A Year and More of Silence

A long silence of more than 500 days to write and to draw for the sake of writing and drawing for myself only.

It is easy to lose sight of why we decide to do something when we share it with others. It is easy to fall in the trap of doing things so that we can say we have done them and that we can show what we have achieved and not for the joy of simply doing them.

During this long silence, I continued to draw Mandalas even if not as regularly and I continued to write regularly a journal every day with some occasional terrible sketches, these definitely only for my eyes. Now I reached day number 1646 of my daily journaling and my third Mandala sketchbook.

And now, I feel ready to break a bit this silence, I am happy enough with myself for having honoured these two commitments, for having given myself the space and time to go deeper and explored different ideas, for allowing myself in my silence to try, to fail again and again, to forgive and eventually heal, to discover and embrace light and joy and then becoming lost again and again, and then restart again and again but never from the same starting point, always a bit richer in my understanding about myself.

“Within each of us there is a silence
—a silence as vast as a universe.
We are afraid of it…and we long for it.
When we experience that silence, we remember
who we are: creatures of the stars, created
from the cooling of this planet, created
from dust and gas, created
from the elements, created
from time and space…created
from silence.
….

Silence brings us back to basics, to our senses,
to our selves. It locates us. Without that return
we can go so far away from our true natures
that we end up, quite literally, beside ourselves.
We live blindly and act thoughtlessly.
…” Gunilla Norris. Sourced from https://www.tarabrach.com/meditation-reconnecting-silence-presence/

October – December 2020

2021

Sacred Geometry Experiments 2021

Sleepless nights reflections on Life and on being grounded and groundless Mandalas.

 

I do what I can, I read what I can, I learn what I can, I live the way I can, I achieve what I can and there is no shame in simply doing what I can. I release the need to be more, to be special, to have more, to be more, to achieve more, to want more. I am freeing myself from the illusion of not being enough or worst that to be enough is shameful or inadequate. I have all that is needed. All is here already. I am already all I need to be, all I can be and all is well.

I surrender to Life and let life leading me, “taking me by the hand”.

 

May I trust Life and me and have true Hope. May I love myself and all Life be loved. May I surrender to Life. May I be free.

There is no true solid ground for my roots underneath my feet, there is no true and perfect stillness, everything, everywhere is a in a continuous state of becoming and all is at once well and here and fragile and uncertain and mysterious. Flourishing come from being grounded and floating at once, firmly rooted in the full apparent void of the infinite Universe I belong to, of which, I am at once a creation and one of the creators with all other living beings and Life itself.

I was blessed with a life of comfort and security and I didn’t realise, and I became lost in fear of losing what I had and complaining of all that I thought I didn’t have and that I thought everybody else easily had and that I should have, thinking some inherent flaws in me kept me from having all that I was entitled to aspire to have. The true I am remembering is that in Life nothing is really granted, we are not entitled by nature to anything other than the exact moment we are living in the moment we are living it and in the way we are living it in that moment; that in Life everything can happen in a moment, everything Life has given you, Life can take away as freely and suddenly and that instead of acknowledging the blessings and free gifts of Life I received from being born and grew up in a life where I don’t have to worry about having enough money for food, for shelter, for clothes, for studying, for going to the doctor if I need and for many other things that are not essentials, I, like many others in my situation, become attached to this comfort as my birthrights and greedy, wanting to keep them forever and anxious of not losing any of my comforts, while most of the world we inhabit struggles with survival, with suffering I cannot even imagine. Comfort became a prison, became a disability that blinded me from the truth of human life and from all the richness I took from granted without appreciation and respect, getting caught too often in petty arguments and competitions with others, trying to collect more and more external approvals, material things to protect and preserve my status, my comforts and my safety. But nothing in Life can really protect my material life from the destruction that can happen in any moment, nothing in Life can really protect me from harm or from suffering and from almost unbearable loss and I need to find my way back to the essential core Truth of my own life, my real home groundless with roots growing strong in what falsely seems empty space instead of in the illusionary ground underneath my feet and branches spreading freely above my head in the same illusionary empty space. 

May I be free from trying to achieve something, from trying to have a perfect life, without even knowing what would be a perfect life. May I be free to experiment without boundaries, mixing what seems to have no reason to be together, without letting fear of failure, of creating something ugly, sad or ridiculous, keeping me from enjoying the process of imagining, expressing and creating. May I be free from the prison of limiting definitions of what is right or wrong, limiting standards of behaviours and expectations, small dreams of being always happy, confident and safe. May I be free to enjoy the process of living, of creating, and be free to fail at creating something good and beautiful, but having fun and experiencing the joy of being free in doing so in plain sight without fear of being silly or non-sensical.

