chords accompany the tune that the lines make.

If we look at the lines, trying to see the character of the tune, in my opinion, it is hesitant, even afraid somewhat. It tries to describe something but we cannot identify what it is. In a way it is like what toddlers do sometimes, when they pretend to be writing words and sentences but they don’t yet know how to write. So the lines only looks as if they are describing shapes. There is humor in that.

Now if we look at the color shapes, they don’t seem to be worried at all. They seem to be happy. They come together to share an activity and while playing together they keep their independence and individual identities. They seem to be playful and enjoying the game that they play.

If we describe the music here, it may be something like this: on the background of freely moving pleasant chords, the tune is hesitant. Its parts hold on to each other as if they are afraid to fall apart. There is no sense of freedom in the tune. It seems to be working hard, trying to fulfill some duty or necessity. It is a bit ridiculous in its efforts to describe everything in detail while it is impossible to decipher what it describes.

The chords in this piece of music are strange. They are a mixture of pleasant and unpleasant feelings.

I actually like that kind of music.

But if this were the description of a person, what would you want to tell him?

Maybe it will be, to let go of some of the seriousness with which it takes the story line, and give some attention to the deeper layer of himself, where the playfulness, freedom and maybe even the beauty of life’s experiences can be felt. This layer is so close…

But the story won’t stop. And we are here for the story, aren’t we?

So maybe it is possible to take some of the character of the inner layers of who we are and bring it with us outside, when we create the lines of our stories. Maybe we will then make lines that are a bit freer and happier than before?

234. Segovia and the quiet spot

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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.)

233. How the “I” moves to a wider view

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Being tired and in pain I became sad. Pain is a simple thing but living with it creates additional problems. Now all of them weighed on me. I thought: I can’t go on like this any more. I did not even paint yesterday and today.

My friend from Germany called. We started to talk and the phone line went dead.

I pulled a new piece of paper onto the table, dipped the brush into the water and into the first paint that my eyes saw in the watercolor box. It was olive green. This is how I choose the first color.

And then there was the drawing. No time. No pain. Brush, water, paint and the composition, the story with no words. The energy of the truth. Everything is good.

The olive green lines and the white of the paper are the best of friends. It is a holy connection. The lines, strikingly, appearing out of the white. The white does not have inside and outside. It is everywhere. It is all-there-is-everywhere. Even the word everywhere does not fit here. Is the green line real? And my eyes that see it: are they real? And my heart that has just become so full and so delighted, what about it?

(The other colors came later.)

 

Now in a different way:

Pain is part of the illusion of life, together with the body, with time, with good and bad.

The true self cannot have pain. Its essence is joy. Its essence is love and playing and being curious. The true self cannot be affected by the illusion.

For the “I” in the illusion pain is real and hard.

The good thing is that everything is connected. All I need to do is to change the way I focus and switch my identity to the true I.

Instead of focusing on the pain and automatically trying to escape it, to fight it, to prevent it, to change it, Instead of these, I find my curiosity and make the olive green lines. I find my playfulness and play with everything that shows itself. I look for the beauty in everything and find it easily. I look for my joy and it is right there. I am joyful. I look for my love and indeed what else do I have? This is how I start to identify with the true self.

And as I do this, I find that I have forgotten the pain. I don’t even feel it. Or if I do, it is not significant. I am in peace. The vibrations of the pain, the waves that streamed through the legs calm down. My hands that clutched one foot fall down, relaxed. The body rests. The energy of creation flows flawlessly everywhere it has to go. The body heals. The specific thinking processes that hold on to the body and its suffering become weaker. I am not so dependent on the body and the world around it. I witness them and I am free. In my mind I am already walking down to town, where the galleries are. I am going to see an exhibition. Right foot, left foot and I dance.

 

228. Imprisoned in his own choice

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In this painting there are three major systems:

  1. The lines, which are in purple, olive green and one little line is in blue.
  2. The areas of color that appear to be behind the lines.
  3. The red areas that are inside of shapes, delineated by some of the purple lines.

Many times it is enough to describe with words what you see in a picture, to know what it is about. This indeed is one of the ways to read art.

Here:

The system of lines that has its story, appears on the background of nothing. The story may be that the lines describe something, that some of them do something to other lines, that some are purple and some are in other colors, etc. The background of nothing is the white that has no features except that there are no colors and no shapes in it.

