Spirits in the material world by Stephen Blease

Wednesday, 01 April 2009

Jade Ashcroft suspects her inspiration often comes from her past lives. The 34-year-old artist believes in reincarnation and the existence of spirits – and it is these beliefs that inform her paintings. Jade’s beliefs also tie in with her work as a reiki healer. She feels patients can be healed by the universal energy, and as a healer she is a channel for it, helped by the spiritual guides.

As well as working as an artist, Jade is a tarot reader, reiki healer and editor of Enlightening Times, an online magazine dedicated to spiritual matters of all kinds.

And she is keen to encourage other people to connect with their spiritual side – in whatever way they find suits them.

Jade lives in Pica, in the midst of the west Cumbrian countryside with husband Gary and their 19-month-old son David.

She is not a native of Cumbria, having been born in the Drumchapel area of Glasgow, but moved to this county at the age of five: “I’m more of a Cumbrian than a Glaswegian.”

Jade attended St Benedict’s School in Whitehaven – “the only non-Catholic in a Catholic school,” as she recalls. She had been drawing and painting for as long as she could remember, so after leaving school she studied for an art diploma, equivalent to an A Level, at the old Park Lane College in Workington.

However, like many artists she found academic study of the subject off-putting. “I didn’t draw or paint for six years after that,” she said.

Jade played guitar and drums in various bands – channelling her creativity into music rather than art – and worked for an entertainments magazine before returning to education, to study media and communications at the University of Cumbria.

But her interest in spiritual matters had been growing since the age of 18, when she began looking into Tarot cards.

“When I first got interested in spirituality people thought I was losing the plot,” Jade said. “But for each person to be a whole person, everyone needs to make a spiritual connection.”

She feels strongly that people should be free to subscribe to whatever spiritual beliefs they find work best for them, whether they come from an established religion or from other traditions. “I want to help people find their own unique specific path,” she says.

But her own beliefs draw on the pagan idea of Goddess-worship, seeing the earth as a mother which gives birth to everything that grows.

“It’s a common idea,” Jade says. “Some people could call it God, or the life force, or universal energy, or Mother Nature.”

She is also drawn to the idea that all of us possess a God-like essence or divine spark – which could be called the soul – and is reincarnated after our bodies die.

“You learn something in each life you have, and when you have learnt enough your soul can move up to another level.

“You can then become a spiritual guide, helping people who are still in the physical world.”

So in some senses spiritual guides could be seen as similar to the angels of the Jewish, Christian or Muslim traditions.

And for Jade her spirituality and her painting go hand in hand.

“Sometimes I paint scenes that I seem to remember, as if they come from past lives. In one there’s a building like a temple, and I don’t know where that idea came from. So it may have been something from a past life.”

Many of Jade’s other paintings are “Soulscapes”. They are not portraits, but images which she feels come to her from each subject’s divine spark.

As an artist certain colours, especially dark blues, violets and purples, also have a spiritual resonance for her, representing different energy sources in the body.

“When I’m practising reiki I can often feel the presence of spiritual guides,” she said. “It’s almost as if someone is standing beside me.”

Many people would dismiss or ridicule Jade’s ideas. But again she points our that her spiritual beliefs are hers alone, and no-one is compelled to agree with them. Everyone, she says, should be free to choose whichever ones suit them best.

To help promote interest in all spiritual matters – and help people find the beliefs that fit for them – Jade launched Enlightening Times in 2006.

The online magazine comes out four times a year, at the summer and winter solstices and the spring and autumn equinoxes, so the spring issue has just been published and the next will appear towards the end of June. It carries news and views about various spiritual matters and aims to encourage people to think about and discuss them.

“People send in articles, books or CDs to review, news about spiritual issues or events and links to other sites. What I promote with the Enlightening Times is not any particular spiritual beliefs. I’m providing a platform for artists, poets, musicians, visionaries who all have different beliefs.”

But is there really any spiritual side to life at all? Is there anything more than just the material world? Opinion is sharply divided.

Atheism has a raised profile at present, with Richard Dawkins’s book The God Delusion high in the bestseller charts for many weeks, and bus adverts in London bearing the slogan: “There’s probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life.”

But at the same time, many people are becoming much more interested in spiritual matters, believing that there is something beyond the physical world.

These spiritual beliefs take many forms. But while many of the established religions tend to stress that theirs is the only true spiritual outlook, Jade’s attitude is much more flexible.

And she appeals to those who believe that only one religion has all the answers, or those who don’t believe there is any spiritual side to life at all, to keep an open mind.

“Some people just write spirituality off before they’ve even looked at it,” she said.

“I don’t understand why they would choose not to be open to new experiences.”

Many of Jade’s paintings are on show at http://www.esoteric-art.co.uk

To subscribe to Enlightening Times go to http://www.enlighteningtimes.co.uk/Subscribe.html
Article courtesy of Stephen Blease
Email SBlease@cngroup.co.uk