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/

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)

One Year of Silence

Time passes slowly, sometimes, and sometimes it passes faster than you can imagine and you realise that a year is gone in silence and you realise while, externally it appeared as nothing had really changed, the truth is that something fundamental has shifted internally and you are a different person, what was not possible a year ago now becomes a real possibility, but it takes time even to realise how  you have changed, it needs silence and space for reflection and integration.

Regrets are waste of energy and time, I simply couldn’t have done things differently, lived my life differently, bullying myself to achieve something better quicker, to be better. I’m  who I am and I’m learning that there is much I don’t know about myself and about life and it is ok, because maybe this is what life is: a journey of discovery and constant transformation.

In this year since my last post, I learned more, read more, draw more mandalas, took time off for healing in partial solitute and silence, for walking and reflection, for family time and for simply being and then only when I was ready at my own personal pace for taking action.

 

My Perfectly Imperfect Life- The new blog title.

I have been silent for a while. While I’m still drawing Mandalas, I’m not doing it with the same regularity or commitment and for now, I feel that this is the right way for me. In the last few years, I have been experimenting with different tools and practices to manage my Generalised Anxiety Disorder without medication so that I do not end up, as happened twice in the past in a Depression diagnosis, and I think I am managing quite well considering that is more than four years since I have taken the last medication. What I learned so far is that there is no perfect solution that will fit everybody and will work all the time even for the same person because not only we are all unique, we, ourselves, also change and what used to work for us might not work anymore and we, almost continuously, need to re-assess and re-evaluate our own balance and our own support systems.

Drawing Mandala for a while it was a good self-reflection tool, but when the drawing itself became the focus instead of being a tool, I had to take a step back. It is very easy to forget the real intention behind our action and become distracted and confuse a tool for a purpose.

In the last weeks instead I have been working with the Artist’s way book by Julia Cameron and I started the practice of the daily morning pages (3 pages of longhand, stream-of-consciousness morning writing) and even though I feel some resistance every morning, I am still doing it every morning and feeling the benefit of doing it. More recently, I have added at the start a short 10 Minutes meditation that includes both short breathing and bodyscan meditation. While I cannot share my morning pages on this page as I used to do for the Mandala, as they are private, I want to share the benefit they have brought me so far, in particular, a feeling of joy in seeing that when I do something that resonates with my deeper self and with my way of being I can be disciplined enough to sacrifice something and I can conquer any resistance in order to do it. I think that when we struggle too much to implement a new routine that we think it would be beneficial for us, it might because we are trying to implement something that does not really fit our way of being, we need to experiment and find the solution that is suitable for us.
And here there is my last perfectly imperfect Mandala. It does not need to be even close to be perfect. My own life and I are like we are supposed to be: perfectly imperfect.

Forty-Seventh Mandala – Universal Particulars Mandala

From a series of small details is built a big picture, from the picture I understand the idea, in general, but then I go back to notice the single small details that create the big picture. The big picture gives me a key to open a door on the comprehension of my reality, but then the details are the ones that give me the deep flavor and richness of that reality. It is a continuous journey from universal to particulars and from particulars to universal. It is a balancing act between focusing on myself, and my own limited experience of the world and the world outside me. The details disconnected from each other do not create a picture, they cannot be understood, but connected with each other they become something different and they can become visible and clear.

Mindfulness is teaching me patience and to look at the details of my surroundings, and looking at the details, is opening my mind to possibilities I could not even imagine before. Drawing Mandalas was not something I could imagine doing. It all starts with a small line draw on a page, with a word, with a step to a direction unknown, if we have the patience to wait until the big  picture is revealed.

Loving-kindness is allowing me to engage this drawing/reflecting journey as it is teaching me to be kind and compassionate with myself as I’m a beginner as all beginners, my efforts are very often clumsy and far from being perfect.

“I believe that the big picture is somehow shaped by how we live the details, the little pictures that run through our lives.” (The Dance – Oriah Mountain Dreamer)

“Concepts always remain universal, and so do not reach down to the particular, yet, it is precisely the particular, that hast to be dealt with in life.” (Schopenhauer as quoted in the Art of Reflection by Ratnaguna).

http://www.windhorsepublications.com/product/the-art-of-reflection/

http://www.windhorsepublications.com/product/the-art-of-reflection/

Fortieth Mandala – Intention and Attention Mandala

Intention and Attention.

Clarity and Simplicity.

Honesty and Compassion.

Isolation and Integration.

Concentration and expansion.

Being present, here, in the body, in the mind and in the heart of life creating now the future choices.

Mindfully choosing to act with the clarity and confidence of honest and true intention.

Simplifying the surrounding, removing unnecessary shining distractions, reducing and choosing what to take in: which food, which drinks, which news, which information, which emotions, which sounds, which truth…

This is the journey I am choosing, one small change at the time, one commitment at the time. Continuing to bring attention to the deepest and honest intention, I move forward with new aspiration for the future grounded in the present.

