Using creative practice and meditation as a means of self discovery
Author: Adele Satori
I am a life long artist dedicated to inviting curiosity and enhancing life experience using my creative gifts while walking with others on our creative journeys. I'm a 500-hour Authorized Teacher of Instinctive Meditation®. Meditation and creative practices flow together so well!
Image shows the ocean at sunset. A tidepool is surrounded by rocks and reflects the sky.
I’m in deep reflection with gratitude, love, and awe, at the departure from Earth of my beloved teacher, Lorin Roche, PhD, co-founder of The Radiance Sutras School of Meditation. Beyond words, really for all that he, his partner in life and teaching Camille Maurine, all my teachers, mentors, the behind the scenes magic makers, and the global community of friends I’ve been gifted.
I like using his book The Radiance Sutras as an oracle, and here’s what I opened to this evening.
Sutra 104 Holiness permeates everywhere. Senses cannot grasp it. Images cannot represent it.
It is totally free— Free to appear as form, Free to be beyond form.
Heart and body an mind in unison, Attend to the unimaginable. In the intercourse of unknowable and known, An awakening will be born in you As you join with that reality which you already are. *************************** From the illumination essay that accompanies the sutra: “bodha sambhava: to come into intimacy with pure consciousness.”
I can only imagine that Lorin is dancing a beautiful dance of intimacy with the unknowable.
Much love to Camille, all my teachers, the behind the scene magic makers, and the community I’ve come to love so deeply
I feel Not only in times of war. Also in our busy hectic everyday lives.
I really appreciate this framework. To me it’s a psychological version of putting on your own oxygen mask before helping others. It can be applied not only to immediate stressful situations, but in just about any problem solving scenario.
Learning to reside in a state of relaxed awareness rather than hypervigilance is more sustainable. Both serve a purpose. I see relaxed awareness as being for the marathon, and hypervigilance for the sprint.
As it states in the article: “Most people cannot influence geopolitical outcomes. But everyone can influence how they treat others, how they regulate their reactions, how they participate in conversations, and how they show up in their own communities. Mindfulness does not ask us to withdraw from the world. It asks us to meet it — with clarity, courage, and responsibility. Can we rise to the occasion?”
Image is a color photography of a hand holding a heart-shaped piece of clear glass in front of a sunset by the ocean.
What sacred treasure lies in the hidden places of your heart? ***************************** There is a secret temple in your heart, longing to be discovered. Pulsing in and around you always.
Curiosity and courage are map and key. Open the door and greet your Self.
Invite the beauty of existence to fill you with its light radiating everywhere, until the Truth of Universe and Self as One bursts through the temple walls.
Sings it song for all to hear, Or whispers just to you. Calling you to dance, and laugh, or to rest awhile in quiet splendor. ~Adele Satori, 14 March 2026
Image is a black and white photo of the full moon with pine branches reaching across from the left side
This morning I woke up, thinking about today’s first full moon of the year. How in some traditions the full moon has been seen as the culmination of events, and a time to release that which no longer serves us.
I started to wonder, instead, of thinking of the full moon, and all of the phases of the moon, as a ripening, and reaching up to pluck it like a sweet berry from the sky, full of starlight and dreams. Inspiration and a seed for the coming month. A reminder of the continual cycle of growth and rest.
I love shifting and exploring different perspectives. It’s part of my creative practice.
May curiosity and awe continue to lead each and everyone of us into exploring the beauty and possibility all around us.
Image is a black and white photograph of a light coloured piece of crumpled paper on a black background
Time spent in creative practice doesn’t have to result in something tangible.
Not one word, brushstroke, note, pixel, movement or sound needs to exist.
How did reading that make you feel? Excited? Uncomfortable? An exclamation of wow, or how ridiculous?
Congratulations! You just did something creative! You received an external stimulus, processed it, and put things together that is an expression of all your experience in a way that is unique to you. A definition of creativity.
I teach a creativity and meditation class once a month. One of the cool things about that is that I either come up with a theme and explore it, to see how I might invite others in the creative practice portion of the class, or I mess around with one of the many ways I like to engage with the world, and see what comes up.
Something that arose for me this month is that there doesn’t have to be a tangible result during time spent in creative practice. I think that’s what holds some people back in exploring- the pressure to make something that’s visible to others… or something that has some perceived value. Comparing it to work that’s in a gallery/museum/stage/musical platform/book.
How would it be for you to instead take a walk with a theme, such as “what colour/shape/sound am I most noticing today?” Or sit somewhere and become immersed with the music of life flowing around you? Spend time in your creative space (even if it’s wherever you make a place in the moment) and explore your materials with your senses? Feel the textures of paper, metal, wood, or beads in your hand. The squish of garden dirt between your fingers. The weight of a musical instrument on your lap. Laying on the floor and feeling the subtle energy of breath and blood pulsing through your body. Watch the quality of light and shadow shift with the passing of time. Listen to music and follow the sound of one instrument. Enjoy it in the moment, and set it free.
All of this, to me, is both creative practice and meditation. I won’t have anything to show for it, but it’s tucked away in my mind and heart, and time has revealed that these things appear at some point later, when I’m in the flow of creating something in my outer world. And something I can revisit at any time I choose.
The picture at the beginning of this article was part of my most recent exploration. My theme in November started as light and dark, and expanded to exploring opposites. Earlier in the day I had taken some photos of the interior of a box grater, and had been thinking about light and shadow most of the day.
Image is a black and white photo of the interior of a box grater
I crumpled up part of a brown paper bag and set it on my table. I started to sketch it- white chalk on black paper, and became a little frustrated. Drawing has been problematic for me over the years, for so many reasons (an article in itself!), and I stopped.
Black and white photo of a close up of a crumpled paper bag.
Instead, I gave over to exploring with my senses only. At first crumpling and uncrumpling the paper. I listened to the sounds it made. I followed the folds with my eyes, enjoying the rhythms that appeared. I thought about how I would embody crumpling.. folding and unfolding.. light and dark. I put the paper in different light and noticed how it accentuated different crevices. Smelled that unique brown paper bag smell. When I felt I was done, and only then, I took out my phone and took some pictures. And only because I was inspired to do so. No obligation. No expectation.
Black and white photo of a crumpled paper bag set on its edge on a black background. Black and white photo of a crumpled paper bag on a black background. The foreground is in focus, softening as the image goes back.
I then went on with my day. I loved the sensation that I’d done something pleasurable for awhile, for myself (even though it was initially in preparation for a class).
It’s important to remember that play and rest are integral parts of both creative practice and meditation. Often after an intense round of output, I can spend weeks of not creating any actual thing, but that doesn’t mean than I’m not engaged in creative practice. Rest is a great tool for creativity.
I invite you to play and not create something tangible at the end. Arrange some twigs in a pleasing manner. Stack stones. Make hand shadows. Allow the silliest sounds you’ve every heard come from you. Dance with the wind. Deeply listen to music. Follow the brushstrokes of a painting in a gallery with your eyes. Don’t document it.. simple play and enjoy some unbounded creativity. Do it for you!
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