When I was a young around 7/ 8 years old, my sister was in her nationalist era and she had several poster-paintings by Frida Kahlo in her room. Whenever I would go in there I would remain in awe looking at those images due to the content/ expression they represented as a lot of suffering – Frida crying, blood, self portrayals of her physical discomfort and all of these surreal passages that got stuck within my mind. I was actually quite ‘sad’ when she took them down because my mother thought it was ‘too depressive’ to have those paintings in her room, ‘too gory’ and ‘too much of a negative energy’ for the room.
I had not realized how these paintings became a platform to ‘build my expression’ due to the extent that they ‘awakened’ my emotional patterns, the desire to experience the same she was portraying in her paintings, it made me ‘feel alive’ which is how I began to identify that desire to ‘suffer’ and ‘feel pain’ in order to ‘create great art’ like that, and be able to ‘express’ something as meaningful as she did. Of course I got to know her story of actual physical discomfort due to her accident, which I simply used then as a way to think that I had to suffer, create some turmoil in my life to be able to depict it through paintings and get to be ‘as good as she was’ at it.
I began creating these ideas and relationships in my head that I could use to Create what I deemed were ‘similar experiences’ of pain and suffering – this was back in 2003 as I described in my previous post – just so that I could paint something like her paintings. Couple of years later I read in a book a quote that really got stuck in my head ‘True art comes from suffering’ – or something along the lines, and that confirmed my idea that ‘I wanted to be an artist because I could ‘feel’ such torture in my being,’ lol – which was actually built and self-created from a much earlier stage in my life – 7/8 years old – and only confirming that or believing that I had in fact ‘found my place in Art’ when reading such quote 10 years after the initial ‘imprint’ of this desire to create in an emotional state.
And so, the specialness aura goes for debunking through Self Forgiveness.
Pattern: Believing that great art is only existent if it evokes an emotion within me and others
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that art could only be ‘great art’ if it evoked an emotional experience within me and others
Self Forgiveness Statements
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to be haunted by the Frida Kahlo paintings in my sister’s room specifically because of the suffering, sadness and pain they portrayed, which caught my attention to the emotional depiction of sorrow, pain, suffering as something that I could experience while looking at them and within this, feeling ‘alive’ when looking at paintings.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to develop an attraction to this particular depiction of human emotions through images depicting blood, pain, tears, the human physical body in pain and through that, creating the foundation of an emotional state that I would allow myself to to experience whenever I would go into my sister’s room to look at the paintings.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to define myself as being attracted to the depiction of pain and sorrow in paintings, wherein I started valuing images depicting such emotional states as ‘great art’ and within that, me wanting and desiring to be able to paint similar topics to evoke the same emotions in others, the same way Frida’s paintings were evoking within myself.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to within this fascination/ attraction for the paintings and the experience that I was obtaining from looking at them, start thinking that ‘someday I want to be a painter just like her’ – wherein this single thought became a desire later on as the years went by, which I eventually consummated when opting to finally study arts.
I realize that I made that decision from the Experience that I got which was linked to fascination, mystery and a vicarious enjoyment of staring at a painting that depicted suffering/ pain/ dismal view upon the world which I recognized as ‘my view of the world,’ yet it was simply the energetic experience that I was truly drawn to due to and because of the emotional body ‘awakening’ to these paintings and beginning the identification of myself as such emotions, as an experience that I defined as ‘preference’ and ‘kinship’ to the painter, without realizing it was just the mind finding its ‘source’ to generate emotions from a visual interaction with paintings depicting such emotions.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to within this acceptance of myself as emotions, start thinking and believing that ‘I have to be an artist’ because of thinking that ‘not everyone would get the same experiences I did’ when looking at art, which was only due to and based to the accumulation of self-talk throughout the years to ‘find a taste’ on art because of the associations I started giving to Art as a ‘superior human activity’ in my mind – hence using it as a way to value ‘art’ more than any other human activity, to justify my eventual decision to ‘be an artist’ simply because of the curiosity around creation and the Experience that I would get from looking at art, images, video, etc.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to want to be a painter just to be as ‘famous’ and ‘well-known’ as Frida, because she got to be a world-wide known persona and that’s what attracted me the most in terms of being a famous person.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to desire creating images that could instigate the same emotional side that I got from looking at Frida’s paintings to other people, so that I could ensure that I could ‘touch’ people through paintings/ images, within this
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to be fascinated by someone that was so ‘filled with emotions’ and being apparently ‘mysterious’ as she was, due to her tormented life which became a trigger point for her creations.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to feed my mind with thoughts of ‘fascination’ whenever I would be in my sister’s room and stare at the images for quite some time, trying to almost ‘suck’ the essence out of the pain and sorrow they represented and use it as a way to ‘make my own art’ which eventually influenced what I did without me wanting to openly admit it, because ‘hey, I have to be special!’
