Tag: drawing

art, art appreciation, Creativity, drawing, instinctive meditation, journaling, meditation, Memories, mindfulness, poetry, writing

Drawing Memory

Adele Satori
Image shows a pastel drawing of an ocean beach. There are waves coming to shore. On the right is a large boulder, with a yellow sun just to the left of the boulder.

Consider all the pain and all the pleasure
You have ever experienced
As waves on a very deep ocean which you are.

From the depths, witness those waves,
Rolling along so bravely, always changing,
Beautiful in their self-sustaining power.

Marvel that once, you identified with
Only the surface of this ocean.
Now embrace waves, depths, undersea mountains,
Out to the farthest shore.
~Insight verse 136, “The Radiance Sutras”, Lorin Roche, PhD.
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The image I drew in a recent Playing With Creativity and Meditation class that my friend Andrea Abrahamson and I co-teach at the online Radiance Sutras School of Meditation. It was her turn to facilitate, and the theme was travel.  

Going into the meditation, we were invited to attune to our senses. I live on a really busy street, and the ebb and flow of traffic began to sound like ocean waves to me.  I could see the image I drew so clearly, so out it came.  As I worked with the pastels, my fingers blending the colours together also sounded like the ocean to me, so I played with that… moving my hand and much of my body, creating the sound of the ocean. The movement of waves. The tingling of my fingers reminded me a little of the sharp tingling of sand under my bare feet.

It’s my favourite little beach in Pacific Palisades, and is still closed after the January fires. I looked at the satellite map recently, tracing the route down the twists and turns down Sunset Blvd. that I’ve enjoyed driving.  So much is gone; I’m not sure when I’ll have the heart to make the drive again. It’s so wonderful to have the memory of it, and now this image, as one of my doorways into meditation.

Creativity, drawing, focus, Personal growth, sensation, spirituality

Visualizing Sensation

Adele Satori

visualizing-sensationb

Today while walking, two men passed me.  They smelled of old books.

Not long afterwards, I saw them admiring a tree.  One patted it with affection and said “I’m sure this tree has stories to tell.”  The other nodded.

Later I saw them again, looking at the plants in the garden.  First one would say something about it, then the other.  Sharing their knowledge, not in competition, but in conversation.  They looked at each other often in the way of loving understanding that only people who’ve been companions a long time do.  In my head I named the men Verso and Recto… facing pages in a book.

I sat on a bench and began to doodle, as I sometimes do there.  Doodling for me is a way to turn off my Inner Narrator- that constant voice in my head. I don’t think about what comes next; I just let the pen go where it will on the paper.  This time, I realized.. I was drawing the way the garden sounded and felt.  I was drawing sensation.. not what I saw.  I tuned in and continued with this focus. I will leave it to you to interpret what I was hearing, seeing, and feeling.

I’ve done this with creating music, or dancing before, but not drawing, and it felt amazing.

Will you take a moment to let your Inner Narrator settle and silence?  What do you hear?  What do you feel?  What does that look like?

I’d love to see what you come up with!