Lifting to the Light: Notes from an Artist’s Journey

For more of an interactive experience, feel free to read while listening to Silver's rendition of Om Namah Shivaya Prayer

 

Always a dreamer

Setting out quietly, often at dusk, basking in the companionship of the horse, in the serene magnificence of the land. Young girl, riding horseback, alone. Saskatchewan family farm. The transition of twilight touching so deeply, bringing solace, bringing the mystery close.

Humming, singing, howling, crying, laughing…beloved horse the witness.  Being received.  Powerful.  Elemental.

Young adult: discovery of music, creating music, first on ukulele, then guitar.  A way into expression of all those same emotions, plus the excruciating layers of coming of age questions: what is my place in the world? what am I meant to do? how to live? where to live? how to love? How to express what is felt inside?

Disillusionment with academic approaches to philosophy. And then, an opening: yoga. A way to work with the questions, to discover the depth in living that was a soul-craving from the very first. Finding community in that quest. Joy.

Good fortune. Seen by a teacher, the artist within nurtured at last. The complete delight in exploring materials, exploring process - drawing, painting, sculpting, photographing…black and white and colour, texture, line, large, small, realist, abstract.  Finding a way to settle in with the work, paying the dues of art as practise. Through it all, yoga as practise, music as  practise, and dreaming, always dreaming.

Women’s spirituality. An exploration. A return to Earth, a return to The Mother, to that first love - the natural world. Singing to HER: praises, exultation.

Songs arriving out of the depths.

Community. Dance. Laughter.

A spiritual home

Yasodhara Ashram. A treasure. The sheer depth encountered, a surprise, a deep delight. An answer to the thirst for music, art, to be a natural part of life. Community: support, challenge, understanding. Living, daily, the foundation of a yogic life: non-violence, truthfulness, non-stealing, moderation of the senses, non-greed, self-purification, contentment, self-discipline, self-study, self-surrender. Spiritual friendships. Gratitude.

Giving back. Inner call to  expand dreaming. Devotional practises, reflection, silence, space. Seeing what arises, what is calling to come forward. A hum, a fragment of song, a howl, a cry, a belly laugh. A germ, a seed, something…finding its way to a chord, another, a word, another, carving out story in song.

Dreaming, holding space, returning to silence. Believing, sidestepping doubt, returning to feeling, examining doubt. Tasting resistance, tasting frustration. Returning to feeling. Again and again and again. Looking for the opening. For what is true. Honest. Bypassing fashion, what is popular, what is said by experts to be ‘the right way’.  Seeking the real, the true, the resonance deep inside that whispers, “yes.”

The creative crucible contained within the larger life. Living the practises, facing the realities of the world. Survival. Serving community. Being present. Offering from the depths of practise, from the heart. Letting go. Prayers: to be useful, to fulfill purpose.

Lifting to the Light

Always lifting. Sense of sight powerful, magnetic, a call for purity, clarity. Attempts: to align colour, texture, with ephemeral inner vision, the dynamism of the real, the true. And touch - touch of brush, touch of heart, touch of the mystery. For a moment, for all of time. Oscillation of delight and despair. Falling back to earth again and again and again. Sacred quest. Nowhere else to be. Nothing else to do. Sacred purpose.

LIGHT: A fragrance, a taste, a fire, soul cry, an inner reach, deep and abiding rest.

SPACE: Ether calls, echoes, reverberates, surrounds, holds. Wholeness. Jolt of awareness: where is this?

Always returning

Creating the conditions for opening to occur. Tending the garden of the mind. Over and over. Patience. Gratitude for community, for Swami Radha’s love and sacrifice, for the teachings offered so beautifully.

It is here. It is here. It is HERE. That which is sought. It is within this life, these days, these tasks, these encounters, moments of pain, moments of beauty. It is nowhere else. How to remember? How to accept?

DANCE: of yoga, of life. Within the fire, devotion, commitment, love - self, then Self, and self again. Stillness at the centre. And everywhere the fire, whirling, surrounding, burning. Dance. The only thing to do. Be in it. Take a step, and then another.
Step into the place that has been waiting.

Waiting, for so long.

For you.

Step.

Now.

 

Silver Frith (she/her) is grateful to live, work and play in beautiful Mi'kma'ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi'maq people. Major delights are: learning to be a loving partner, doing yoga practises, chanting mantra, singing, creating, laughing, walking by the ocean,exploring forests, looking at the stars, being held in the web of community, and continuing to ask the big questions as life changes and evolves.
Find her original chants and songs on YouTube: Silver Frith: Chants & Songs of Light.
Original artwork in this blog by Silver.