My Re-emerging Art Story - The Meditation Series.

It does happen.  What you love most may be more than one thing and I'm happy to tell you, that if you have forbearance and do your best to live consciously, your worlds will merge. For me that that's spirituality and art.  Imagine the delight and amazement after almost 12 years of not painting or identifying as an artist an opportunity to start again presented itself. Re-emerging as an artist has opened a remarkable window of new creativity that began to pour out thanks to my meditation series sketchbooks over a period of 12 months.

Every day I meditate.  I'm an Olympic-grade meditator.  I'm also a Tantrik yogini who loves her daily rituals.  During this first year back exploring art, I sit would sit as usual for my morning meditation and be delighted to witness a new visual representation of my inner world experience. New images, new ideas, new start. The intention became to keep an intention of no mind with my new direction. 

What I drew was so simple yet also with a feeling of joy and multidimensionality that if an onlooker contemplated or inquired into them, their heads would be cracked up and their minds escape into the vast ocean of consciousness.

What happens in my inner world is usually private. The experience can be anything from the pure void to lights, sounds, language, and images.  Now there were images that were very easy to use as a foundation for artwork and an art series. Happy days.

They were a delightful blend of mystical and domestic, real.  Without judgement from my previous art life or comparing myself to others to stay focused, I recorded these images diligently in my sketchbook.

At first, it was awkward drawing again.  I’ve been through a lot.  When most of the world is out striving and desiring in the world, I was instead called profoundly to my mystical nature and joined an ashram and instead strived and desired nothing and only craved Self-knowledge.  

Coming back as an integrated being from all I've been through and not reverting to the old me meant the path of slow and self-loving was the way. This was so much more important over and above any push and ambition which quite frankly I think was what held me back in my previous incarnation of this life as an artist.  I used to be so competitive and frustrated with myself. Even though I had skill, I was in my head from looking outwards, from reading and seeing too much and that’s not conducive to soul and heart expression long term.

During my twelve-year hiatus as an artist, I was fully responsible for two beautiful young souls that had signed up in this life to have this single mum who tried her hardest but also was dogged with cPTSD from her volatile childhood and chronic health issues. 

One day a suggestion was made at the ashram I belonged to that I was a gifted cook and possibly a better cook than an artist. This will be more of a contribution to the ashram and my children if I knuckle down for a while and get my chef's apprenticeship and a 'real' job.

It was radical and shocking but I chose to be open to listening. Having no supportive family and my children's father's family also choosing to abandon them put a lot of pressure on me and it was impacting my ability to create.  My kids are and always will be my greatest love.

It didn’t feel comfortable and I did question the suggestion and it even got to a point where a focus group was created for me at the ashram, filled with the boffins who thought they were smarter and knew better ‘cause they were professionals and academics.  In a circle and me in the middle, they literally went around and told me one by one why I should quit being an artist and get practical and become a chef. 

Ok, I know there will be many artists and creative people like me out there who have had to endure a lifetime of people saying we will die poor and impoverished if we follow the creative call.  My situation created a doorway of doubt. They must know more than me maybe?  Food wasn't random either. I had been working in kitchens and as a cook for many years and loved it, it was creative too.  At this stage, I was already working as a kitchen hand at the local café and had my own simple catering business.   I started my apprenticeship.

The café was basic, so I ended up working three chef jobs including a fine dining restaurant for more experience. I was training and in an awful controlling relationship with one of the boffins, he was pushing me and running my tank empty.  I was exhausted – doing the shifts at the ashram kitchen voluntarily, working three jobs, raising young kids, teaching spiritual vegetarian cooking classes in my spare time and then running around for my new partner.  First full adrenal breakdown.

The biggest heartache? I didn’t know who I was now no longer an artist, what to do now? Chef days over. My usual self-soothing modality was gone.  It was deeply painful and even though I did my best and threw everything I had at life, I was never fully satisfied like I was with a sketchbook and pencil case sitting at the beach seeing Lord Ganesh above the waves in the sky.  I am a good cook and have a passion for cooking and feeding people, but the boffins weren’t right. 

Fast-forward to reaching the glorious age of 50 and with chronic illness from a lifetime of cPTSD and the middle of the covid pandemic, everything and everyone came to a halt.  There are many in my generation dealing with inter-generational trauma and PTSD from what the past generations didn’t deal with and passed on. It’s only now being acknowledged and we have a long way to go for effective management and understanding.

Covid was a blessing. 

