I have a gift that I discovered in my twenties. I could read art and know how the people who made it felt when they made their art. This gift has developed a great deal since I started working with people to lessen their suffering, using art-making in the process. Today much more information comes to me through people’s art. And more still comes through my own art-work, done in people’s presence, or when I am aware of them.
I used to be a graphic designer and an illustrator. I wrote for children and a little bit for adults. I came to NYC in 1985, 40 years old, married with three children and started a new career as an illustrator only. A few years later I became involved with 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 NYU to study art therapy.
ByGiora Carmi
This entry has nothing to do with the usual direction that this blog takes. It has to do with my support of a friend, Tamara Suttle, who has a blog that supports therapists in private practice with ideas of how to make it work. She has asked me to write a short entry to her…
ByGiora Carmi
When you are in a conflict Between doing this or that In your view The light is outside of you But the truth is that the light Is in you You are the light And the conflict Is a beautiful thing Happening inside of you. The mistake that we make Is identifying with…
ByGiora Carmi
This entry is long. It described one more of those processes in which I discover an issue that is central and comes up again and again. I release the issue or dissolve it thoroughly by doing a process that you have seen before and today I call it a visual meditation. Imagine yourself meditating. In…
ByGiora Carmi
The nerves, as they heal slowly, going from closer to the spine toward the edges of the body, have come to the skin. Now I experience 24 hours of relentless pain every day. Every touching of the feet is like putting a match there. Some of my friends and family, who do not see it…
ByGiora Carmi
There is an eye Everything grows around it Real or unreal We are always on the back of ancients Good or bad If you want to live forever Do nothing Settle in the eye. Every time I sit down to draw and write it surprises me. I never know what will come out in the…
ByGiora Carmi
A late night drawing: The morning words: If you have A soft dark secret That’s how high you can get Before it starts Bleeding Then you start Coming close together Out of fear And even though We provide a sky for you You feel that it is limited And pressured And of course you…
ByGiora Carmi
Woken up around 3:30 at night, with the whole body trembling. I feel as if a different energy than my usual is entering my body. Maybe it is a dream and I am only half awake. I want to stay with it and allow the process to happen. After a while it is so uncomfortable…
ByGiora Carmi
There is a lot of habitual readiness to continue living with pain, when your pain has been with you for years. There is even fear. How can I live without pain? What will my life be like? What was the protection that the pain gave me that now I will be without? There are many…
ByGiora Carmi
I am going through changes and for some time I felt as if I was floating in space in some way, not feeling like doing anything, because it was not clear to me why to act at all. A whole old paradigm, so to speak, became obsolete and the new paradigm is unfolding still. I…
ByGiora Carmi
The red sun is painting the foliage at dusk Intensifying play reality The green that overgrows In the village of my youth Is the shadow Of the villagers’ lives Look! Look! The truck that you hear Struggling up the little hill Will soon appear Among the burning casuarinas. You may ask yourself: What does…
ByGiora Carmi
There is no picture with this entry. You are invited to imagine it for yourself. It is night. No sleep, as the pain makes me move constantly. Around 4 I start paying attention to the feeling of “I”. I have found that this is one of the things that sometimes helps reducing or eliminating the…
ByGiora Carmi
Caterpillars crawling on top of each other Going in the same direction In a hurry As much as caterpillars can be in a hurry We don’t know where they are going And we don’t know Who will appear when they are gone We could know everything If we zoomed out and left the game Of…
