2. The Book of Knowledge. 5. 3. Finger painting

The BOOK of KNOWLEDGE,
a novel by Alexandra Kryuchkova
in the “PLAYING ANOTHER REALITY” series

PART 2. ANOTHER REALITY

Day No. 5

CHAPTER 5.3. FINGER PAINTING

We went down to the hall with white sheets of A3 paper and watercolors. No brushes. We had to paint with our fingers. I was fond of painting very much. All the days spent at the seminar, I had been looking forward to the moment when we finally … And so, after the panther and other exercises, among which, as usual, there was the dance spine to spine, RAM switched on meditative music.

“Now you’ll paint no matter what. Don’t think, paint as you want. You can paint your feelings. Whatever colors first come to your mind. Let yourself paint. Nobody is going to put any marks. This is a game with paints and paper. Become children. Don’t look at others. Let everyone do in their paintings what they want, how they feel at the moment. During the work you will paint several pictures. As many as you can. If you run out of white paper, I have a lot of blank sheets in stock … I wish you good luck.”

We were lying on straw mats on our tummies. I lifted my heels up and was dangling them, humming something to myself. My fingers were working on their own. Someone in me guided them to the right colors for that picture. No exact images – just waves, spots, circles, some splashes of something. Sasha was lying next to me on the left, at first he was as chained, then he started painting something at full.

I finished the first picture and I looked at it from the side: fiery waves of red-orange color were pulsating all over the sheet so that there was almost no white background left. I wondered what that meant. Suddenly I got it, that was the broken glass on which we walked on the roof. It was not green, because looking with the Third Eye, you could see vibrations of Fire emanated by the broken glass, that was what it looked like. I put the picture aside to let it dry, and I took the next white sheet. RAM came to me and looked smiling at my finished picture.

Next I was painting the rainbow I had seen there so often. Then the girl under the rainbow. The girl was all in purple, she had several bodies. The Astral one, for example, was transparent, almost invisible, the purple was very blurred, following the contour of her physical body, but was larger in size. The girl was walking under the rainbow dome. Everything around was flooded with Light. I put the picture aside and took the next sheet. I turned to Sasha. He had no sheets left. I handed him a few from my folder.

“No, thanks, Daphne, I have already painted everything.”

“Take it and paint!” RAM told him.

Sasha obediently took the sheets and went on.

I painted waves… Blue, raspberry, purple… I didn’t know what they were. Completely different, not like in the picture about the broken glass. I didn’t understand it. Then I added a blue circle almost in the center, above the waves. My next picture showed some diagonal strokes stretched towards the Sun, from the lower left corner to the upper right corner. Blue, blue-green and yellow-orange ones. They looked like flowers, but were not. Something in me reaching for the Sun. The last picture was obviously a flower, a huge one, covering the entire A3 sheet. It seemed to be an aster or a peony. I started from the center with a light yellow, put strokes outwards, leaving a lot of white space. Then I put yellow, in the same way, behind a light yellow, and the strokes were longer and wider. Then – pink, then – raspberry color. As if the flower were opening, and the strokes were its petals.

“Well, let’s slowly finish our work,” RAM said.

We raised our heads and saw who had painted what. During the work, each seminarian had painted about five pictures. RAM walked around us, examining the masterpieces of spontaneous creativity, smiled and told us to place the pictures in the center of the hall to admire them together. Natasha and I organized the exhibition space.

“Do you feel the energy?” RAM asked.

In fact, their energy was completely different, as we all were. Some paintings cut right through me, some were shocking.

“And now,” said RAM, “each of you should choose one painting from our exhibition hall, find out who painted it, and ask for an autograph. The author is obliged to give this picture to the one who asks him for it. Thus, each of you will take home, besides your masterpieces, one more gift. The selected picture should be framed and hung at home. The energy of the picture you like will work for you.”

It was a complete surprise for everyone. For me, it was a pleasant surprise. I really liked the Heart in the Rainbow, painted, as it turned out later, by Olga from Klaipeda.

“I painted it for my daughter,” she said sadly, feeling sorry for giving me her Heart.

“Okay, keep it for yourself,” I said smiling without offense.

RAM heard us and told loudly for all the artists, “Dear authors! Don’t feel sorry for your pictures! Give them to the world, to whom they will bring Joy, Goodness and Light! You will get back twice as much!”

Olga from Klaipeda signed and handed me her Heart. I had already imagined its decoration – the kind of Passe-partout, the frame, and the right place for it at home. RAM took my picture of the broken glass and asked me to sign it.

