This week I visited my friend in her garden. There we spoke of the many transformative changes in our lives and in the world around us, as we watched butterflies and hummingbirds lighting on milkweed and on butterfly bushes (Buddleia davidii). Milkweed, is a native North American wildflower that attracts hummingbirds and butterflies. Viewed by many as a weed this important plant has been removed from acres and acres of land and replaced with lawns. But many organic gardeners like my friend and I are allowing it to take back the habitat it once was so prevalent in. Image credit
Category Archives: Spirituality
Making Mandalas: A Magical Process
Are you a doodler? Have you ever drawn mandalas ? I had a very busy week full of medical and laboratory appointments and I spent hours traveling between them. While sitting in waiting rooms I began to doodle and produced several mandalas. My girfriend who was visiting and chauferring me between appointments got into the act as well.
“Mandala” is a Sanskrit word which lossely translated can mean circle, polygon, community and connection representing wholeness. They are a geometric compositions, symbolizing spiritual, cosmic and psychic order. Hence they can be seen as a models for the organizational structure of life itself as they are cosmic diagrams depicting our relationship to that world that extends both beyond and within our bodies and minds.
The mandala pattern is used in many religious traditions from ancient Aztecs calendar and Taoist “yin-yang” symbol to sand mandalas created by Navajo Indians and Tibetan monks to demonstrate the impermanence of life. — What is a Mandala?
Mandala (Sanskrit maṇḍala मंड “essence” + ल “having” or “containing”. It is also often translated as “circle-circumference” or “completion”, both derived from the Tibetan term dkyil khor is a term used to refer to various objects. It is of Hindu origin, but is also used in other Indian religions, such as Buddhism. In the Tibetan branch of Vajrayana Buddhism, they have been developed into sandpainting. In practice, mandala has become a generic term for any plan, chart or geometric pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically, a microcosm of the Universe from the human perspective.
In various spiritual traditions, mandalas may be employed for focusing attention of aspirants and adepts, a spiritual teaching tool, for establishing a sacred space and as an aid to meditation and trance induction. Its symbolic nature can help one “to access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, ultimately assisting the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which the cosmos in all its manifold forms arises. The psychoanalyst Carl Jung saw the mandala as “a representation of the unconscious self,” and believed his paintings of mandalas enabled him to identify emotional disorders.
Zendalas- How to Draw a Mandala Zentangle Style
Gratitude Mandalas – Blog Short 2
View also:
http://thistimespace.tumblr.com/post/311544915/new-year-mandalas-art-as-meditation
http://thistimespace.tumblr.com/post/309015609/mandala-transitions
If you aren’t into drawing in the round or into drawing at all. Even if you don’t use photoshop you can create a depiction of connection using layers of images like this one (click image to enlarge).
Spread good thoughts!
Have you visited inspired type: where good thoughts are designed? I love what I see there so I’m inviting you to check out these inspirational images. It’s a growing collection with new ideas weekly — thought provoking, encouraging and motivating.
Spread good thoughts!
If you see something there you like, please share it with your own network of friends and followers.
Use and Copyright
You are free to share or re-post. Please attribute with credit to Susan Alexander, and including a link to the Inspired Type blog is always appreciated. All content is the sole property of Susan Alexander, and is protected by a Creative Commons License. Use is allowed only for non-commercial purposes, and designs may not be altered or derivatives created. Permission for special uses may be available by contacting Susan through her Contact page.
All Hallow’s
The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the “lighter half” of the year and beginning of the “darker half”, and is sometimes regarded as the “Celtic New Year“.
The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through. The family’s ancestors were honoured and invited home while harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks. Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm. — wikipedia