May I be free from trying to achieve something, from trying to have a perfect life, without even knowing what would be a perfect life. May I be free to experiment without boundaries, mixing what seems to have no reason to be together, without letting fear of failing at creating something ugly or ridiculous, keeping me from enjoying the process of imagining, creating and expressing myself in the way I can. May I be free from the prison of limiting definitions of what is right or wrong, limiting standards of behaviours and expectations of being always happy and successful and small dreams. May I be free to enjoy the process of living, of creating, and be free to fail at creating something good and beautiful, but having fun and experiencing the joy of being free in doing so in plain sight without fear of being silly or non-sensical.

 

“…

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
is life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.
He says don’t be afraid.
Don’t be afraid.

Look, feel, let life take you by the hand.

Let life live through you.”

“Hokusai Says” by Roger Keyes, https://www.tarabrach.com/meditation-letting-life-live-through-you-2207-min/

1000 Days and Day 1 Every Day – Mandala

Yesterday, I reached my personal milestone of 1,000 consecutive days of daily morning meditation and Journaling.

The first journal I used started with the quote I often reflect on: “A journey of a thousand miles starts beneath one’s feet” (Tao Te Ching – Lao Tzu – chapter 64), today I feel like I’m ready to close a phase of my self-discovery and growth journey but not the journey. It took me a thousand days and 20 notebooks to get me here, to really appreciate the journey more than reaching a destination, to honour and consider equally important each and every day because every single moment counted and contributed to creating the life I live today. Many things have subtly and slowly changed in my way of approaching life thanks to this, in theory, simple routine of starting every day with a ritual of morning journaling, inspired by Julia Cameron’s book “the Artist’s Way”, and meditation. I’m learning that loving myself means sometimes doing and appreciating what feels hard in the moment, but is good for my life and saying no, instead, to familiar immediate easy pleasing things which because of my personal history are in reality unhealthy for me. I’m learning that life is a continuous act of balancing opposite forces, opposite desires and to look for the truly honest intention behind my own choices and actions while trying to embrace the quote: “Love says ‘I am everything’, Wisdom says ‘I am nothing’, between these two my life flows.” (Sri Nisargadatta as quoted in The Wise Heart by Jack Kornfield).

The journey is not complete and will never be completed, so this is, at once, an important mandala and a mandala like all the others I  drew before,  and any moment is a good moment to restart with honest acceptance, courage, compassion and love as travel companions. The journey will continue to present obstacles, discomfort and moments of uncertainties and confusions, but will also continue to give me moments of hope, faith, freedom, joy and clarity because life is made by everything and to live a full and meaningful life, I need to continue on this path with renewed purpose, energy and clarity.

I planned to say more,  but maybe, for now, this is enough; maybe, now, it is time for a rich and meaningful silence.

 

A mandala of 2 opposite mandalas.

 

 

My 20 journals of morning pages.

 

 

Some of my meditation sites.

 

A bit more than a year

A bit more than a year has passed since the last post, but not since my last drawing. In fact, I continued to draw, to reflect and to grow but in the privacy of my own life. I think it was important for me to continue drawing and reflecting but without sharing it with anybody else or using it for anything else than to simply do it in order to maintain and protect the focus on what is important for me and not what I am easily conditioned to believe, like many others, is important by society. I often wonder if in our society we can really appreciate that something is beautiful and meaningful regardless if it is visible to anybody else or publicly recognised, and I often wonder, in our society, so obsessed with material success and achievements, how many wonderful and meaningful things happen, all the time, without anybody knowing about them without, for this reason, being less wonderful or meaningful.

A bit more than a year from the last post, today, I’m less than 30 days away from my first 1 thousand days of daily morning meditation and journalling, close to 4 years of mandala drawing, close to 600 days of healthier eating and  250 days from when I started running in the mornings to try to heal and care for my physical and mental wellbeing,   that made me be a lighter, more courageous and powerful version of myself.  It has been a long journey that is far from being complete and fully clear, far for being free of doubts, anxieties, fears, wrong turns and unexpected detours, some good, some less. A mantra refined several times along the way, as life unfolded, has been the light, the map, the trusted friend, the voice of wisdom along with many formal and informal teachers.

