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.