Giant: Drawing and Dharma - Part 2
*Here the second article on meditation and art by Mike Giant – amigo de la MBA Project – from his blog on Fecalface.com.
Sunday, 29 July 2007
Part 2 of a series of observations on meditation practice and art making:
I’ve learned a lot from the transitional mindstate between deep sleep and the waking state. Sometimes my body begins the process of “waking” while I’m in the midst of a horrible nightmare. As my mind moves into the waking state, I become “conscious” that the nightmare experience is just imaginary. My experience transitions from being “in” the nightmare to “observing” the nightmare as a simple mental process. In those waking moments, I can acknowledge the horrible thoughts my mind is producing as “nightmare”, and let them go. They’re not real. I don’t have to dwell in such an unwholesome mindstate. I have the capacity to just let those thoughts go and start fresh.
During sleep, my mind is free to create without restriction, using the information accumulated by my senses as its medium. When I’m awake, because my senses are activated, the dreamlike “noise” of my mind retreats to my sub-conscious. But that subconscious noise is the base from which I experience the world. If my subconscious is ruminating something violent or painful, and I’m unaware of those thoughts, I may react in anger or fear in my “awake” conscious experience.
For example, sometimes I feel like I’m just having a bad day. I get up on the wrong side of the bed, I feel shitty, clumsy, angry, frustrated… and I could just go about my day continuing to feel like that. Or, I could sit and meditate for half an hour and listen to what’s on my mind. Usually, once I can observe my base thoughts in meditation, I can acknowledge them and let them go, thus relieving a lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety. It’s a much better way to start my day, and a much better state of mind for making art.
Learning how to understand my mind in this way has been the most beneficial aspect of my meditation practice. I no longer feel as though I am my thoughts. I see my thoughts as the creative process of mind. Nothing more. This simple acknowledgement has deepened my understanding of the world and my place in it more than any other. I also feel much more personal freedom since I’ve begun to experience my thoughts from this observational perspective.
I hope these words inspire and heal.