Now, I’m far from being perfect or happy and relaxed, but I’m ok with who I am most of the time, it doesn’t mean that now I’m free from my fears, self-doubts, self-judgements, old familiar monsters in my head, old unhealthy habits and little addictions, but it does mean that I don’t let them define me or my life and that I recognise that I’m all of that and much more and that sometimes I even let myself like, love and trust who I am and how I am, because I’m accepting that all life is imperfect, paradoxical, complicated and extremely simple, transitory fragile, groundless, wonderful, harmonious, mysterious in its apparent randomness.

Now it doesn’t start another journey for me, but I continue on the same life journey, made of many, more or less important, rebirths and failures and, only in appearance, pauses to recharge, to appreciate, to make sure that the purpose is not lost or confused again with secondary achievements along the way. But now, I let myself, even if still timidly, to have a dream, to live in the moment with a timid hope for the future and for projects to come and now I recognise the blessings I received and still receive from life and instead of feeling guilty for not honouring them enough, I feel grateful and full of energy for giving back to life what I can.

 

A Celebration Mandala.

 

“won’t you celebrate with me

what i have shaped into

a kind of life? i had no model.

born in babylon

both nonwhite and woman

what did i see to be except myself?

i made it up

here on this bridge between

starshine and clay,

my one hand holding tight

my other hand; come celebrate

with me that everyday

something has tried to kill me

and has failed.”

by Lucille Clifton

 

 

3 Years of Mandalas, close to 600 days of daily morning pages and meditation and now close to 200 days of the diet.

This post is a celebration and an opportunity to reflect on how sometimes what we had believed impossible for a very long time has become not just possible, but a reality.

If we cultivate and we practice regularly self-love, self-acceptance and faith, we are patient, courageous and compassionate with failures, and beneath all, we have a strong and honest motivation that guides and supports us when we face resistance to change, doubts and fear, what was impossible becomes the new reality.

It has been a long and unclear journey and is far from being finished, but it is important to pause and look back to the very messy and twisted road we have travelled and that has brought us to a point we would not have probably imagined before and take it in and celebrate.

In my case, the change in appearance, that is limited to the most recent and latest part of this journey, is probably what is most visible, but it is only the most superficial aspect of a change that I started long before my Mandalas and has its roots in my last depression breakdown. Weight was for me an armour, a comfort blanket, a certainty, a faithful hated friend that was my life companion for a very long time and to let go of it, I needed first to become stronger, to love and accept who and how I was and to learn to have faith in myself, in my ability to commit to change and to face difficult times.

The paradox of change is that to change we need first to recognise, accept and love what we have. No lasting change can be built on rejection or self-hatred or self-judgement, because rejection, self-hatred and self-judgement focus our energy and our efforts on the struggle, instead of focusing them on a more positive and constructive view of our life choices. If I look at mandala drawing as a something I need to excel, meditation as an additional chore on my never-ending to-do-list, if I look at my diet as a continuous sacrifice, I will be miserable and frustrated most of, if not all, the time, but if I can look at meditation and diet to ways to express my love for myself, for my life and for my family, for others, then diet is not giving up the freedom to eat what I want, but becomes the freedom to chose what I want, because it is the best choice for my life, for my body and for my mind now and in the future.

 

 

Mandala of Hearts: a healing mandala.

Trying to make sense of a destructive pain that seems irrational, impossible to reason with, born out of fears of faceless illusions of the reality, pervasive shame and self-inflicted harsh judgements.

Trying to find a way out of the darkness and back to the light to the right path, to the guiding star of what really matters.

For very long moments, all seems lost in pain and despair, and more I resist and struggle, more entangled all become, the only way out is through real acceptance, patient stillness and attentive silence, and when nothing seems to be working, the healing starts and from a real pain born out of illusionary fears, a timid spring of love starts to emerge. Out of the darkness, a light joyful Mandala of Hears unfold.

 

Innocent, almost naive Hearts sprung out of twisted lines.

A sense of spontaneous faith and hope that the well of goodness is still full and intact,

that the spring of love inside did not dwindle.

I still judge and measure my life with, by now and for a long while, old and ineffective, judgements and measures.

My thoughts are slower than my heart to recognise the conclusion that

All is well where stillness lies,    

All is safe at the heart of my being.

These innocent maybe frivolous hearts surprise me.

Had I forgotten how or maybe never was light and impractical?

Had I forgotten how or maybe never was romantic and whimsical?

I gave up so much for what? To preserve an illusionary sense of safety and security?