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to deny admitting or fear admitting that Frida Kahlo was one of my influences because of how ‘popular’ she is in Mexico and me wanting to be ‘unique’ and ‘special’ as ‘an artist,’ which I thought that when naming Frida as an influence, I would be tagged as cheesy or predictable – hence I kept it ‘hidden’ and always naming any other artist as ‘influence’ just so that I could remain in an apparent ‘safe zone’ of influences and not going for what seemed ‘obvious’ only in my mind.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that Frida’s paintings were a ‘great influence for me,’ wherein the idea of ‘influence’ is still used as a way to not directly accept that I in fact just wanted to be like her and experience myself the same way she did as ‘that made her create great art!’ without ever really measuring what it would be like to be living in constant depression, sorrow and pain as the emotions that I would get and imagine her experiencing when looking at her paintings.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to from the moment of being in my sister’s room, looking at Frida’s paintings, create this ‘special moment’ of me staring at a work of art with a predisposition to ‘get something off it’ as an experience, and the more I was able to get any form of ‘empathy’ such as depression, sadness, chills or any other energetic experience, I would use as a measuring point to say that the artwork was ‘powerful’ and ‘great’ and if I didn’t get any emotion/ feeling from it: I would say the artwork is not good/ bullshit.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to link the creation of emotions whenever I looked at art/ paintings/ music videos and any other image that I could use as a way to ‘feel alive’ through generating emotions and feelings from it.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to define being emotional and mysterious as being a ‘superior being’ that is more ‘sensitive’ toward the world, when in fact it is no different to any other being existing as the mind, generating emotions and feelings instead of just Living here as breath – within this, I realize that I have pondered artists and creative people that are well-tormented as ‘superior’ because of how I programmed myself from that early age to associate being emotional = being alive, being more aware, being more ‘in touch with yourself,’ which is just another excuse for me to validate my career choice and entire personality as in wanting to be and become ‘an artist.’
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to take the judgment of my mother toward Frida’s paintings on my sister’s wall as being ‘too sad and gory’ while making a gesture of disgust as a ‘good idea’ for me to do something that would deliberately vex her, disturb her, which is linked to an entire process that I’ve realized fairly recently due to the Heaven’s Journey To Life blog how there is this friction relationship with the mother from the time of inception – hence this event was just part of me creating a point of friction toward her, to deliberately ‘shock’ and ‘disturb’ her, as a way to get out of the ‘cookie cutter pattern’ that I thought she wanted me to remain as/ impose onto myself because of being ‘her daughter’ – within this
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to like the idea of me doing something that would disturb my mother in a shocking way, as a statement of saying: I am not like my sisters, I do not have conventional preferences, I step out of the family mold – which is how through becoming the entire ‘eccentric’ role, I fed my self-belief as this art-lover more and more as that meant separating myself more and more from having to continue/ follow the steps of my sisters as what I deemed being ‘normal, ordinary, conventional’ in a derogatory/ inferior way, wherein I had placed the eccentric/ odd/ mysterious/ emotional in a superior place in my mental value scheme toward the world and people.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to from the moment of seeing the shock and impact that images would create and instill in my mother to the point of her asking my sister to take them down, to then use paintings as a way for me to ‘go against her flow’ and create shocking images just for the sake of secretly vindicating my desire to vex and disturb my mother, even if I ‘hid’ most of those paintings from her, even till this day –
I forgive myself that I have not accepted and allowed myself to realize that the entire play-out of events from this moment on defined my desire to paint something that would be ‘eccentric’ and disturbing as a way to make my mother react or be bothered, and get a kick out of it – with no reason or purpose but that initial primordial relationship of mother/ daughter that began from the moment I was inside her womb.
I forgive myself that I accepted an allowed myself to choose a career just for the sake of wanting to ‘step out ‘of the mold that I believed I was being imposed with, and in that desire to ‘spite my mother’/ family structure, I opted to study something that represented ‘getting out of the family mold,’ without realizing that the only one I was fucking with was myself, as I would have to live with that decision based on all of these emotional and relationship play outs in my family that I defined myself according to.