“Well, Alice, you painted it amazingly! Do you feel the energy of your work? I’ll hang it at my house to recharge myself! It’s so hot! What a fire!!!”

Everyone began to walk around with the picture chosen as a gift in search of the author. Vera took my “Rainbow with a Girl” to America, “Waves with a circle almost in the center” went to Yura in Kaliningrad, “Flower on the whole A3 sheet” went to Klaipeda, “Flowers Reaching for the Sun” took Natasha in Moscow, and “The fire of the broken glass” went to Kazakhstan to RAM. “Great!” I thought, “All my paintings will disperse throughout the world.” I didn’t feel sorry for them at all.

Then Larisa came up to me and, somehow piteously looking into my eyes, said, “Give me one of your paintings, Alice, please!”

I realized that I had nothing left.

“Larisa, I’m sorry, I’ll paint something else for you later, okay?”

Then another seminarian approached me with the same request, “I’ve heard so much about your Moon Cat! Can you paint something for me too, about the Cat and the Girl, Alice?”

Sasha came up right away, “Do you have something left? Will you give it to me?”

“Nothing left, Sasha.”

“Well then, paint me something tomorrow, Daphne!”

Everyone slowly began to disperse for dinner. I was left alone with the paintings in the empty hall. RAM had asked not to take away the un-gifted masterpieces until the classes after dinner. I was walking slowly around the pictures, trying to read each one. Svetlana returned to the hall.

“Do you have the key of our room? What are you doing here?”

“Reading … Oriental wisdom says, one picture is worth a thousand words.”

“Listen, Alice, why and what did we paint?”

“Creative activity is often used as a remedy.”

“How does it work?”

“Being distracted from the Earthly Reality, you harmonize the inner state, and through the inner harmony comes the external one. In the physical body, for example. There are different ways: music therapy, play therapy, drama therapy. You can treat with fairy tales, with dances.”

“What is drama therapy?”

“People play some roles, like in the theater. There is also book-therapy, you write stories. Like me, for example. As I started at the age of eleven, so far no one can stop me. I’m sublimating in the absence of the protagonist of my Book…”

“You know to write books…”

“It doesn’t matter, books or something else. It’s creative self-expression that matters, as well as access to the Subconscious.”

“Is painting art therapy?”

“Yes, there are several of art therapies: ordinary painting, therapy with images – visualization, meditative painting. You can also create compositions from natural materials: cones, flowers, stones, shells. Each material sets certain ways of working with it. Plasticine and clay are plastic, you can work over aggression and fears. Through the fingers, aggression goes into plasticine, it becomes easier for the Soul. Painting is the most accessible and attractive type of creative activity, because of the elementary artistic means, and most importantly, no experience and skill is needed. You can make pictures using crayons and charcoal. A simple pencil is easier, since it’s corrected with an eraser. Colors are used mainly to work with emotions, it’s a kind of spontaneous creativity. In life, we usually create all sorts of nonsense, taking out aggression on the first person we meet. And here you can combine useful with pleasure. A safe way to discharge our inner destructive energies.”

“Did we work with a meditative painting?”

“You can say that. At first we were tuned in to creativity, then we painted to the music. Usually everyone is asked to tell about his pictures and emotions experienced during the work. It’s so called verbalization. Usually. But we have here too much that it’s better not to verbalize. Look here, for example,” I showed one of the pictures to Svetlana.

“What is here?”

“A person splashed out a serious illness. No wonder no one has chosen this picture as a gift. We subconsciously feel what the author put in the picture. Painting, first of all, is not art.”

“And what is it?”

“Speech, words, emotions, feelings. After all, feelings and mental images appear first, then they are clothed in words. Being painted, they are expressed in symbolic language. The language of pictures tells us about the artist’s inner world more correctly than words. I think it was very interesting for RAM to look at our work. She got more about us than we would have told her. If you carefully observe the process of creation and look at the final result, you can get close to understanding a person, his inner world, the world of feelings, his essence, that is, the Personality-Soul. RAM communicated with us on a symbolic, associative level, through non-verbal, visual communication.”

“What happened while we were painting?”

“Carl Gustav Jung said a wonderful phrase, the artist is the mouthpiece of the Unconscious, or the Subconscious. In a spontaneous painting, what is hidden from the Consciousness due to internal censorship is not only manifested, but often realized. We can get intuitive knowledge, insight, understand the meaning of the picture, learn something new about ourselves. Although this new is just the old well-forgotten one, or rather, forced by us out into the Subconscious. It’s released, comes out in the process of creativity, and we feel relieved.”