Innocent, sweet looking Hearts are True Joy. The True Joy that scares me and that I’m sceptical of out of fear, but that now I can see and feel. They are the colours, the light, the comfort and the love that has always been here but not seen, not recognised and not acknowledged till now.

Innocent, playful  Hearts are what I found at the heart of my being at the end of a long dark moment, still and always unscathed regardless of what happens on the outside or what the external world tells me.

I endeavoured to keep them hidden ashamed and mistakenly thinking them not worthy of being cherished and cared for.

I engaged in and failed repeatedly to live a life that was not mine to live, to find acceptance and love where there was none to be found.

Now I let these playful, forever young and wise Hearts out, to show me how to live, to thoroughly experience Joy and Sadness, Trust and Fear, Love and Loss.

 

 

Love who you are,

Accept who you are as you are,

Believe in and Trust that who you are is all you need to be,

Be who you are,

Act Courageously and Compassionately for who you are as you are.

I Love who I am,

I accept who I am as I am,

I believe and I trust that who I am is all I need to be,

I am who I am,

I act courageously and compassionately for who I am as I am.

 

Mandala 2.2 – The Bliss: Floating into the Light.

Stage 2 – The Bliss is the time of limitless YES to the boundless opportunities of a life yet to begin, to unfold.

Infinite possibilities of a blank canvas, of pure energy at work, before limitations and boundaries born out of expectations, dreams, beliefs and fears will set in.

It is the time, when after resting and growing in darkness; I float into the light, fearless because I have no awareness yet of being separated from the light and from the world, I inhabit.

The first Mandala of this phase is a “Million Stars Mandala”, the universe with its infinite potential.

Because we are born many times to a new life, the second Mandala is a birth or better the re-birth Mandala. I was born late November, only a few burned leaves left on the floor at the trees feet. I was born a month early and I was born, floating in the light through an abundant stream of water. Was I impatient to start living? Was I not fully prepared for it? Floating first, and through convoluted trajectories after, I live a life of several re-birth, through the darkness over and over again to the light of a new day, to the life that is always here: boundless, confused, messy, exciting, mysterious, ugly, painful, luminous, joyful all at once. Enthusiastic impatience, followed by fears and hiding away till courage and love too strong to be kept hidden pushing again into the light, into the life I am meant to live.

I experiment in this phase, no expectations or goals, testing the boundless opportunities of the blank canvas in front of me, of a new day with no directions yet and so no correction is needed because without expectation there is no right or wrong. I used a pebble collected from the beach to shape things for simple fun and a sense of freedom. The result is skewed, messy, formless, confused, meaningless, directionless, incomplete, beyond salvation, free from the prison of being good enough, liberated from expectations and aspirations, from the need to find sense in what is beyond comprehension and control… totally, utterly, unequivocally free of being as it is.

Mandala 2.1 – The Void: Resting In the Darkness

For the first years of my personal work with Mandalas, I only research, randomly and only rarely, information about the philosophy and how of mandala drawing and meditation without a structured or more in-depth approach, preferring to let myself be free to explore this experience with a full beginner’s blank mind and to allow this personal journey to unfold free of pre-conceived ideas about “the why and the right way of doing things” and therefore free from concerns of doing things right that might have stopped or limited me from fully engaging in this experience.

Now, after more than 2 years of drawing Mandalas for meditation and self-discovery, I feel I trust my commitment to this practice and my experience to be strong and settled enough to face a change of pace, mistakes, doubts and normal resistance that any new practice is bound to face, to start working with my mandalas in a more structured and educated way and to give myself the opportunity to enrich this personal journey by learning about tools and ways for self-expression from others. I recently started a new phase of this self-discovery healing journey through Mandalas using the Mandala Workbook by Susanne F. Fincher as my guide. (www.shambhala.com/the-mandala-workbook.html)

This journey is divided in 12 Mandala stages to form “the Great Round of Mandala”. The first stage mandalas are a representation of the origin of life, when in the darkness nothing much seems to happen, it is a time when everything seem to stand still and patiently waiting for life to unfold.

My first mandalas of this first stage are about

• becoming familiar with the original circular motion by drawing free hand, in the air first and on paper after, aiming at creating a circle to contain a personal safe sacred place, at first drawing the circular lines free hand was a slightly intimidating new experience, but then the pattern became familiar as the drawing gather momentum;
• becoming more open to new understandings of my personal experience by switching between my two hands, using for the first time in a very long time my left hand to hold a pencil forced me to be more careful with my movements but I also felt that it released new energy that was not used; at first again the lines with the left hand were more uncertain and trembling but after a while the flow of colours between right and left seemed to flow more and more easily;
• weaving slowly one line at time a progressively  more complex image, like life, spider’s web;
• staying patiently in the darkness trusting the silent process of life unfolding by filling the circle with black and adding very little details hinting at changes that are so small to be unseen.

