One night about ten years ago CHARTAKI arrived in my dream.
It’s large, golden letters hovered in mid-air, shimmering and glowing gently, creating a feeling of tranquility that felt like the words:
“All is well and all will be well”.
Waking with a jolt I opened my eyes and the word remained as an after-image, as if to ensure it made it across the veil from dream to ‘reality’.
I kept seeing CHARTAKI in my dreams and every now and again I’d try to find it’s meaning in this world. I felt sure I must have seen it somewhere and was simply processing it in that odd way dreams do. I tried Google and it was uncharacteristically light on results – just a remote high school in Bangladesh and a couple of Greek songs where the word translates as ‘a piece of paper’. Neither of these things I knew about before the word starting showing up in my dreams.
CHARTAKI showed up at a time of great personal transformation.
I had recently left a seemingly successful life in the city to live with my family on a small permaculture farm and focus on my music. I’d also worked hard to come off lithium, ten years after I had been sectioned and diagnosed Bipolar. And I was exploring lots of personal and spiritual development ideas, including yoga and an ashram trip to India where I was gifted the name Ganapati (aka Ganesha, the elephant headed god).
So I asked around, thinking maybe I’d heard the word CHARTAKI in a workshop or training. But no answer came. As the word appeared in a dream, I took it along to a dream interpretation workshop, where the guidance was to seek what it meant to me rather than continue to look for something external.
For many years I simply accepted it’s presence with curiously. Occasionally it would appear in my dreams as before and again creating this sense of peacefulness. Whatever it was trying to tell me, it was in no rush.
Then a bolt from the blue changed everything.
In the middle of the pandemic I found out my heart was broken – literally! My aorta valve was life-threateningly tight and I was scheduled for open heart surgery as soon as possible.
My friends offered all sorts of healing to help me through this terrifying experience, including a light-language session. In this I was invited to try myself and it is something I’d explored but never got into. I decided to let go and see what came through and straightaway I saw CHARTAKI and for the first time heard a faint, reassuring whisper… “chaaar tah-kee”…
I wept with gratitude for this simple word and the magical peace it created inside of me. As the tears streamed down my cheeks I knew CHARTAKI meant something beyond words – a feeling of deep wellbeing, a sense of total acceptance of myself and my place in the world, an unquestioning knowing that all is well and all will be well.
As I recovered from the operation and my heart began to heal I began to feel ready to start sharing my music and writings again but something had changed.
I’d known all my life that my creativity was my comfort – a place for expressing what is happening inside of me and in doing so it can be released, soothed and made meaningful.
I was literally singing to myself and writing the words I wished I’d read.
It was as if in those moments of creation I was simply a channel for something else to express itself through me so I could heal and grow.
This has led me to bring together and share my creativity under the name CHARTAKI as I feel that it is this simple message I am trying to tell myself and others… “all is well and all will be well”…
I was born and raised Manchester, England to a Scottish mother and father or Welsh and Irish descent. I studied in Sheffield and Aberdeen.
I am based in Whakatū (Nelson) in Aotearoa (New Zealand).
Gareth Edwards is my birth name – my family and UK friends call me Gaz.
Ganapati (aka Ganesha) is the spiritual name I was given by Swami Niranjanananda and I was nicknamed G-love as a Laughter Yogi.
Most people simply call me G.