“What can come out?”

“Fears, resentment, illness, loneliness, dreams, internal conflicts, early childhood memories, everything that exists in both the Earthly and Another Realities, without exception. Look at this picture! Do you see one’s loneliness?”

“Well, I see … a ship.”

“Yes, but there is nothing else and no one, except for the Ship. The ship is small as a matchbox, while the sheet is A3 format, by the way. The only color used is dark and depressing. The sky is painted in such a way that it presses hard. Loneliness presses on a person. He feels lost in the vast world. He could paint a larger ship, with colorful and joyful colors, paint birds or someone else on the shore. Everything is different here. A person in life may seem sociable and happy, but he suppresses loneliness, being shy to show it to people. The painting allows one to work out the suppressed thoughts and emotions. It works simultaneously with both the Right and Left Hemispheres of the brain.”

“Well, one can talk about loneliness to a psychotherapist.”

“One can. But no one has ever told anyone the whole truth about themselves. Painting is easy. No need to go out. No one is forcing you to tell either. Almost no effort. Painting is closer to the game. Therefore, by the way, when working with children, psychologists use painting instead of talking, or they combine both. Children think in shapes, colors, sounds and sensations. Adults are accustomed to words, little thinking that something more is hidden behind the words. Picture is a transit space between words and what is behind them. It’s also a bridge connecting vision, motor coordination, speech and thinking.”

“Is that why RAM said to become children and return to our childhood?”

“Yes. Children in general, up to a certain age, paint differently from adults. For example, they paint a basket behind a curtain. Theoretically, we don’t see it behind the curtain. But the kids know it’s there. So they paint the transparent curtain and the basket. They know also that there are mushrooms in the basket, because they themselves have picked them today in the forest. And they’ll definitely paint mushrooms as well. It’s a three-in-one picture – curtain, basket, mushrooms. In spontaneous creativity, it’s important to be children in order to paint everything hidden behind the curtain of the Subconscious. I would even say behind the iron curtain.”

“I always thought that one should try to paint as accurately as possible to the original image. For example, paint an apple as an apple, to take into account all sorts of shades.”

“That’s exactly why in art therapy they work at a high level of symbolization. That is, you should paint not objects, but concepts. For example, Good and Evil, Fate, Fear, Feelings, Happiness. Concepts don’t have specific well-known artistic analogues, role models, and thus, force us to turn to our own associations, the inner world. So that some excellent students don’t try to copy apples for the excellent mark.”

“Is it bad to paint for the excellent mark?”

“It’s excellent. Just don’t put apples growing in your country house and apples of the tree in the Garden of Eden into one basket. Apples differ according to the goals. In academic schools, you have to become somebody, in art therapy – just be yourself. There are no grades there. But look at our masterpieces. They are not worse than the Impressionists and Symbolists put together. I think, many works can be sent directly from this hall to the Hermitage.”

“Perhaps. And what does art therapy do besides archeological excavations of one self?”

“As Nietzsche once said, health is not freedom from illness, but the ability of a person to cope with it. Visual creativity not only reduces fatigue and negative emotional states, but, relying on the internal mechanisms of self-regulation, is a real tool for healing the Soul. As if the inner child, which still lives in each of us, is released and heals the adult. First, we open the Black Box of the Subconscious and splash out the accumulated negativity. But you can as well simulate positive emotions, for example, paint yourself in a happy future, paint a dream. There are many good things to paint. Painting good things, we don’t think about bad things, so we automatically emanate positive vibrations, harmonizing our Personality the Soul.”

“What can we paint?”

“Everything, Svetlana. Even what doesn’t exist.”

“Give me some examples!”

“You can paint a problem and sign the picture as number 1. Then paint what will happen when you have already solved it. It will be a picture number 3. Then imagine that you have a Magic Wand that will allow you to go from the picture number 1 to the picture number 3, and paint the picture number 2.”

“And what happens?”

“Paint and see what happens.”

“Okay, but can we paint something more specific?”

“Do you mean apples? Well, paint apples as well. The theme of the picture is ‘A man picking an apple from a tree’. Symbolically, it shows how a person is moving towards his goal. It’s interesting that the task seems to be elementary, but everyone will perform it differently.”

“Come on, Alice! What is so important to be paint in different ways?”