Going Within – The Mandala of Life

I sit cross legged

in the middle of my heart, of my Mandala,

Nothing beneath me

Nothing besides me

Nothing above me

Only empty, deep blackness

I sit letting the emptiness be

Accepting it without hiding from it anymore

Welcoming it.

I cannot draw it

I cannot write it

It is too big

It is too everything

It cannot be fully contained

It cannot be fully defined

It cannot be fully revealed.

I let myself be,

I let my life be as it is

without definitions

boundless and wild

beautiful and frightening

immense and small.

This is the perfection in life,

I did not see it before for what it was,

this total blackness

this emptiness that fills every corner,

I mistakenly confused for void

and helplessness

and hopelessness.

I am Home.

I see the sparks of light purple and then

some white luminous flashes.

I am free.

I am free from the prison of wanting to make sense with these lines.

I am free from the need to be understood and being right.

Then why be scared?

What is left to fear when we can embrace the full blackness?

Everything passes eventually.

I am destined to die like everything else,

why then giving up the risk of living to protect a safe unlived life?

What does it matter?

To live long or to live really, even if is just for a short moment?

I let fear have a voice, but not being the driving force of my choices,

I let anger have a voice, but not being an unbending master,

I let envy have a voice, but not being the only voice, I hear,

I let all of the be present,

but I do not let them be all that I see, hear, think or feel anymore,

I do not let them define who I am.

Because they have reasons,

but they are also short-sighted,

so, I let them be present and have their voice, but along with all the other voices, experiences and feelings that I have.

We are complex.

Life is complex.

The Mandala of Life, I am visualising, is more complex I will ever manage to represent and capture with paper and colours, I will keep trying and, in this process, I will learn more, I will discover more, I will continue to travel within and higher.

The visualisation of the Mandala of Life was inspired from the guided meditation going within on Insighttimer (Meditation by: Dakota Earth Cloud at the Link: https://insighttimer.com/dakotaearthcloud/guided-meditations/going-within)

Wabi-Sabi – A perfectly imperfect Mandala

“Should we look at the spring blossoms only in full flowers, at the moon only when cloudless and clear “? Yoshida Kenkō as quoted by Beth Kempton in Wabi Sabi – Japanese wisdom for a perfectly imperfect life.

My drawing doesn’t have to be beautiful or perfect, and not only because nothing is beautiful or perfect always, but because there is beauty to discover in the imperfect lines and colours, there is still beauty in life when everything seems to fall apart or decay as it naturally happens in life. My roses and my small cherry tree are still worth having in my garden and being looked at even after the flowers have rotten on their branch and all leaves have fallen leaving behind bare and only apparently death branches, there is still beauty in them hidden away from sight but it can still be felt by a heart that can stay still and in silent contemplation of wonders of life.

My, all, words are imperfect, my drawings are imperfect and clumsy attempts at translating what the heart experiences when it connects with life.

The purpose of drawing a Mandala, the deep and true purpose is in the process of creating something one line at the time.

Chasing a result will shift the attention from the enjoyment of the process in the present moment to the waiting for a result to feel joy where no result is guaranteed.

The outcome whatever will be is only a possibility, not the reason.

I enjoy and trust the process and let go of expectations. Sometimes, something beautiful might emerge. Sometimes nothing worthy of notice, except to my eyes, will emerge but for me, it is still worthy of my time and efforts. There is beauty, still, in an imperfect and at the eye of the rest of the world even ugly drawing.

Breathing and drawing one simple line, enjoying the process beyond the result is liberating, it is living in the present moment for the present moment. If I chase a success life will be a continuous wait for something that will last just a few fleeting moments. Instead, I choose to give my full attention and feel joy, deep and true, while creating a single Mandala and this is all that really matters.

I dared myself to screw up, to fill the white spaces of my last Mandala with oil colours barely contained within the lines, because if I want to live from the heart, with colour and courage and mistakes, because nothing really stay still for even a moment and then why should we get attached to anything at all? Detachment is not disrespect or disinterest but is the ability to keep a light hold on what we have in our lives without being dominated by it, without confusing a byproduct with a purpose. Goals we might pursue are in service of a well and fully lived life and not the purpose of life.