Posts Tagged 'true self'

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.

 

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.

125. It is so close

P1000227

When I illustrated ’The Chanukah Tree’ I was in a period in my illustration in which I was very aware of every single brushstroke that I made. It had to feel a certain way. I can remember the feeling that I sought. Now imagine: How many brush strokes were there in the book and in all the illustrations I did through many years? Numerous. right? And I did this every single day.

Here in the room I hanged an illustration from this book.The picture at the top is part of it.

The people of the story and a few unknown characters run excitedly, on their main street at night, to see the stranger and his strange car driving through their Christmas-night village-center.

Before starting with the individual colors of each person and object, I did seven layers of under-painting that covered the whole area of the illustration with brush-strokes, and I paid attention to how every brushstroke related and combined with the other brushstrokes.

This created the darks and lights of the illustration. It was a night scene and I wanted it to have the darkness feeling of the night. I did all these in one day between eight in the morning and something like seven in the evening, almost non stop. Then I walked through the neighborhood to another home there, to bring my daughter home from her friend.

I did not think about it at all but I was in a deep meditative state. A group of four big-bodied youngsters stopped me. One aimed a pistol at my heart and told me to be quiet. Another strangled me from behind, so I won’t be able to move. I was peaceful and had no fear. I looked into the eyes of the guy with the pistol and nothing was going through my head. The pressure on my throat felt uncomfortable. I took the strangling hands away from my throat with no much effort (he did not resist) and started to walk , as if nothing happened, continuing toward the house where my daughter was.

If you are into every brush-stroke in an artwork that you make, if you feel them all, you are meditating, and it has a very good effect on you.

If you feel everything that you do to make sure it feels as you want it to feel, and it is up to you how you want it to feel, you are meditating. It means: You are coming from your true self. It is so close.

170. Tuning in to who I am

Here is another example of reading art. As it was in the previous entry, when you look at the drawing at first it seems as if it will be hard to tell something clear about it. But as I started describing what I see, the vision became clear. This is the fun in this game. The truth is always hiding in plain sight. And my blog has turned into straight forward reading of my art, based on the most straight-forward approach to understanding subconscious content through art. It is: simply describing what I see. As I describe what I see, the connection to my life appears. The art had to be done intuitively, to reflect so clearly what is going on in the subconscious. Any thinking-guided part of the art would have stopped the flow of the description and obscure the clarity. We would have to read the thought first and let it go in this way, so that the next drawing will flow better. It is a method. I am describing the method that I use in art therapy. Everything in this blog, right from the first entry has to do with how I work not only on myself but with others, to clear blockages to their inner flow and allow them to find out who they really are.

The layers of different focusses

The layers of different focusses

It looks like a collection of creatures. They are very lively and have the sense of being absorbed in being who they are, as monkeys do, but without an awareness of it. They also seem to be agitated and about to jump at any moment. This is what animals do. They behave as who they are, without any hindrances, and they do not know who they are. It is a simple life.

They look like monkeys or cats or bugs.

There is the lower layer in purple and browns. Then there is an upper layer in green and light blue. And finally there are the two light orange creatures at the top of the picture.

You can see that the interest of the animals in the lowest layer is horizontal. They do not think about going up.

The interest of the green animal is in the process of changing. The animal stops going right, horizontally, and turns to look up. The blue lines that come out of it also turn in different directions.

The light orange critters at the top of the picture fly up into the sky, and you can see that they are fine with it. They are peaceful. They do not feel fear. You can say that they are enjoying the flight.

All these are different focuses of the animals and the critters. These focuses are available to every one of them, but they make a choice and focus in one way.

Other interesting elements in the drawing are the two places where there are the shapes in more intense orange. The one in the lower strata just creates an intense interest, presenting to the animals something intensely different. The one on the upper layer seems to be what has stopped the green animal from going to the right. It is sharp, and to avoid it the animal turned around.

All the orange shapes in the picture feel to me to be connected with what we call the spiritual pursuit, or seeking to know experientially who we are. At first it is something that feels different and provokes interest and wonder. Then it may be suffering of any sort that pushes us to change direction. And then comes the discovery of what was felt from the beginning, which is the sense of the true self, which shifts the focus away from the earthly bond.

Now looking at the beginning of this path again, the first animal, the one in purple, seems to be peaceful and in meditation. All of this happens in his mind. The not-knowing, the intense interest, the change of direction and finally the flight. All these happen on their own, without any effort. It is just the way things happen when you take your hands off them, and allow them to move. This is what I call healing.

This is what this art process does.

My book “Opening Intuitive Flow Through Artwork” will come out soon. It has the method in it and examples from my sessions with people.


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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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