“It’s important what is shown in the picture: preparation for the action (a person is dragging a ladder to a tree), the action itself (a person is picking an apple) or the result (an apple is in his hand). Someone is tormented in the picture: standing on tiptoe, he cannot reach the apple, someone is climbing the trunk, someone is knocking an apple down with a stick, someone is shaking the tree with all his might. Almost the conquest of Everest. Someone gets a wormy apple, someone’s apple is rotten or sour, unripe. But no one told anyone that a tree should be so high, and that the picked apple would have a surprise in the form of a worm. It’s a natural question, why do people paint such difficulties for themselves?”

“Why?”

“Everyone has their own worms in their heads.”

“Anything else about apples?”

“There are a lot to say. For example, the number of apples on the tree may show the number of unresolved problems, or it could be a sign of guilt. See also if there are any fallen apples under the tree.”

“What do the fallen apples mean?”

“Already resolved issues.”

“Wow, it’s interesting! Tell me more about what to paint!”

“You can paint yourself, the house and the tree. I saw a painting of a seven-year-old boy. I still can’t forget it. The A3 format, vertically. The tree is black and high up to the sky, all over the sheet. The trunk is one-third the width of the sheet. No leaves. Just branches. The house as small as a matchbox on the left under the tree. The child is small, but one and a half times bigger than the house. Black birds, the size of himself, are flying across the sky. Everything is black, except the background completely filled with dark purple.”

“Wow!”

“For children, the theme ‘My family’ is still practiced. A very interesting story about one’s family in a picture. Sometimes the questions disappear at once.”

“And for adults?”

“The greatest impression of childhood. If it’s negative, you need to understand whether there is a connection between that situation in the past and today. If there is, how does it affects the person now? Then paint the happiest memory. We return to that state and simultaneously experience the same positive emotions in the present. A similar work called Personal Refuge, but without painting, exists in hypnotic techniques. We mentally return to that time and place where and when we felt very good, and re-experience happy moments. I often use this exercise myself. I have already developed a conditioned reflex. My lifesaver, it works without fail.”

“And where do you go back in your childhood?”

“No, Svetlana, I never go back to my childhood. I try my best to escape from it.”

“And what’s the way to work with fears?”

“A lot of ways. You can, for example, first tell each other, preferably not at night, the most horrible dream or a story from life. Then paint your fear and deal with it ruthlessly: burn, tear, destroy it somehow.”

“Does it help?”

“It becomes easier in any case, but it depends on the fear. Any fear is dangerous being the basis of aggression. Outwardly, the connection is invisible. But in reality, every aggression in one way or another comes out of some fear. It seems to me important to find the reason, why one is afraid of something.”

“Was that like with your Atlantis?”

“My fear of water was transferred into my Consciousness a long time ago, that is, I found the cause in the chest of the Subconscious and safely took it out. It’s worse and more painful if the cause remains undiscovered, it presses on a person inside.”

“Can we paint ourselves in a specific way?”

“Paint yourself as a tree. I am the Tree. As many people, so as many self-portraits. None will repeat. You can paint a self-portrait consisting solely of various colors, but without contours and geometry.”

“Working with color, right?”

“Yes, you can do a lot of things with color. Paint a picture, but only in shades of the same color. Or an outline of your physical body (although it will be your astral body) and place various feelings inside, each one in its own color. Any color in any shape. Then look at the colors, their location and the sizes of your feelings.”

“Tell me more!”

“So tonight, instead of going to your friend in the Astral, you’ll paint. Won’t your friend be offended?”

“He won’t, tell me.”

“We can ask a person, ‘Who are you?’ Let him write 10 answers on one side of the paper, and on the reverse side, ask him to answer the same question, but only in the form of a picture. Then compare what is written in words with what is painted, and find 10 differences.”

“Really?”

“Well, maybe not 10, of course, but they will surely be. The Consciousness answered with words, the Subconscious answered with a picture. Immediately, all hidden claims, inner contradictions and unsatisfied desires will come out.”

“Okay, I’ll paint something, but how to read it?”

“There are general recommendations, but the picture itself always tells you what to pay attention to. It’s better to let the author talk about his work, as he sees it, it contributes to an independent understanding of the causes and consequences, the images of the Subconscious are being worked out and pulled into the Consciousness area. It’s necessary to make mentally a structural division of the picture. If there are several objects or parts in the picture, build a dialogue between them. The author speaks in the first person, as if he himself were each of the objects in turn. It’s also interesting to read the captions in the picture, if any.”

“What if they are missing?”

“Think about what feeling the picture conveys, what looks strange or unusual. Any unusual object indicates some problem. Look at what is in the center, what is offset or even at the edges of the sheet. At proportions and their distortions in the sizes of objects, at shading, hatching and transparency. Is there movement and what is its direction: up and down, diagonally, curve, at random, and so on. Perhaps there is an overlay of objects. Pay attention to corrections, underlines.”

