Invisible Moves, Visualized

A series of digital paintings illustrating subtle internal moves that can increase happiness, presence and clarity

#1. Releasing Tanha

This piece was my first exploration of how to convey a relatively complex inner move through a highly descriptive visual metaphor. It ended up inspiring me to make the rest of the series.

“Taṇhā” is a buddhist concept that describes the quick “grabbing” movement we do that causes suffering. We perceive phenomena (represented by the flying spheres in this image) and experience them as having valence (blue ones pleasant, red ones unpleasant). We grasp at them either through aversion or clinging (hands reaching out or hands with knives trying to stab) and this grasping creates suffering (hooks on the skin). When we have enough sensory clarity (light through the third eye), we can let go of that quick, almost imperceptible grasping movement (light ray cutting cord) - this is the “internal move.”

#2. Becoming Aware Of Yourself Becoming Aware Of Yourself Becoming Aware Of Yourself

I feel like this one doesn’t need much of an explanation. You can be aware of sensations - what you see, what you hear, what you feel - and then you can become aware of yourself being aware of those sensations. Spend enough time in that space and go up enough layers and things will start to get weird.

#3. Manifesting

This piece is about the move of manifesting, strongly influenced by my explorations in Chaos Magick, and by my friend Xiq’s thoughts about the collective unconscious as the substrate for magic.

This one is the most mysterious of all the pieces in this series and it is so on purpose. It is meant less to be understood and more to be intuited. How can we align our desires with the Natural Flow Of Things and manifest the best possible outcomes? What kind of communication, what kind of surrender, what kind of observational skills do we need to know in order to manifest the reality we want?

#4. Dissolving Parasitic Egregores By Resonating With Gnosis

When you connect with direct experiential knowledge of the truth, you cannot be possessed by evil memetic entities - and you can liberate others too, little by little, through compassion.

This piece was made in collaboration with Michael Smith. I watched this podcast interview and I immediately knew I wanted to make something with him. I highly recommend watching it if you want to know more about the topic of this piece!

#5. Radiating Love Constantly To All Beings In All Places And Times

This piece was a collaboration with my friend Tasshin. It was inspired by a practice by Peace Pilgim (which has peace as an object instead of love). Here is a quote where she describes how she went from actively praying for peace to automatically radiating it constantly towards everyone in the world:

“In the beginning I undertook my walking…as a prayer discipline to keep me concentrated on my prayer for peace. After the first few years the prayer discipline was completely unnecessary, because I had learned to pray without ceasing. I made the contact so thoroughly that into my prayer consciousness I put any condition or person in the world I am concerned about and the rest takes place automatically.” — Peace Pilgrim

Neither me nor Tasshin have yet mastered this move as it involves doing something constantly, but it feels like a really exciting goal to work towards. This adds a new dimension that the previous moves didn’t have — that it is done across time and space, infinitely and continuously.

To add strength to the image and help convey the move in more detail, Tasshin wrote the following text (and published it on his website in case you want to revisit it later):

“Radiating Love Constantly to All Beings in All Places and Times. Feel Love. In Your Heart. From the Heart. Keep Love in Your Heart. Constantly. Ceaseless Prayer.

All Beings. All Realms. All Times. Human, Non-Human. Near, Far. Seen, Unseen. Past, Present, Future. Aware of All. All-One! Everywhere! Everywhen! Everyone!

Now, Now, Now. Here, Here, Here. Embody Love. Become Love Itself. Be Love. Be Love. Be Love. Love, Love. Love.”

#6. Sinking Into The Quiet Place In Your Mind Underneath All Thoughts

In the process of discovering that thoughts are not as solid as I thought they were, I found out that I could rest in a place that is deeper, emptier, and much much calmer, beyond the agitated cloud of thinking that usually adds so much noise to my experience. The move feels like descending, a type of letting oneself fall, and the metaphor of sinking into the bottom of a turbulent ocean felt like the perfect visual representation for this.

#7. Surrendering Your Worries To The Universe

The idea for this piece was born from something very real and uncomfortable that I was working through a few months ago: excessive worry.

I worry unnecessarily about a lot of things and then hold on it as a habit. When I noticed this, I started a new practice (yet again, inspired by Peace Pilgrim). Every time worry came up, I would:

1. Ask myself “Is this something I can solve right now or effectively make progress towards solving?”

2. If yes, do that. If no,

3. Say “God, I leave this in your hands. I trust you, thank you” and let it go.

It took me a while to learn how to do this skilfully (really meaning what I said and truly letting go). But since then it's become pretty automatic and i'd say it has removed something like 40% of my suffering.

As for the worries I cannot solve myself, the best thing to do is acknowledge them and immediately let go. And it's easier to let go into someone/something (god/universe/entity of choice) because then you can add an element of trust - that they will solve it in the best way and time.

#8. Being A Clear Channel For The Muse

During the course of this series I started a relationship with the Muse. I fully opened myself up to the belief that my creativity comes from somewhere else other (higher?) than me, and that instead of being the source, I am just a channel whose purpose is to be as clear as possible for the Muse’s message to pass through.

I started behaving according to this belief. I wrote a prayer to the Muse that I started repeating every time I needed inspiration before making art:

oh Muse, Mother, Source
i offer myself to you
let me be a clear channel
for your message to pass through

bless me with your light
i'm listening for your call
let me create from your insight
for the benefit of all

Not only did I start praying, but I also started listening for answers. I keep my eyes open when I go for a walk. I listen closely during conversations. I look out for signs when I read books, watch movies, or do something new. And the answers do come—in the form of repetition, synchronicities, familiar patterns, obvious signs.

#9. Discovering That The One Who Loves You Unconditionally Already Lives Within

This piece was made in collaboration with my friend Anita, and it’s about self love being a discovery of something that already exists - and it exists inside of you! - rather than creating something new from scratch.

I recommend looking at the image for a few minutes and trying to feel in what ways that is true. In addition to this, Anita also created a beautiful guided meditation that helps you further explore this move from a few different perspectives.

#10. Looking For The Self (And Not Finding It)

This image was an attempt to describe my subjective experience of what came up as sat with questions such as “Who am I?”, “Where is the Self?,” and “Who is thinking these thoughts?”

One of the first things I noticed was that whenever I asked “Where is the Self?” the first answer always seemed to be “in the place just behind and in between my eyes.” But then as soon as I investigated that place further, it quickly broke down into a thousand different sensations, and it soon became clear there was no “self” to be found.

Different shifts in my way of looking at things would also change it. For example, expanding my awareness from just the place behind my eyes to the whole body and then the whole room and then beyond the room itself would immediately include unexpected things in my “sense of self”: the sounds of birds outside, the feeling of the object in my hand, the awareness of being aware of all this.

Gradually everything started having less substance, the boundaries between things less clear. It wasn’t easy to describe these explorations through an image — not least because I’m still in the middle of questioning — but I feel like I came pretty close to something very real.