Cultivating joy is a process of happiness in development and actualisation. When I discuss with clients how to cultivate joy, I will sometimes ask them what gave them joy in childhood, and whether they can replay it, for a renewed affect, in adulthood.
I rediscovered one of my childhood joys, in adulthood. Bonding with my son when he was little, at play, while he was drawing. Joy’ning in. He shared his experiences, and drawings, as they were evolving. And, in that process, I remembered, that I too loved to draw when I was little. So I began to do it too.
It took me back to an earlier ambition, as a teen. I thought a good vocation would be to establish a career as a commercial artist. Yet everything conspired against it. The art elective at high school was cancelled after I was accepted, because there wasn’t enough viable interest, from other students. I was accepted into a private art school on the basis of an art exercise, and my portfolio that I had developed, but the cost was astronomical, and I couldn’t afford it, by any stretch of the imagination. Eventually it was abandoned as an ambition, as I moved to another career tangent, as life had other opportunities, in play for me, in the interim.
Looking back, I get it. My art was never meant for moulding, for others, in a commercial setting. It was meant for my soul element development, evolving purely, from the psyche, and then sharing.
And here it is, a sample mandala medley of what I have been posting, and developing, Each with it’s own verse and story. Never an art class, just a mindful joy and a peaceful pleasure, in the background, creating, and developing, at insistent leisure.
It formed a foundation, for inspiring, storytelling, and beauty meaning making, as part of life evolving. For me, and for the collective, that it is affecting. As a mandala’verse generating musings of wholeness, integrating.
And I enjoy Instagram posting them progressively with other life joys for appreciating as they are emerging and affecting.
If you consider, that you are a part of your dharma and purpose, perhaps you too can define, where, for the sake of joy, you can follow your bliss. And your life, and talent, refine.
And seal that bliss, in your heart, with a loving kiss.
SaraSwati Shakti is a creatrix of life and story. An idea generator in words and drawings. Using mandala images as fragments of the psyche that lead to inner equilibrium and understanding. Each drawing and verse, serving as Snapshots of the Soul, at that moment, whole. And forming allegories, in the language of the feminine, weaving myths, memories, and stories, felt and spoken, in multi-layered dimension, and creation. At the same time, the outcome, and the goal, as the intention. Her guiding light when creating art is to express beauty and meaning to illuminate life.