“And as for the color, do you have to consider its meaning?”

“Yes. But keep in mind that color is perceived by each person differently. The color can display not only the object itself, but also the attitude of a person to the object. Pay attention to the prevailing colors and non-standard colors.”

“What do you mean?”

“For example, the apple is black, the leaves are purple.”

“Okay, and what else should I pay attention to?”

“To the fullness of the sheet and the voids. In general, what is missing. The missing elements are especially important to the author. He lacks them in real life, not only in the picture. For example, if the author has suffered violence, the lower part of the torso may be missing when depicting a human figure. This also means, in addition to repressed sexuality, a distorted image of one’s Self. It’s difficult to deal with fantastic characters, because there are two options here. Either the author has these qualities, for example, children with a strong ego will have a positively monstrous hero in the picture, or, on the contrary, the child forms an unreal image of his Self, because he lacks these qualities.”

“I’m not going to paint monsters, say something else not about them.”

“If there are several pictures, identify the most stable themes and images, that is, common semantic lines. You don’t have to look far for an example, remember a series of my pictures about the Girl and the Moon Cat. They talk about themselves, you can write a fairy tale about them. Not so much about the Moon Cat, as about the Girl.”

“Do you mean the Girl in the pictures, or…?”

“It’s all the same in this case. Repetitions or repeating objects (elements, features) in the picture are also important. As a rule, the sum of such elements is a significant number for a person. It may refer to the age when something happened to the author. For example, I counted the number of mountains in two of my paintings about the monastery, where I had been during meditations. It turned out that there were 12 big and obvious ones on each picture, and the 13th mountain wasn’t painted clearly, only the top was visible. When I was twelve and a half, my mother died. Painting these pictures, of course, I had no thought to count the number of mountains. I learned about the counting of elements after I had completed the meditation masterpieces of my Subconscious.”

“Cool! Tell me, what else, in the picture with the apple tree, should I pay attention to?”

“You’re all about apples, Svetlana. Apparently, Eva’s fame haunts many. Let’s talk about trees in general, not just about apple trees. The bifurcation of the trunk may mean the loss of family kinship with a close one who meant a lot to the author of the picture. If there is a stump or the tree is broken, there was an experience associated with a breakdown of the personality, goals and references were lost, as well as the meaning of existence, up to the unwillingness to live. I painted a lot in my childhood. In almost every picture, there was a stump, and often not one, but several at once. If a tree has no leaves or soil, the author lost fulcrum, has no inner balance. Pay attention to the age of the tree and the age of the author. Sometimes the tree is two hundred years old, and the author is ten. If we imagine a vertical line from the place where the roots merge with the trunk to the upper border of the crown, we’ll get a conditional life line of the author. Consider the result. If there is a woodpecker sitting on the tree, for example, we take the line of life and imagine how old the author was when the woodpecker struck him.”

“Struck? What do you mean?”

“It depends on the woodpecker.”

Svetlana sighed heavily.

“Alice, can we paint not one apple tree, but several at once?”

“You can paint the whole Garden of Eden, better without the Serpent and without worms in apples. Having painted yourself as a tree, look where the tree grows. If in the forest, then look what trees are nearby. Is it comfortable for your tree to live among them? If the tree is on the edge of the forest, or all alone and in the field, I think you don’t need my comments.”

“Loneliness… Like of the ship in that picture. And what else can we do?”

“We can look out the window.”

“What window?”

“The window in this hall, or in the room where the person was painting.”

“Why?! We are reading the picture! Shouldn’t we look at it?”

“First – out the window, then – at the picture. To check if the season outside the window corresponds to the season in the picture. It’s bad if it’s a sunny summer outside, and a gloomy autumn in the picture.”

“Are you talking about the picture with the apple tree?”

“No, in general. And one more thing, also general. Look at the horizontal line separating the Sky from the Earth, or from water, or whatever else there. The line separating the Sky for some reason,” I made a pause thoughtfully.

“Do you mean the horizon line?”

“Yes, because it can press on you, indicating depression.”

“It’s so sad.”

“Why?”

“I can’t paint ships so beautifully!”

“We all are real artists: me, and you, and every person in the Universe, but everyone paints in their own way. This is the most valuable.”

“Maybe you are right. Okay, let’s go, they are probably having dinner there. However, I feel pity…”

“For the author of the ship?”

“For the fact that you’ve told me so much, but I’ve got no notebook with me.”