Thirty-Third Mandala – The Rainbow Mandala

Meditating with a six-years-old can be tricky, it is a juggling game between letting go of the desire to do it right and join the fun when she wants to have some hearty laughs and trying to bring back then some focus on some simple deep breathing and visualisation. We don’t spend much time reading and “meditating” in bed before her sleep and it appears only a simple and ordinary activity but it brings infinite magic and wonder to my daily routine. I remind of something I read recently in a book – Haiku Mind by Patricia Donegan –  about “finding ordinary mind… how subtle and ordinary Haiku really was – and that because it is so ordinary it seems extraordinary.” Meditating with my daughter feels the same subtle and ordinary and eventually very much extraordinary.

Recently we were trying to practice a Meditation called the “Rainbow meditation” from the book “Buddha at bedtime” and that meditation, my daughter laughs and appreciation for the colours and for the idea of being filled with happiness, love, friendship, peace and gentleness inspired my last Mandala.

“Take a breath in… and out, and feel your body relax.

Picture yourself surrounded by red light. Imagine breathing in the red light, and it filling you with energy.

Now see yourself surrounded by orange light. Imagine breathing in the orange light, and it filling you with strength.

Next, visualise yourself surrounded by yellow light. Imagine breathing in the yellow light, and it filling you with happiness.

Then, picture yourself surrounded by green light. Imagine breathing in the green light, and it filling you with friendship.  – Here my daughter was very excited about being filled with friendship. –

Now see yourself surrounded by blue light. Imagine breathing in the blue light, and it filling you with peace.

Next picture yourself surround by Indigo light, breathing indigo light, and it filling you with gentleness. – Here we both had some doubts about what colour was indigo, but we both loved being filled with gentleness. –

Now, visualise yourself surrounded by violet light. Imagine breathing in the violet light, and it filling you with love.  – Obviously being romantic, in the most encompassing way, souls, we both loved this last part about love. –

Finally imagine a bright rainbow carrying all this energy, strength, happiness, friendship, peace, gentleness and love from your heart, into your home, your street, your town, your country… the whole world. Slowly the rainbow fade…” – From Buddha at Bedtime by Dharmachari Nagaraja.

These are the two books that inspired me

 

and this is my Rainbow Mandala

This idea of the ordinary life also inspired some walking writing meditation, that brings my attention to the little corner of the world where I am so lucky to live and to notice things which are at once ordinary and magnificent:

Thick solid grey clouds

Rays of light red and yellow filter through

Like a sign of God’s presence

 

Wonders of Nature

In a little green leave now red on the ground

In the sweet yawn of kitten half asleep in a bed of sun

In the joyful singing of many birds hidden safely in the branches of the trees

The vast blue sky, then almost black and sparkling with the light of countless little stars

A transparent white moon still high in the vast sky in the morning

All ordinary simple free gifts unnoticed too easily.

 

Of the miracles of our everyday life around us

How little we notice and know.

We are outsiders.

We are strangers to our world

inside us and outside us.

We take too much for granted and

We forget to be grateful for our innumerable blessings that

we notice only when we lose them.

Our life revolution is to notice and to appreciate the subtle wonders of everyday life.

Twenty-ninth Mandala – The creativity garden Mandala

A colourful garden is blossoming from the well of my creativity. Like love creativity grows with its use, more we give love more love we have to give. More we use our creativity more it blossoms in something new, we could not even imagine before, it opens new paths, it offers new perspectives and it brings a new sense of balance and fulfilment.

the importance of what I create is in the action itself and in the emotions I feel while I do it more than in the drawing, is in the new ideas that are born from it.

Often, it takes time and a series of trial and errors to find what type of activities really appeals to us so much that we will stick to it because we simply enjoying do it. It happened this with drawing Mandalas and it is now happening with this combination of mindful walking and poem writing exercises (Haiku) from a book I was recently reading (Writing your way by Manjusvara – https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7546923-writing-your-way?from_search=true). Paying attention to my surroundings while walking provided inspiration for short quick lines and for the smile on my face. The short poems that were popping up in my mind will probably look silly or not perfect to everybody else, but they gave me joy and this is what was important for me.

This is my mindful walking exercise and Haiku Practice:

One morning, on our way to school Francesca and I:

1 – Fallen red leaves

We pick them up together

Feeling pure joy

on my way to the train station:

2 – A spider’s web

So close to my face

I am not scared

3 – The sunshine

lighting up the green leaves

I am happy now

4 – Behind the leaves

cascading like raindrops

Cheerful robins sing

Crossing the bridge on the Liffey:

5- Wind on the river

Sudden grey clouds appear

My face is now wet.

Fourteenth Mandala – My mindfulness formal practice

This week mandala is about my efforts and understandings about formal mindfulness practice that I’m embracing and building one step at a time with repetitions, with studying, with sharing and connection with others who have engaged in similar paths.

It is a bit different Mandala there are more words than symbols or drawings. These are the words, the questions, the applications, the mantras I want to keep in mind and be aware not only during the formal practice but as part of my efforts for living a mindful life.

p.s. I noticed some errors… but as for all my creations I not only do not aim or pretend to be perfect or accurate, I do not even try. I simply enjoy the process and the reflection.

(01/05/2016)