painting and nonjudgment

The joy of creating something is the joy of finding the next step, following the invisible thread, not planning what you're making in advance, or even if you think you have, being surprised. The sentence which writes itself, the idea that comes out of nowhere, the sudden jump from one subject to another, or from one foot to the other if you're dancing, the connections making themselves, the sense that all you have to do is receive.

It's a wonderful feeling, an addictive feeling, and it comes from the sudden space and silence in the mind that happens when the chatter stops. For some the chatter is more incessant than for others, the volume varies, the content varies, but there tends to be a constant, and that's the judgemental tone. Comparing everything you see with another thing, comparing past with present, what you did and what you could have or should have done, comparing one person or situation with another, very often to the detriment of yourself. Does this sound familiar?

The inner judgement stream is involuntary, it just happens. Not in the way that creativity does, though. It's a different way of just happening, a stream running along deep grooves in the mind, it's the habit of all habits, The way creativity 'just happens' is what the mind does when left to it's own devices and its own natural state - the attention no longer runs in those old mind grooves. The attention is free to join up with the rest of the world, with all the thoughts there are to think, words there are to write, movements and sounds there are to make and colours, shapes, textures and forms there are to paint, all present with their own rhythms, when you're not making them into things to be compared. This is maybe the clearest in music, in group improvisation, when each person's notes join to create a greater whole, entirely of the moment and unplanned, as if the music were already there.

Abstract painting, intuitive painting or whatever you want to call the non figurative kind, is maybe one of the easiest ways in which to drop the judging mind for a moment because the paint is so material, always being its own way, and doing its own thing. A drip, a splodge, as you can see in the painting above, a rip in the paper where it got soggy with an overload of water, all the things that happen when you stop trying to control them, or despite your efforts to control them, that provoke a reaction – to fill in a space or to make a mark of a different kind in response.

This way of playing, responding, listening, creating, is joyful in itself. In the lack of judgement, you can experience some peace, some tacit acceptance of yourself as you are, some experience of being in the moment, not mentally in the future, the past, or the comparison between them. This isn't necessarily the be all and end all of life but it's a really good place to start.