The system of colored areas appears behind the line system. The colored shapes system has its own story. It is not being told in continuous lines or shapes. Things appear mostly unconnected. But you can feel relationships. For example, you can feel that all the greens belong to each other because of having the same color. All the shapes, because of their general outline, which is softly rounded, without sharp points or angles, all of them are of the same kind. This whole system appears in the same proximity of the lines system, and therefore the two systems seem to be related to each other, as if they are parts of the same thing. How about seeing this as a person and his emotional system. (Here I went beyond just describing what I see. I added an idea that seemed to make sense to me.)

There is one shape among the colored areas that is different. It is the blue one that looks like a river or a road. It goes from close to us to another place far away that we do not see. This may be the path of life on which we float with ease or with struggles. (again, an interpretation. It can be something else too. But something that leads the eye far away, to where you cannot see the end, these can be seen.)

Now let’s take the reds, which got caught within some of the purple lines that created closed shapes. Usually in the picture, the lines go freely to wherever they go. They describe shapes, that you have a feeling are not finally determined. These shapes still can grow, shrink or move. But these areas that caught the red inside of them seem to be more final. Their muscles are stretched and tense, holding the red and preventing it from changing. This is where the happily and freely flowing human system is becoming hard and inflexible. This goes against the nature of free flow and therefore it is the place of suffering.

And all of this appears to play in an environment of no features (the white). This is not a physical portrait in a realistic environment. It is the inner experience of life, created in awareness and experienced in awareness, done and felt in the same moment. Doing and experiencing here are not separate.

And if you see that, where do you choose to place your identification? What part do you choose to be?

Here is another way to look at it:

There are two big systems that relate to each other harmoniously. There is no event  in that. Only a continuous flow. The two systems can go on and change together, every one of them in its own related way to the other. They can go on forever. But the minute the regularity is broken by an unusual behavior that occurred in a few parts, an event is created and it starts to be interesting. That’s life.

Where was the identification, when it happened?

It was in the parts that caught the red. “I must have this red in me,” said the ‘I’ who identified with these parts. Before, there was freedom there. But now the travelling ’I’ became imprisoned in his own choice.

 

217. A slight movement of an eyebrow

What is hiding in the forms?

The tilted, hidden story

At first I thought this was going to be a boring drawing with no emotions, no story and nothing happens. As I worked on it, it felt almost like a drawing that came from thinking.

But it didn’t. I find it interesting now. It has a story. The story is whispered. Boiled down to the essence, the story is about real, beautiful, sweet and loving life, hidden in forms. The forms would seem to limit the life, but they can’t. Everything sings. It dances in the air, like the people and cows in paintings by Chagall. It whispers slight differences of colors and shapes. It completes itself as a composition, which is an expression of non-physical relations, involvements and collaborations. It could be called: The hidden joy of inner music.

If it were a person, it would just stand there, well dressed and quiet. But you would notice a very slight movement of an eyebrow and you’ll understand everything.

216. The story point of view and the energy point of view

The influence of the wind.

The left and the right.

There is some discrepancy between the right side and the left side of the picture. The left is loose and hardly organized. It looks like something that is falling apart. The right is better organized, but it is losing some of its order by the pressure and movement that come from the left.

The right is filled with interesting things that try hard to hold on to their shapes. The left looks as if it used to have shapes too, but with the movement, no good form is left in it.

What does it mean?

From the point of view of the story of life, this painting may depict a traumatic and frightening event.

From energy point of view it is just the process of change. In the end of it, maybe there will appear new forms that will be better adjusted for swift movement? And it is also possible that after this movement the forms will disappear all together and there will only be a peaceful sea of energy, in which some things appear and disappear.

The forms are the story.

The sea is the ground of all.

So what do they think about the wind?

From the story point of view it is what brings a disaster.

From energy point of view it is how freedom manifests.

191. Dont worry, go with the energy

This is who we are

This is who we are

I am moved

Because it is beautiful for me

Meaning, Something from home

Love coming through

There is an external story

Of shapes doing

Like, maybe, a tree grows on a rock

Maybe it is turning into a monster

Doing strange things

But inside

In a one two three rhythm

We go from total darkness

To the blue sky

Or a lake

It is ancient

It has always been here

And we have been looking

The outside has muscles

The inside is a whispering light

Of love

This is how we are

And this is how everything comes to us

To see the dark of night

And the blue of the sky

This is how we are.

 

 

Author’s note:

 

Words float on energy

Like colorful mosaic stones

On the concrete

Of a wall

The wall holds everything

The concrete flows from floor to ceiling

The stones don’t have to hold the wall

That’s the way I write

Spontaneously

The words

Float in energy

The energy connects all

The words don’t have

To do the same job

That’s why

My text is skipping

Don’t worry

Go with the energy.


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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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