ARTIST - Eva Lewarne
  • bio
  • Abstracted2
  • ALICE
  • Abstarcted1
  • NewSpirit
  • funny world
  • fortitude
  • blog
  • Photography
  • floral
  • Art Market Mag 2022+24
  • Art Market Mag 2023+21
  • water+garden
  • Animals
  • B&W
  • Clowns
  • songs
  • Children
  • alchemy
  • nature
  • sun way
  • Exhibition2021
  • coming home
  • friendly pixels
  • japanese inspired
  • ravens
  • many strings
  • like a woman
  • friends
  • nudes
  • the times
  • commissions
  • drawings
  • north wind
  • oracles
  • enigma
  • figures
  • city 2
  • digital
  • illusion
  • fish stories
  • transformation
  • creativity&health
  • Haiku + Photos
  • city1
  • urbanity
  • designs
  • poetry
  • sasha's Art
  • moon art

The Rain Falls Equally On All Things....

12/31/2016

0 Comments

 
"The rain falls equally on all things, the master’s golden staff is gold everywhere you break it, and outside the temple gate a dog is pissing to the skies."….Zen Saying

What does this actually mean?

Rain does not discriminate where it falls, it sheds its wetness on all things equally. The outer weather nourishes our inner life, makes us grow into compassionate loving individuals as we age and broaden with experience and wisdom. If we try to protect ourselves from it with artificial tools, like man-made umbrellas, we do not grow, we remain stunted in our adolescence for all eternity. Remaining in the material world of social rules and morays we never move beyond competition, greed and self-centredness.

Money is one readily available umbrella, where the rich think they are sheltered from rain, rain, that is a metaphor for Life. And to some extent they are outwardly, materially, because they can more easily maneuver society and be more comfortable as they are doing it but what happens to their inner world. They start to think Life is unfair and that is acceptable, the poor can remain homeless because Life made it that way, "dog eat dog" and they were chosen by Life for a better existence...etc. You all know the script.
​

But Zen says no, you are wrong and stunted in your growth and thinking, Life tries to nourish all, it does not play favourites and karma exists. Life, beside matter, is illuminated by the miracle of awareness which will live long after our body and money disintegrates. And the sooner we start to appreciate the message of rain and start enjoying it's luscious fruits, rather than whine about its wetness, the sooner our souls will soar.
0 Comments

REALLY SEEING

12/17/2016

0 Comments

 
Being a visual artist is really all about seeing things as they are below the surface, below your conceptual mind. You learned to create visual shortcuts in school from about the age of 11, when abstract thinking became more important than seeing. So you created shortcut images in your mind for the everyday world. When you heard the word dog, you immediately conjured up an image of a hot dog with ears, a tail and four stick legs. Then your mind did not have to linger any longer on the image. You knew what the other person was referring to. Unfortunately due to the fact that left-brained activities became the most important through your school career and later on, you stopped really seeing altogether.

Drawing is really about learning how to see light and dark shadows and the edges of things, contour lines. Most people never pay attention to these things preferring to use their symbols conjured up in there minds.

When I taught adults art, who were beginners and did not have time to go through four years of art college and learn technique, I would teach them to see and think like an artist instead. Often times they were able to draw a decent self-portrait after eight lessons, instead of four years of school.

Why you ask? Because they learned how to really see what was there.

One of my exercises was to have them view a white bland coffee mug for ten minutes without thinking about anything else, a sort of mindfulness meditation. At first they struggled due to an overactive mundane mind, thinking to themselves “how boring, I came to learn to draw faces, not white mugs.” But with encouragement they overcame their resistance and started to become involved in the seeing itself. One of the reasons they struggled is because they were used to being primarily in their left brain with the kinds of activities demanded of them in their everyday life. The extreme left side of the brain functions in a very fast way, needing more and more stimulation and being easily bored, needing constant novelty. Thus the technological fast-paced age is born, feeding that need. 

To help my students pop over more to the right side of their brain, they needed to stay with their feelings of boredom until the left side gave up (apparently it gives up only in times of boredom or shock and I could not bring a gun to class) and the right side to take over a more leadership function.

Things would suddenly change and people began to get excited about the activity and find meaning in it. People who insist we always use both sides of the brain maybe are correct but we need to understand that the brain is vast and unexplored and it is useful to talk about the continuum line, where activities are placed, to understand how we can have more control of the brain. There is a lot of research on this topic I won't go into, just share my own experience of how to move people from an uncreative way of perceiving the world to a creative one. 

What happened next astonished them. All of a sudden they began to enjoy what they were doing and were able to see more and more of what the cup actually represented, in other words they saw more than just the cup, plus the cup as is, and they felt wonderful doing it.

I used to tell them if they actually looked at their partners and children and pets in the same way, life would be nothing but adventure and a miracle for them. Unfortunately after the initial honeymoon we start imagining we know our partners inside out, have a shortcut version of them in our minds and actually stop seeing them at all. 

Out of touch with our senses, imprisoned in our conceptual mind we also stop feeling and need more and more stimulation to know we are alive. It is no wonder porn is big business.

The adults in my classes did not necessarily become professional artists but their lives started to change, they learned to enjoy and appreciate every moment of their existence, they become more tolerant, less judgemental and saw the world as mostly beautiful. That is what really seeing will do for you.










0 Comments

Intention is Everything!

12/10/2016

0 Comments

 
The Dali Lama when interviewed was asked what was the first thing he did each morning. His answer was that he set his intention for the day. Of course his intention was to do his best, to be of service and help others, to the best of his ability. He meant this in both a literal sense and a metaphorical one, where he worked on himself to be a better human, watching his thoughts and his acts.

The Dalai Lama said that intention is everything! That doing good in the world without proper intention does nothing useful really and sometimes can cause harm even.

What is intention? It is the desire to be of benefit to others in the world. Our interactions and experiences seem to go better when we’ve spent some time looking at our minds, intentionally cultivating them so that they’re more attuned to connection with others and a true appreciation for life—including even its difficulties. Working with intention makes room in the front of our minds for what we really value. In other words the true intention is one of doing no harm and putting others first. This is not self-help, it is a meaningful satisfaction that you get from knowing that, whatever life happens, you’re making room in your mind and heart to accept it. And then to let it go.
​

And in that frame of mind you can truly help others besides yourself and be of genuine benefit in the world.
0 Comments

Evolution of the Brain

12/9/2016

0 Comments

 
There is a lot about the brain we don't know, and we know practically nothing about consciousness. However I believe we are constantly evolving as is the rest of the world.

In Jesus time, at that point in time, the fore brain evolved and that is why he told us to think before we use our fists. Before that there were only fists. Our intellect (left brain), which acts like a computer has gotten us this far with remarkable scientific and technological discoveries but in the process we lost sight of the fact that we are organic matter and practically destroyed ourselves and the earth. It is the right side of the brain that gives us a sense of meaning and connectedness to each other and living beings.

I think our next major step in evolution will be a spiritual one related to our far right side of the brain and para-sympathetic nervous system. Meditation is helping that process along.
How the new paradigm will manifest will be depended on how evolved we are morally however. We could go one of two ways, because part of that evolution is going beyond good and evil. Spiritual Intelligence is now seen as a new process in our brains by scientists.
​
Spirituality, is called the SQ paradigm and it clarifies how the spiritual dimension of intelligence can be experienced directly as an innate capability without resort to religious faith. The evidence for spiritual intelligence is drawn from direct personal experience and from the findings of scientific research.

The problem is that people will develop no guilt, without checks and rules, but not necessarily the moral side of their character when taught by regular meditation teachers. Meditation becomes only a health benefit in that way of teaching.
0 Comments

    Archives

    May 2025
    March 2025
    February 2025
    January 2025
    July 2024
    February 2024
    September 2023
    June 2023
    May 2023
    March 2023
    June 2022
    May 2022
    April 2022
    September 2021
    August 2021
    July 2021
    June 2021
    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    February 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    April 2018
    March 2018
    February 2018
    January 2018
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    August 2015
    April 2015

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed