Becoming Painting

I wanted to share with you the creation of my last piece which I call "Becoming".  I create my art through an awakened state of meditation.  As I am creating, I take small breaks to rest and meditate.  As I concentrate colors, designs, words, or thoughts come into my mind.  These thoughts also come to me while I am in the process of creating.  My works are not pre planned, so I really don't even know what the end result will look like until I am finished. I chose to name this piece Becoming because of the insight I experienced during creation.  The word that first came to me was perception.  So I stopped for a moment and looked up the definition of the word.  This is what I found: To become aware of, know, or identify by means of the senses. It seems to me that our senses create inward projections of what our physical being is coming into or into contact with.  Sight, touch, smell, hearing, tasting are 5 of our physical senses.  These are the first to react when we come into contact with something, or find ourselves in a certain situation.  As an example, we try a new food and our taste buds tell us if we like it or not.  We look to find something beautiful, and our eyes find that for us.  If we are physically hurt, our sense of touch feels this for us.  This all happens in a split second of receiving this information from our senses.  Our mind puts that situation linked with our sense into one of our subconscious "perception funnels" (as I like to call them). I will go into my ideas of "perception funnels" at a later time, but I would like to just quickly fill you in.  Since birth we experience all sorts of sensations that we automatically link with a feeling and/or a memory.  These funnels happen without us knowing, in our mind, and form a set of rules that will be mentally followed each time we experience that same sense, emotion, or memory for the rest of our lives without us really even thinking about it.  I imagine them as funnels because from here on in all that we experience, good or bad, will be processed mentally through them. For example, a child smells some really good soup cooking; the child tries to taste the soup but its too hot and the child burns his tongue.  That child has just created a "funnel" linking the soup, the smell, sense of heat, and being hurt.  The subconscious now kicks in every time food is cooking to be careful or I may get burnt if the food is too hot. When the child smells that same soup later on in life, he will probably remember "that's the soup I burnt myself with that one time when I as little". This same concept can be linked to almost anything that we have experienced from birth until now.  It doesn't matter if it was a good or bad experience.  It can be applied to people we have met, places we have been, or circumstances we have found ourselves in.  The problem I see, is that these "perception funnels" or rules came into effect without thought.  These rules came into effect without our being mindful of how to handle the situation and how to handle putting the rules together.  Our minds took care of that for us, without logic and reasoning.  It put these rules together out of fear so that we would not be harmed again or so that we would not feel the negative emotion again. So what is to say we haven't formed a "negative perception funnel"? Now, I understand that the soup explanation is not that big of a deal...it's a good thing because it really taught the child to be careful.  However, think of all of the fears or anxiety or negative emotions you have had toward something, someone, or even toward yourself that may have come from one of these funnels being formed because of a past experience.  You may have a funnel for friends, a funnel for being hurt, a funnel for what life should be like for you, a funnel for people you have never met, and so on. Becoming mindful is the method that we can use to help us become more aware of our true feelings or true self.  To rid ourselves of these funnels that hold us back and to see things as they truly are without dissolution or judgement.  Mindfulness practice is not easy and it is not something that happens overnight. The more you become mindful the more you tend to understand.  The more you understand, the more you can forgive, move on, accept, and live freely.  I will talk more about mindfulness practice in the future, but just making yourself aware that this is even happening is becoming mindful. From the time we are born we are shaped and molded by our society, the people around us, and the circumstances of our actions, and sometimes the circumstances of others actions.  Unknowingly, we take all of the information we have acquired from these situations and create "perception funnels" or possibly even "negative perception funnels".  Since we did not consciously take part in the rule making..how much of it really makes logical sense?  How much of it is really hindering us? hindering our growth? or hindering us from being happy?  Have we formed the incorrect perception of a situation, person, or experience? of ourselves? When I look at this finished piece, I remember that: "Maybe the journey isn't so much about becoming anything. Maybe it's about un-becoming everything that isn't really you, so you can be who you were meant to be in the first place". ~author unknown

Painting:Acrylic on Paper

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:16 W x 24 H x 1 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.