Journey back to the Catholic faith from Yoga and visions

Below is an excerpt from a book in the making that deals with Jane’s spiritual journey back to the catholic faith.

INTRODUCTION

This little book is a series of vignettes describing the key events in my life, and those in my spiritual life. I am an artist who fell away from her faith and this is the story of my journey back to the Catholic Church, and to the Cross of Jesus. And also, the story of some of the things that happened along the Way.

I grew up in West Sussex, England, and moved to London aged 17 in 1982, in the middle of my A levels. I spent the next 16 years of my life living in London as a bit of a nomad, until I managed to buy a place in Ealing in 1998. I moved back down to Sussex in 2004 and now live with my mother in Horsham, West Sussex.

After studying fine art and textiles at Goldsmith’s College in the 1980’s, I spent a number of years developing a painting technique on glass. The effect of painting directly on to the glass is that the image changes with the movement of light upon its surface, with myriad effect.

I have had some success with this and commissions followed. These include a major series for Royal Caribbean International, The Saudi Royal Family; London’s Capital Hotel; Holiday Inn, Vienna; and others both here and abroad. I have been invited to exhibit at Wilkinson of Mayfair; Harrods Knightsbridge, The Royal Commonwealth Society; the London Buddhist Centre; South Bank’s Oxo Tower and Art in Action in Oxford.

My journey back to Jesus involved a journey through Yoga and I took initiation into Kriya Yoga in 1999. In 2004 I came under satanic attack, the devil was twisting the words to the Rosary in my ear. I was prayed over by an Exorcist to whom I had to renounce ‘all forms of occult practise’ – this meant Yoga – and felt free of a heavy bondage. I surrendered myself totally to Jesus. This was however, at a time that I had separated from a long-time boyfriend and started hearing voices the same day I split up with him (I was diagnosed with Schizophrenia the next year, in 2005). The voices ended the same day that I finished the first draft of this book, in 2011.

August 2011

Chapter 5

A few months later my car had broken down and I was on the train back to London from visiting my mother in Sussex. I had a vision of Jesus on the train. I had been crying out to Him from the depths of my heart for a husband. I had asked God for an ‘earthy’ love. I don’t know why. It seemed a long time since I’d had a boyfriend and I thought it was about time that I got married. I was looking at an article in a magazine about a beautiful garden in Belguim called Beloeil ‘Good Eye’ which was built on the principles of Sacred Geometry, when Jesus appeared out the vanishing point of the picture – an avenue of Beech trees at Dusk. He reached down into the earth and made a heart out of the earth, and without losing eye contact with me, put it inside His chest which He opened with a simple movement of His hands. He said ‘this is your loving’ when I fearfully questioned Him as to what the vision meant. I heard the words in my head. I did not understand.

He was wearing a luminous white robe (as he wears in the Divine Mercy image, but I didn’t realise that then,) and His eyes were ‘full of all the suffering in the world’ full of all the suffering in the world. I could not forget that. Yet they were also full of tenderness, humor and love. What did it mean? I asked myself. I don’t know how long the vision lasted, whether it was second or half a minute. I wondered, and felt afraid that I was not loving enough. (Now of course, I realise, He was saying His is the earthy love I was praying for!)….

Jane