Meditative Visions (Pastel Art)

[IllusiveOwl]

Occasionally I will have an experience that I do not want to forget about while meditating and I will do my best to immortalize it in art so I dont forget them in the endless sea of experiences we live through.

I figured some of you may find them interesting or neat.

Post automatically merged: May 24, 2024

Some more, with the last being the most recent. I gave one away as a gift and only have a picture of it in the frame they placed it in.

Post automatically merged: May 30, 2024

 

[Yazata]

Try imgur?

 

[IllusiveOwl]

I originally started doing expressionist art as a practice of Jungian art therapy to help me deal with the emotional rigors of C-PTSD and express how I felt. These are all digital and in retrospect are just as meditative as the first few batches, so I'll share the less visceral and more esoteric ones. The first one in particular rings very true to my recent view, even though I really didn't understand it as I made it (I was high).

 

[Mars]

Are those like visual impressions you get during meditation?

How long do they last on average? Do they leave tracers?

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Are those like visual impressions you get during meditation?

How long do they last on average? Do they leave tracers?

It's sometimes a literal recreation of what I see, sometimes its a recreation of sensory experience - not physical but tangible energy that you feel just as vividly - sometimes it's an attempt to express an idea made in meditation, or a realization, for example:

Thats a rough attempt to show how innert and unaffected the self is while a beehive of activity dances around over it.

This matches the feeling of being unchained to any conditions or desires, of just being, completely free and full.

Usually these experiences build up over the course of thirty or forty minutes, sometimes the intense parts are only a minute, sometimes they last a lot longer. They're made with the intention of getting the important parts down so I don't forget, because the transcendental experiences fade in time, regardless of how sweet they are... every time I have an experience, I am permanently changed, subtly, just from the lessons learnt and the psychic muscles being exercised. I think that is what you meant by trace, right?

 

[Mars]

It's sometimes a literal recreation of what I see, sometimes its a recreation of sensory experience - not physical but tangible energy that you feel just as vividly - sometimes it's an attempt to express an idea made in meditation, or a realization, for example:

Thats a rough attempt to show how innert and unaffected the self is while a beehive of activity dances around over it.

This matches the feeling of being unchained to any conditions or desires, of just being, completely free and full.

Usually these experiences build up over the course of thirty or forty minutes, sometimes the intense parts are only a minute, sometimes they last a lot longer. They're made with the intention of getting the important parts down so I don't forget, because the transcendental experiences fade in time, regardless of how sweet they are... every time I have an experience, I am permanently changed, subtly, just from the lessons learnt and the psychic muscles being exercised. I think that is what you meant by trace, right?

Interesting! With trace I meant more like tracers in your vision, like how bright lights linger for a while. But what you described is interesting to read too!

So these images build up over 30 minutes? Like do they need this time to fade in or do they literally build themselves? Is this also accompanied by physical sensations? Like perhaps feeling as if you got hit or or permeated by something? Auditory experiences too?

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Interesting! With trace I meant more like tracers in your vision, like how bright lights linger for a while. But what you described is interesting to read too!

So these images build up over 30 minutes? Like do they need this time to fade in or do they literally build themselves? Is this also accompanied by physical sensations? Like perhaps feeling as if you got hit or or permeated by something? Auditory experiences too?

These experiences are usually "physical" and visual, but sometimes information comes too, like it's "seen" rather than thought, like another set of eyes. Usually there is around 15 minutes of stilling the mind, then some kind of revelation or breakthrough, which I then utilize to push my awareness further into unknown territory. The experiences range in intensity and duration, with the peak or epitome being what's painted.

I hate calling it energy because it sounds new-agey, but I have no idea what else to call the feeling, it's like physical but I know it isn't; it starts as a whirlpool of pressure in the head then envelops my whole body in warmth and pressure, and my whole awareness is focused on it, and whatever it experiences is all I experience, no thought. Sometimes it goes places and takes in the atmosphere, once it focused on a person though in unsure if they were real, I believe it may have been some kind of intensified active imagination, because it was entirely receptive, like you take in what your senses tell you, there is no creation involved so it's not my mind playing tricks. It was like suddenly being someone else and the context of everything happening is just known.

I have these non-physical sensations often when in the early stages of meditation, it feels like some kind of organ I intuitively am learning to use. I also had many "hallucinations" often before all this years ago, they were visual and vivid, I'm positive it was spiritual now and not just brain-noise from waking up in sleep mode.

Sorry for the ramble, I don't open up about this stuff often.

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2024

Also I've had a bit to drink tonight

Post automatically merged: Jun 7, 2024

This is also a recreation of my first and most vivid ultra-sensory experience. I was profoundly relaxed, went within myself, and it was like I was transparent, but this pillar of blue light formed. It was brief but it filled me with awe for days.

 

[Mars]

It was like suddenly being someone else and the context of everything happening is just known.

Like in a dream right? It happens immediately and you tend to lose the thoughts during ordinary waking state.

I have this long suspicion that dreams take place on the astral realm and it's just the soul getting out the body and at some point becoming dormant and things just start happening. And because you usually associate sleeping with resting and not being focused you are often confused when this happens, whereas during meditation you are quite focused and actively and conciously experience whatever happens.

 

[IllusiveOwl]

Like in a dream right? It happens immediately and you tend to lose the thoughts during ordinary waking state.

I have this long suspicion that dreams take place on the astral realm and it's just the soul getting out the body and at some point becoming dormant and things just start happening. And because you usually associate sleeping with resting and not being focused you are often confused when this happens, whereas during meditation you are quite focused and actively and conciously experience whatever happens.

It was a lot more sober and encompassing than my normal dream experience. I remember vividly that it was like suddenly my environment changed around me, like I was somewhere else suddenly, and my natural instinct to want to know where I was kicked in, filling me in on the context and situation as though I had lived it up until that point. The reason why I assume it was Active Imagination was because it was in a carriage, the character I assumed was kidnapped nobility surrounded by his captors as they rode off somewhere unknown and secluded.

I dont know what it was, I just know it was vivid, that I was awake, and everything was sensed, not created or generated.

Post automatically merged: Monday at 7:06 PM

I do not make much plans for how a piece turns out, I just have something and make it. Sometimes this makes things vague and hard to understand, but sometimes pieces link together in a very satisfying way.

The first piece I posted here:

The piece I made today before a job interview (that I rocked btw):

The egg symbolism is something that Carl Jung explored a lot in his Red Book, I believe it was the Soul he was so interested in creating. Each of us has an egg that we carry. Don't forget about it or sacrifice it to please your flesh-sack. You must sacrifice your body and ego in service to it.