Dear reader,

There’s an old tale, that is being told all over the world, in countless forms. It goes something like this:

A beggar had been sitting by the side of a road for many years. One day a stranger walked by. ‘Do you have some money?’, asked the beggar? ‘I have nothing to give you’, said the stranger. ‘But where are you sitting on?’

‘Oh, it’s only an old box. I’ve been sitting on it for as long as I can remember’, said the beggar. ‘Have you ever looked inside?’, asked the stranger. ‘No, why should I? There’s nothing inside’.

‘Take a look at it anyway’, said the stranger.
After some resistance, the beggar opened the box. To his astonishment, the box was filled with gold.

Something precious

This teaching story touches almost everybody, since it points to a deeper knowing: there is something precious underneath ‘ordinary life’.
Daily life can be filled with all kinds of things: positive and negative, beautiful and bad. If you aren’t aware of your deeper being, you are like a beggar, deprived of a sense of belonging and fulfillment.
Once you’re connected to this ‘deep I’, your life is filled with gold – whatever the outer circumstances are.

Deep inside, everybody is looking for that gold – if they are aware of it or not. This connection to ‘Being’ (or God, or Source – it has been called many by many names in different cultures and religions) is the most precious thing on earth.

How to connect to Being?

But how do you connect to that inner peace? It can be buried under lots of thoughts, or blurred by all kinds of emotions about the ups and downs of your life.

One of the ways to connect to the deeper I is being completely in the present moment. Not thinking about the past, not thinking about the future, but just being simply aware from what’s happening inside and in front of you. Now.

The entrance to stillness

In our busy life, it’s not always that easy to find the ‘entrance’ to that space and stillness. For me, painting has always been one of the ways that led me to that inner state of Being. Making art – not for the sake of making ‘beautiful things’, but for the sake of ‘being in the Now’.

I believe many people who feel attracted to painting, do so, because they – consciously or unconsciously – know that this drive for creative expression is connected to their deeper longing for experiencing ‘the deeper I’.

So, if you feel this urge to paint, please do! For you (as it was for me) it might be one of the ways that helps you to find the gold deep inside.

With love!

PS: because I’m so enthusiastic about this way of making art in the Now, I created a free video series about ‘The Art of Now’. You can find it here.
Also, there’s an online course with the same name. You can check it out here.

Practicing the Power of Now

You might have read ‘The Power of Now’ by Eckhart Tolle. This book is about the importance of quitting the excessive thinking about the past and the future, and realizing that there is only one moment: ‘Now.’ Everything else is a mental construction. Even if you think about the past, you are still doing it Now. And when you worry about the future, you also are doing it Now.

Painting is a beautiful way of drawing you into the Now. There is little thinking required. Yes, thinking can come in handy for practical matters. You can ask yourself for instance: ‘How can I prevent the water-soluble crayon from smearing?’ Or: ‘What colors do I need to mix a beautiful green?’ But thinking about your next brush stroke usually does not make your painting much better. And worrying about the mess you just made even less.

Negative thinking and worrying

Still, we tend to think and worry a lot about painting. Regret, comparison, judgment, jealousy, shame, and self-criticism are often not far away:

• I can’t paint!
• Am I a real artist? No, I’m fake.
• I will never be able to paint like the other ones.
• I should have gone to art school; it’s too late now.
• I should have pushed myself further years ago; now I haven’t learned as much as I could have.
• My friends have expositions, and I don’t.
• Everybody is going to laugh about me when they see this rubbish.
• I’m going to look like a fool when I have my exposition.

And so on. I have had a lot of thoughts like these, and sometimes they still put a spell on me. But I know one thing for sure: those thoughts and worries don’t make my painting more enjoyable, and they don’t make my painting any better. On the contrary, I postponed painting for years and years until I finally dared to pick up the brushes and just start.

Practice being in the Now

Good news: painting is a beautiful way to practice being in the Now, in the same way that running or singing or being in nature helps you to become present and feel connected.

Since painting is such a sensory thing to do, you can use your senses to the max, which draws you away from your thinking head. You can watch the colors, see how they mix, feel the paint with your fingers, smell the typical scent of the paint, hear your ink pen scratching over the paper. You can feel your inner body, as Eckhart Tolle calls it: the inner energy-field, the aliveness in your body. And when you notice that you are thinking again about the future or the past, or when you hear your inner voice whisper judgments, you can purposely go back to your inner body and use your senses while painting.

So, if you feel trapped in negative thinking, in worry, in stress or general unhappiness, grab a piece of paper, a bit of paint, and some crayons, and start making marks, color fields, shapes, and textures. Without any plan. Get amazed by the colors, like you would do if you would see them for the first time. Feel the excitement when making marks, just like you would do if you were a toddler, having a crayon in its hands for the first time.

Let your thinking come to rest, and simply enjoy being alive.