Guided Art Making Meditation: The Curious End to the War Against Ourselves

The public at both the Republican and Democratic National Conventions can watch and listen to this meditation on their phones as they paint and draw on the scroll entitled "The Curious End to the War Against Ourselves." You can also try this at home.

In the first couple of minutes is video so you can see some suggested art supplies and techniques.  Then listen, relax and express.  The way you do it is just right.  

You are invited to play with art materials and find calm, create, get curious and feel more compassionate towards yourself and those whom you judge.  It doesn’t matter what appears on the canvas.  What matters is that you can let go and sink into the sensations in your body and the world around you.  Plan to spend about 10 minutes.

1. Find something to draw with, a water-soluble crayon or soft pencil (4b or higher) and locate the water. 
2. Close your eyes, touch the crayon or pencil to the linen or paper.
3. Drawing with gravity: Make your whole body be stiff like a robot.  Pivot from your ankles and draw by swaying forward or to the side or backwards, and taking soothing breaths.
4. Paint with water.  Glance where the water is and close your eyes again. Feel the water with your fingers and spread the water on the canvas, enjoying the sensations of movement.  Yes, the pencil or crayon marks will spread around randomly.
5. Express feelings you are having– sadness, joy, anger, fear– by choosing wet or dry, various colors, thick or thin. Paint and draw with your eyes mostly closed.
6. Notice if you feel self-conscious critical of yourself.  Let your pencil crayon dance to the rhythms of this inner voice.  Notice if it’s or screechy or pushy or pounding and move your hand to these sensations.  
7. Now look out at the world and people around you and move your crayon or pencil.  Do not look at the paper or linen. Notice what you like and don’t like.  Is what you see too dark or too light, the wrong color or texture or form…?  Is a person too messy or too clean, too short or too tall, too rich or too poor, too liberal or too conservative…?  Dance these judgments with your pencil crayon fingers as you see and feel them.  What is the voice, shape, texture, rhythm, color of these judgments?  
8. Notice judgments and the feelings these judgments bring up while at the same time soothing yourself with the calm of the textures of the art supplies and the joy of movement on the page.  Does your body relax a bit?  Could there be an inner smile?
9. Can you find beauty in the things you judge?  Can the expressions and gestures of “the other” have colors and forms that have a beauty of their own?  What could be the good intentions of the people you disagree with?  Keep painting and drawing, feeling into the sensations of your body while exploring these questions.