I realize that the only one that is now living the consequences of such decisions based on experiences is myself, and it has nothing to do with the paintings, the painter, my mother or sisters, but only myself and my own mind as the definition of who and what I wanted to be and what I did not want to be ‘for others,’ not even for myself.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to within spiting what I perceived were imposed decisions for my life from my mother, I took the ‘opposite road’ in order to ensure that ‘I’ could decide for myself, wherein I simply took the opposite road to spite them and separate myself from them, without actually realizing that the decision I was taking was for me and my own life and that the only one that would have to live with such decisions was myself, and that I was the only one that would have to live with it.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to not see that in my desire to ‘spite everyone else,’ I only spitted myself.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to elevate art to the status of being something ‘eccentric and unique’ which fueled my desire to not be ordinary, to be ‘out of this world/ out of my family mold’ and within that, be ‘abnormal’ from the ‘normalcy’ that I had judged as pathetic and predictable, without realizing that we have all always been predictable as the mind patterns that work in mechanical ways wherein I was never really aware of me when living out those choices, but was only following a systematic pattern of creating friction and opposition in order to establish my self-righteousness over common sense in my life, to only fuel my ego.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to begin painting with the desire to be emotional to have something ‘great’ to paint, and to evoke the same experience in another when looking at it, which is what I defined as what would make a painting ‘famous’ and ‘liked’
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to start seeing emotions – in a lesser manner also feelings – as a way to make a painting ‘come alive’ wherein I started believing that the emotional way I was painting in would define a painting s either successful/ not successful based on the reactions that others would be able to obtain from them.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to want to ‘feel alive’ through paintings, associating this with having to be sad, dismal, depressed and angry at the world, which is how I would allow myself to reinforce emotions through words, pictures, ideas, thoughts, lyrics, books in order to gather ‘enough material to work with’ as an emotional experience that I would define as ‘feeling inspired’ to paint and portray that which I wanted to say in order to leave a ‘mark’ of my emotional state for the world – creating an entire mythology around my own paintings as something special.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to think that because I didn’t have much to be sad about, I had to start creating my own sad stories and beginning to yearn for love and relationships, as that was another topic that I saw could generate a similar experience of ‘hopelessness’ and ‘dullness’ that I could express through images/ pictures according to how I would go tagging my reality as sad/ dismal and portraying that as paintings.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to talk myself into depression and deliberately triggering thoughts/ using images to create these emotional experiences because I defined that I could only be alive and be ‘sensitive enough’ just like an artist/ Frida, to create any good work of art.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that I could only create art if I had a ‘broken heart’ or a yearning for a relationship, which are the points that I fueled in order to paint.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to start looking at this world as being damned and shitty, as a thought in my mind just for the sake of making of that thought a painting that could make me ‘feel’ like I as this sensitive person to what was going on in the world – hence making me special in my own eyes and wanting to be special at the eyes of others = the desire to be an eccentric unique being.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to start seeing everyone as sad and dismal and slaves, which became the actual filter with which, till this day, I have been walking in order to not constantly feed the same pattern that I created in order to fuel my ‘creative abilities’ when using emotions as a trigger point for me to paint. This implies that I began seeking for the ‘negative experiences’ as a way to make myself feel ‘better’ about myself and feel ‘good’ whenever I could create with using such ‘emotional states of being’ as a source of ‘inspiration.’
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe then myself to be ‘too sensitive for this world,’ wherein I simply took the idea of ‘an artist being a more sensitive being’ wherein in my mind, being an artist and being sensitive meant a more ‘evolved’ human being, a more ‘humane’ being without ever realizing what emotions were really all about until now through what we learn and educate ourselves with at Desteni.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to talk myself into believing that I had a ‘gift’ to represent emotions in a touching manner through my paintings/ images/ drawings/ pictures, which became a point that I held on as myself, as if I was special about it.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to talk myself into desiring a relationship, instigating any form of problem and friction within myself to have something to be sad, bothered, angry about in order to paint.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe in the sentence ‘True art only comes from suffering’ from Palahniuk’s books that I took on as a creed, and that I used to fuel my desire to have experiences in order to have something ‘meaningful’ to paint, which is how I would judge then what ‘good art’ and what ‘bad art’ was based on the amount of emotions and feelings I could generate/ get from looking at art, without realizing that I had programmed myself to act and believe that this was actually ‘so’ within itself which means: there was never ever something ‘special ‘and ‘unique’ about it, other than my obvious self-brain washing in a desire to be special.
