empathy

Spirit Painting Meditations

This is a recent Spirit Painting I was commissioned to create. These are very different from my other work (abstract and other figurative work) because I meditate while creating it for the person who commissioned it (or for their loved one). I paint what comes. It is a very surprising process for me as the painter but for the recipient, too. These are done for a mitzvah (read that as a “good deed”) and I charge next to nothing for them, but I feel strongly that I should make them available for anyone who might want one, which means the commission fee is very low. Check out others here on my site, under the Spirit Painting heading at the banner. And of course contact me via this site if you’d like one!

Epic Spring II: Our Choices and Destiny

Earth Changes Series/Pole Shift: Epic Spring II

This new painting in the series is currently at Art/Place Gallery in Fairfield, CT. In the meditative state I entered painting it, I felt that swell of momentum reminding me of great ocean waves. Even stepping just a few feet into the breaking waves, there is a power so tremendous, so epic. And when we are subjected to the tide, we succumb to it. We may play with it, but it is with the understanding that the force within each crashing arc of salt water, there is incomprehensible power. We in your physical form are but a moment of time upon a shore that raged thousands of years before we were present, and this same rising and falling, according to its attraction to the moon and the sun, will breathe in and breathe out long after we are all gone in our current form. White horses run toward us, crashing at our feet, as we stand in “the tide of time and light” as it says in the Siddur. Our time is upon us with each wave, our choices and destiny.

Intuitive Stream Drawing Sessions

Detail of a recent intuitive stream drawing done on behalf of a client

The reason why I do intuitive stream drawing sessions is because this creative stream-of-consciousness method supports an inner dialogue, not the loop of endless worries or pain-filled memories, but an awareness of why we do what we do, and in becoming more conscious, we are more likely to strike out doing what is best for us, what our “soul purpose” is. In other words, to live abundantly and fully the life we would most like to live. In this detail of a recent stream drawing I did for a client, I saw the infinity symbol (#8 on its side) and when I see that, for me that drawn line configuration is the symbol of soul purpose. I saw a large central #8 and then (to the right) a smaller one zooming in as if to say, “Time to start that NEW purpose” and I communicated this to the client. Over and over in this drawing there were similar messages with the theme: “It is time to start doing what you’d most love to do. Seek it, find it, create it! What you’ve done so far you’ve done well and it taught you well, but it is now time for that NEW thing that allows you to actually express the creative you that you are.” I urged her to start looking on line for corporations more open to her artistic background and essential creative streak which had suffered somewhat amongst people who could not and never would appreciate her unique expressions. (We often choose jobs that mirror a lack of acceptance we felt at home in early life, unconsciously trying to heal that old wound). She left saying she’d start looking. She called the next day to say she’d had a shock–her job was terminated. She did not need to be reminded that her spiritual knowing already had that insight, the new new was upon her and she didn’t really need me to tell her, life was telling her. But the fact that she came to me for help with it, for me, is a sacred privilege. (see MAKING MARKS: Discover the Art of Intuitive Drawing)

 

EMPATHIC CURIOSITY: CARING ABOUT THE FEELINGS OF OTHERS

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Detail of a recent painting/ Elaine Clayton copyright 2016

As long as we have a feeling stir within the heart, which reminds us that we are not separate from those others we encounter, there is a chance for goodness, wholeness, deep love. Empathy is the act of perceiving the feelings of others as one’s own.
If we are not separate in truth, and are One in that we are all created in the image of the One God, the Great Creator, then it all makes sense to me. It is why a very old knowing was communicated and holds true: Treat others as you would like to be treated. Don’t do things to people you would not like to have done to you.

Life seems to teach us that when we do things that harm others, we get it back, in some form. This then teaches us how it feels to have been “the other person” and then we feel within ourselves that Oneness we were not conscious of before.

I see life as a kind of wild ride where we gain consciousness bit by bit, or sometimes through tragedy or crisis, through our own actions and because of the actions of others. What else is there? I’d rather be curious about others, and ask myself many times a day, “What would it feel like to be that person right now?”

And then to choose to be kind, loving, generous.

Get MAKING MARKS: Discover the Art of Intuitive Drawing and enjoy strengthening your empathic curiosity!