Adam

Adam (12), Bruce, (13 his brother) and a new kid are playing a game, sitting around one of the red tables in the “Hanging Out Room.”

Green is what I say.
Blue is what Adam says.
Purple is what Bruce, Adam’s brother says.
Black is everything else.

I say Hi to all of them.

In Adam’s eyes something lights up. Not a big light but something.

Do you want to do art?

It is in an open center program. Adolescents are welcome to drop in from the neighborhood. They can choose from many other possible activities in the open center. The art studio is one of the possibilities.

Yes, but I’ll wait till they finish the game.

Bruce asks: Why?

Because I don’t want to be there alone.

Ah. (This was I.)

I wander into the kitchen, which is right there. I look at what the cook has made today: Some dark cake, some chocolate chip cookies and some small containers of tea with sugar. I look for others in the room. There is only Marvin, the social worker, who has lost his weight and is always smiling too easily, but you can feel how sadness and fear are so close to the surface.

You know? You are not going to be alone there, I tell Adam

Why?

Because I am going to be there too.

They all laugh. Adam gets up and goes with me.

I say: The thing is not to plan anything. Just do whatever comes to you from inside. Whatever idea shows itself in your imagination, just do it. And all the time use what comes to your imagination, to make the drawing beautiful for you. You can always know what you like more, so you can make things in a way that you like more. It is very easy. If they do not come out in the way you want, change them for yourself.

Each of us takes a set of watercolors, we choose brushes and we share the water in the middle between us. We start drawing. I only see what he is doing in the periphery of my vision field. He makes some kind of a circling line and paints inside of it with different colors.

When he finishes I get a glimpse.

I sense that he is very satisfied. He is proud. He runs with the drawing to his brother.

“I’ll be back,” is what he leaves me with.

I wait a while. I finish my drawing. I go to the “Hanging Out Room.” The two others are still playing. Adam is sitting next to them and he does not show any emotion. He sits there as if he has been there all the time and nothing has happened. I do not see the drawing.

Where is the drawing?

It was nothing, Bruce says.

What do you mean? He liked it and it was beautiful.

No, he does not like it now.

So where is it?

In the garbage.

I find the crumpled drawing in the big garbage container in the kitchen. I straighten it out on another table, next to the one they are sitting at. Adam turns around and is looking at it with me.

I say: Imagine that I am now as small as this little white dot on the table. Now I fly above the drawing and land here (on the blue). Look with me there. What do you think I feel?

Bumpy, he says. It is a good answer. He is sensitive and open.

Now look at the color. What would this color make me feel?

Sad.

All right. Now I am flying to this (the black). I stand there, very small, and I am looking around. What do you think I feel there?

Confused.

OK, confused. Now I am moving on to this (the violet). How do I feel there?

Anger.

Right, I feel anger here.

And what do I feel here (on the green)?

Good.

So here I feel sad. Here I feel confused. Here I feel angry and here I feel good.

Yes.

Now let’s imagine that I fly to this point in the middle, right where the tips of all the colors come to one point, where they all touch each other. There I stand, right among all of them. I look around. What do you think I feel there?

Life.

Right. Life, which includes sadness, confusion, anger and goodness. A complete life. You see? There is a complete life in this drawing. We do not throw such a thing away. It is beautiful. I am going to hang it on the wall.

OK.

In the short event that you have just read, a step in healing and growth happened and it included, almost magically, a short version of the whole process of every healing. It starts with an ongoing situation of a young person denying himself being who he is, because he so desperately wants approval from his brother. Into this state, something new is introduced, a process of art-making which emphasizes listening to one’s own heart. Doing this process, Adam has a glimpse of happiness that naturally shows up when we follow our own heart.

Then an inner automatic subconscious program kicks in. He desperately wants his brother’s approval. He starts to fear that by trusting himself he is going to lose his brother’s support.

His brother does not approve and Adam sinks into listlessness, which is the natural result of not listening to your heart. If you do not follow your heart, what is there to live for?

Through the process of looking at his drawing, Adam goes from seeing the ruinous result of giving up his joy (bumpy), to being sad, to being confused (which is a step before things become clearer, when the old paradigm is shaken and a new one hasn’t appeared yet), to being angry (Which is the first step of climbing out of listlessness), and to knowing that it is possible to feel good.

Seeing all these changes in himself, Adam realized that he was able to be a witness to his own life. He saw a complete process of healing, from the best position, that of awareness, which sees everything indiscriminately, giving us deep wisdom. This is of course only a small step.

You may wonder about how was it possible to create the right order of Adam’s experiences. All this happened easily, playfully and without an effort, because it all happened intuitively. And I suspect that it would have worked just the same with other colors too. The colors were not important. What was important is that there was acceptance of one dominant emotion of the moment after another, until the good feeling showed up. It always does, when we accept everything prior to it.

This is an excerpt from my book: Opening Intuitive Flow Through Artwork, (http://www.intuitionthroughart.com/book.html) which was published in January 2014 and is available through Amazon.

 

 

I used to be a graphic designer and an illustrator.  I became involved with the Chan Meditation Center and studied meditation and Buddhist knowledge with the late Master Sheng-yen from Taiwan. For twelve years I was in a process of deepening my meditation. I had many more experiences and insights and my life changed. After having illustrated more than 40 children’s books and writing two of them, I left this career too and went to New York University to study art therapy.

You can see more about Giora’s work on his blog and website