We all stopped. 

I stopped.

My life was good and I did find a way forward that was helped by the physical crash. I was at least bringing my mystical side to the world regardless of whether the world wanted it or not, it was my art. The chef days were well and truly over due to health and severe arthritis.

Just after my 50th birthday, I received an email from a friend and member of my sangha (spiritual community) that I run, the Self-Knowledge Sangha. (Check out my online spiritual centre Mahadevi Dham.) It was the most delightful email I have ever received.

In it were instructions to use this time to let myself be an artist.  I don’t know if he knew my past, but he was seeing me now and saw a frustrated artist and that healing and happiness for me was art.  That was a common piece of feedback I’d get from strangers, 'are you an artist?' 

In this email, my friend told me he decided to donate some money to me to buy all I needed to get a kit and start. He let me buy an art desk, paper, paint, brushes, a sketchbook and pens. I jumped.  I didn’t let my mind get involved, didn’t get all weird at such an uncommonly generous offer and knock it back.  I grabbed it like an athlete grabbing the baton in a relay running event.  I grabbed the baton and kept running like I was in the athletics world championship with one chance at gold. 

Now I’m middle-aged, scarred, battle-worn but also someone established in their faith and who She is in the universe, the scheme of things.  There is a profound reality to me after my journey so far, about what it is and means to be spiritual and how it can help humanity if shared in a truthful manner, and not the fairy-tale perfection model we are force-fed by eager people who've had a nice spiritual experience then suddenly class themselves Hay House like teachers and messiahs. Harsh I know, but seen it play out that way so often.

I simply want to uplift humanity my way, to let the shakti or spiritual energy reach people and uplift them in whatever way it will.

It took a good six months to find my feet again and I was ok doing simple sketches and starting at the beginning without judgement as to what was coming out.  To challenge myself I posted these meagre sketches and drawings on social media.  A very lovely lady I didn't know randomly messaged me to say she is touched by what I'm doing and would love to donate some money to buy more materials.  I took that as a very promising sign of universal affirmation.

The meditation sketches, as simple as they were, held the key.  One day I decided to paint one.  It was so awful, so ordinary.  Oh no! Please, Lord, I don’t want to feel how I used to feel, I don’t want the old frustration and pressure.  Let it go, take it away! Let the shakti create, let what wants to come through be what it is which will be perfect!

I went back and worked over the top of that painting about a month later, when all the old previous pressure had gone and the new me showed up – no mind me.  The joy of creating was so immense, I knew precisely what I wanted to do, where I wanted my art to go and to stick to it.

Here I am now. 

My commitment to myself is to slowly and lovingly get through those sketchbooks filled with basic quick sketches from meditation and represent them honouring what spirit gave me.  I also love the culture of my spiritual path and painting the murtis (statues) of the Goddess and Gods in the temples in India. Egoless creativity is an excellent practice, yoga and allows the artist to just be.

All the old restrictions from coming out of art school had finally gone, and the time away helped to break away from the old rules that were holding me back.  It’s brilliant to let myself draw and doodle on my work and to use whatever colours I love.   Oh, the glory of simple or pretty.  Previously my work was filled with glitter dot work and now is replaced with paint pen doodles.

Doodling was so much a part of my life growing up. If you are my age or older you may remember each house had one phone usually on a phone table with a notebook and pen next to it to write down messages and phone numbers.  I would sit and talk and doodle all over those books, yet they weren’t particularly clever doodles.  I used to beat myself up about what other artists were at doodling, mine was so simple.

Now I don’t care, I put those simple doodles over the top of my work.  I love nature, I love kitsch, I love symbolism, I love religious art, I love expressionism, I love Indian origin spirituality, I love line and I love the freedom to express as I wish.    The past has helped a lot, it was great to have the grounding I did which made it easy to come back but what I used to create doesn’t matter, it’s become an integral part of why I am who I am now and that’s enough.

This is a re-emerging. A re-emerging artist now also a mystical woman with a fantastic story to tell; a fabulously interesting, heart-warming and heartbreaking story to tell. 

There are enough sketches in the meditation sketchbooks to last me a lifetime for inspiration.  So much love and gratitude to being right-sized as an artist again by the universe. Somehow no matter how difficult and rough the road travelled, it always ends up being what makes us richer and deeper and more able to connect with humanity and our own soul. I feel at home and on purpose with complete reverence and certainty about my visual story. 

Om Namah Shivaya xxx

©MataKamaleshwari