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Mandala Blessings:
Art that Heals and Transforms
by Bonnie Bell |
Mandalas are graceful images that depict a sacred space.
More than just beautiful art, these images are also
empowering tools for positive transformation. Used for
centuries in Hindu, Buddhist and Native American
spiritual practice (with counterparts in many other
cultures) mandalas are becoming increasingly popular in
our time. In this era of visual news, when images of
destruction reach us within minutes of occurring,
mandalas offer us a much-needed visual antidote. They
are wellsprings of blessing energy that we can draw on
for regeneration of body and spirit.
What follows are some ways that you can engage with
mandalas to enrich your life. The emergence of so many
styles of mandala art in our modern culture points to
their deep appeal to our human psyche. The archetypal
shapes and content of these images help us unlock layers
of awareness, light up new levels of intuition, and
balance bodily and emotional states.
The word mandala is used here to describe an image
that is designed with sacred intention; that uses
geometry, symmetry, and color to convey information and
confer blessings. The word "mandala" means
mystic circle. Most mandalas are structured around a
circular or symmetrical enclosure. The image thus
becomes a chalice that holds indwelling presences and
energetic information. Both traditional and modern
mandalas contain many significant symbols, colors, and
sometimes deities or totems. Every shape resonates with
deep levels of meaning. Our intuitive minds are very
responsive to this kind of visual code. By gazing at a
mandala, or by creating one ourselves, we tap into
otherwise inaccessible sources of transformational help.
Whether we understand these sources to be within
ourselves or coming from spirit beyond, we can be
greatly enlivened by their gifts. I speak of this art with passion because I have been
helped very deeply by contemplating and creating
mandalas. During a recent health crisis that could not
really be addressed by allopathic medicine, these images
have been a constant source of comfort and inspiration.
In a very real way, I have drawn on mandalas as a source
of "beauty-medicine". They have given me
support, not only for my personal healing, but for
global healing as well. When the anguishing events of
9/11 took place, I immediately turned to mandalas for
help. My partner, David Todd, and I spent the afternoon
of that heart-rending day creating a mandala called
"World-Healer" (below). It was one way we could
transmute our grief and pain into an image that we hoped
could likewise help others heal. Creating and meditating
on this mandala was something constructive that
we could do in the midst of devastation.
The word "constructive" points to the
profound service that mandalas perform. We are
constantly assembling a picture of the world based on
what we see around us. In modern culture, the pictorial
input we receive comes primarily from commercial and
political interests. We are literally bombarded by
imagery that is designed to sell us products and shape
our thoughts and emotions. Mandalas offer us a different
kind of visual input based on sacred and symbolic
content. The elements in mandalas link us into our own
deep awareness and to sources of transpersonal help.
Mandalas empower us by providing visual building blocks
with which we can construct a new, uplifting picture of
our world, and thus help re-vision it.
How Mandalas Can Support You
There is no right or wrong way to enjoy mandala art.
First and foremost, trust your heart and eyes to guide
you into relationship with these images. However, you
can enhance your experience by considering some specific
ways to work with this form of art. We will explore here
how mandalas can help you to transform and expand your
awareness, how they can bring you harmonizing and
healing energies, and how these images can empower you
and your environment.
Expanding awareness—Since ancient times, it has
been understood that gazing at a mandala can change your
state. Within the spiritual context, mandalas are highly
respected as a tool for transformation. Mandalas confer
initiations and can provide instruction for a person’s
entire practice. Primarily through the growth of
Hinduism and Buddhism in the West, we have been
re-introduced to this spirit-elevating function of
mandalas. Many other traditions, including indigenous
religions around the world, also work with images that
can be considered mandalas or which share their sacred
purpose. Regardless of your spiritual path, you can
benefit from meditating on a mandala. The spacious
beauty of these images invites you to open and expand
your attention. Figures depicted in mandalas may also
help you connect with spirit-guides who can help
navigate the open seas of consciousness.
Within the psychological domain, mandalas are also
used to expand awareness. Dr. C. J. Jung was a
forerunner in bringing mandalas into this form of active
use. He saw that his patients could retrieve crucial
information from primal levels of consciousness by
drawing mandalas. Through the process of drawing a
mandala, they were making visible an inner crucible of
self-content. