(the images on this page start at the bottom and progress upwards)

The future had always seemed much more interesting to me than the present moment, but today, I realized that in fact, the future is so boring. Because it simply does not exist. On the contrary, the present moment suddenly is so interesting, for there are endless options for taking the next step.

So, if I want, I can talk about the future, but it should be taken rather lightly, because at this moment, talking about the future is talking about what could be, it is talking about an illusion, of something that does not exist.

What happens when I give up meaning? …and face my biggest fear- that nobody understands me? What is beyond meaning? Will I disappear? What is the value of someone who does what she wants with no goal that anyone would understand, not even myself? Maybe when there is no need for meaning I can simply…finally…completely enjoy the doing itself and see where that takes me.

I feel that as long as I consciously create meaning I can never express my authentic self and never feel who I am. What will happen when I choose to let go and fall apart? Who am I beyond thought?

The attachment to meaning, attachment to the capability to understand the image. Realization of the boundaries that are created by only creating something until I can understand what the meaning is, or until I think that others can understand. This belief has kept me from wondering further, to see what lies beyond meaning. It had kept me stuck creating the same style of images over and over again until I was so tired of myself, so confused why my hand would not make different shapes already. I was scared that by bypassing my capability to understand the image I was drawing, it would lose its value. Only then did I realize that while in theory I had long ago already understood that the mind operates lower than emotions, I hadn’t fully incorporated that understanding into my creative process yet. The image below was first conscious letting go, I decided to just follow my excitement to keep drawing as I had no understanding anymore of what I was doing, what I was depicting. Only later did I further realize, that I had aligned with my authentic expression which didn’t have any boundaries anymore. It was just pure expression with no limitations set by the mind. I also realized even further how, for something completely new to come together, there old has to completely be destroyed so that it can be rearranged into something new. The bigger the chaos, the more different the next creation.

Attachment to sugar (or maybe, more specifically, attachment to the belief, that sugar provides something to me that I cannot get in any other way?) quick gratification in the moments when I feel anxious, when I have lost my connection with my heart, when I yearn for love but have no energy to create it…or maybe I do, but I have not figured it out yet. When I eat sugar, all of a sudden I feel everything is ok, nothing is missing, and I feel safe and well. It is so easy. Until later when it is not. I am stuck and despite countless attempts of freeing myself, I keep falling back. Maybe sugar also looks for my acceptance, that I would not see it as a bad thing, that I would not regret our get-togethers. After all, it is doing the best it can to help me feel better when I cannot sit with the empty feeling that makes me anxious. Imagine being sugar yourself, so desired and loved and all of a sudden so hated and despised. But you keep providing and actually, you do give as much as you can, you give it all. But it is not enough to be met with real gratitude. Maybe I should write a love and gratitude letter for sugar for all the times it has helped me feel better and then we can part our ways and look for realtionships that better fit both of our needs?

Images drawn after a period of going sugar-free with a growing pressure inside of me that finally resulted in eating almost the whole 250g Merci box. As I was eating I tried something new, I tried to enjoy and not to shame myself, not to put myself down…I tried my best to accept the situation and not create drama. The next day I heard such beautiful words that kept flying around in my heart….”Why would you be any less warm towards yourself because you are struggling? How strange it is, that in the moments when we make “mistakes” or we are not doing our best, we choose to put ourselves down even more, to punish ourselves when instead it is those moments when we, instead, need much more care and understanding.

But I understand, the blueprint for such an approach is from early childhood when we were punished by caretakers and teachers… because they were not capable of understanding that whatever they punished us for, was never done because we were bad, didn’t care or didn’t respect them, but because we were struggling.

Attachment to a plan, a desire