I forgive myself that I have accepted and allowed myself to remain within the belief that ‘I had to be inspired to create any good art’ which mean ‘I had to be experiencing an emotion – preferably – to make any good painting, and that if I was rather ‘happy’ or in a positive attitude, it would mostly not be a good work of art, but only a spoof of reality.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to believe that the sadder I felt, the better the painting would come out to be, wherein I would deliberately begin painting when I thought that I was sad enough, angry enough to do so.
I forgive myself that I accepted and allowed myself to continue with this pattern of believing that creation required myself to be in a particular emotional way to generate emotions within others and within that, make of ‘my work’ something ‘great’ due to and because of how I had believed that only great works of art stem from feeling sad, experiencing sorrow and depression, which became a state of being that I deliberately sought in order to ‘make great art,’ without ever realizing I was only manipulating myself in order to fit my own ideal of what ‘great art’ is supposed to be.
Self Corrective Statements
When and as I see myself believing that ‘great art’ is that which is able to evoke an emotional experience within me and others, I stop and I breathe – I realize that I programmed myself this way from the time when I got an experience from Frida’s paintings that became the ‘blueprint’ for me to establish what is ‘great successful art’ and what is not, wherein through this value system I simply accept myself to be an emotional-robot that can only feel ‘alive’ if being ‘emotional’ in any way as a state of being.
When and as I see myself believing that being an artist is being a ‘special unique being’ and ‘sensitive’ toward the world, I stop and I breathe – I realize that in art the emotional and feeling bodies are used to give further meaning to just images and things in order to perpetuate the idea of the human being a sensitive creature, which is in no way what we really are as the proof of what our desire and drive for experiences is Here as the consequence of this absolute self interest wherein we can do ‘anything’ jus to ‘feel everything’ even if it means depleting the earth’s resources in the name of a feeling/ emotion, abusing ourselves, abusing life and simply perpetuating a monetary system that in no way is supporting LIFE but only the human as experiences within emotions and feelings that keep us all occupied in our minds and neglecting the reality that is crumbling down every step that we take to fulfill our ‘dreams’ instead of acting and caring to consider what is best for all instead.
When and as I see myself being drawn to pictures that depict sorrow, suffering, blood, tears, sadness, I stop and I breathe – I realize that I programmed myself to develop my ‘emotional side’ as the mind within looking at such images, in order to ponder emotions as ‘living’ and equating them to a ‘higher level of consciousness’ due to the belief that I held toward ‘emotions/ feelings’ being the actual ‘core’ of being a human being as in ‘being alive,’ yet absolutely neglecting the consequences that such feelings and emotions had on a physical level in every body, but only going for that rush as the actual energy that I would create whenever I could become emotional, just like a drug that I could generate through my own thoughts and my own images to reinforce such thoughts
When and as I see myself believing that I ‘chose my career’ based on my ‘affinity with art and life’ I stop and I breathe – I realize that this was just the result of me talking to myself to become someone eccentric – as I deemed artists to be – and within that, doing everything that I could to emulate the lives of beings that were artists so that I could be ‘one of them’ by identifying myself with their emotional experience and existence, which I defined as ‘living’ and being a ‘more aware being’ which was never really so, but only a highly ingrained belief system wherein I believed that an emotional being was ‘in touch with themselves, ‘when It was only being in touch with the mind as self, but never self aware as the totality of this world – without realizing that artists, just like any other human being, are only infatuated with their own thoughts, imagination, emotions, feelings, which is no different to any other being existing in absolute self-interest and self-obsession – thus
When and as I see myself seeing an ‘artist’ with this aura of ‘specialness’ when compared to other ‘normal’ beings, I stop and I breathe. I realize I am perpetuating my own mindfuck toward art/ artists being ‘special’ and ‘unique beings’ which is why I sought to be ‘one of them’ when deliberately wanting to ‘identify’ myself with artists and their lives.
When and as I see myself looking at a work of art with the desire to get an ‘experience’ out of it, I stop and I breathe – I realize that the reason why art is ‘art’ is because of reinforcing the emotions and feelings of people – instead I can direct myself to see how I can use art as an effective way to instigate the realization of us human beings being responsible for this world and this Earth as each one of us, which is a more tangible way of using images in the name of Self-Support as Life, and not as mere instigators of emotions and feelings as ‘human nature.’
When and as I see myself wanting to make a decision in my life based on the desire to oppose my family/ the world/ ‘normal people,’ I stop and I breathe. I realize that this is a basic mechanism that I have used throughout my life to generate conflict and separate myself from others in means of keeping me as ‘special’ and ‘unique,’ which is in fact just another egotistical way to ensure that ‘I’ remain special/ unique within the ‘artist role,’ instead I realize that all decisions I make must be considered within the outflows and consequences of the entirety of ‘who I am’ in that moment of decision, taking all into consideration wherein I ensure I am not opposing something/ someone, wanting to ‘avoid’ or wanting to create an experience within me as ‘living,’ – but instead direct me to consider the practical, physical and tangible steps to walk that decision that will be founded upon the consideration of what is best for all life, what is it really required to be and be done in order to establish LIFE in this world.
I realize that I had only sought to be and become this profession to indulge in my egotistical personality, my desire to be special and unique – instead of ever really considering what can I be and become in order to be an actual participant that takes on a position within reality to change the world that I judged for so long, and daring to first walk that process myself which is what I am now walking as my own correction to the decisions I made based on opposition, retaliation in my own mind to create a sense of superiority toward ‘the rest of the world,’ trying to ‘not be of this world’ by ‘being an artist’ and creating an aura of specialness around me.
When and as I see myself desiring to ‘not be like everyone else’ I stop and I breathe, I realize that this is the mechanism that we all accept as ‘normal’ within ourselves, but is in fact the basic platform from which inequality stems, because such statement implies: I want to be special, I want to be ‘more’ than others – hence allowing an entire system that enables such ‘specialness’ through the value given to different professions and skills that can actually be equalized for all if we stop holding anything as more or less than who we are as one and equal. Thus I see that the equalization of myself as life begins with stopping one single thought as a desire to ‘not be normal/ ordinary.’ I direct myself to stand as one and equal as the totality that we are wherein there can be no more and no less, but only self-expansion from the confinement of a mind that seeks to be ‘above others’ into the creation of a reality that I can in fact contribute to be supportive for all equally, and in that, supporting people’s expression to be artists and create themselves as the individuals that we all can be if regarding ourselves as life in Equality.
I realize that the reason why I considered art as some ‘unique’ and ‘special’ activity/ profession in my world, was because of the fame and aura of ‘specialness’ that artists would get, which became my actual desire to be and become an artist for such desire to be recognized and praised as some ‘great creator’ only to fuel my ego and desire for specialness, which stems from an actual inferiority and sense of ‘lacking’ such wholeness/ completion as myself as my physical being, but believing that I had to seek to be ‘more’ than myself as who and what I’ve been and am and will be until I die: my physical body here, breathing.
When and as I see myself believing that I can only create when I am feeling ‘emotional’ in any way – I stop and I breathe – I realize that this is the reason why I believe that ‘I do not want to create anything’ just because I have not been as ‘emotional’ as I used to, wherein I have stopped having this desire to ‘create’ because of the link I created between art creation and emotional experience. Thus I direct myself to create without thinking that I require to be emotional/ inspired to do so, which is then me creating as a moment of expression within myself that does not require to be backed by an experience, but can be directed as the moment in common sense = considering what’s best for all as a creation that is not fueled by emotions or feelings, but only externalizing the expression of myself in any given moment that I direct myself to do so.
When and as I see myself wanting to get positive feedback on my creations as a way to ‘know’ that I have ‘touched’ them in any way, I stop and I breathe – I realize that I am trying to make of art an emotion/ feeling instigator instead of actually supporting myself and others to stop the mind and get back into the physical reality that does not require feelings or emotions to be and exist – hence I direct myself to use pictures, images, paintings in common sense to give them a new meaning based on what life is, what life can be if we all work together to actually create a world that’s best for all, wherein the only role that art can take is the creative process in itself wherein we all realize ourselves as our own creators and within that, being self responsible about such creations in order to ensure that we are in fact considering each other in every moment of creation, and stop creating as a means to elevate our egos –
I commit myself to stop any aura of specialness toward art, and simply accept it, see it as any other form of expression coming from a fellow human being that is valuable just for the part of this reality that it represents, without seeing it as ‘holy objects’ or ‘special objects’ in my world.
I commit myself to establish the Equal Money System that will ensure that dreams of fame and fortune stop being this constant fuel for the desire to be special and unique within beings, but instead become an actual point of support to ensure that all beings can learn how to express through art if they want to do so, and have no restrictions based on time, survival or any other form of belief of what is art/ what is not art – but simply using materials to create as a way to get to know ourselves through our creations, be able to reflect about reality in a self-supportive way wherein emotions and feelings are no longer in the way but we direct the work to be an actual representation of the realization of who we are as one and equals as life.
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Read the previous chapters of this exploration around art as a career choice:
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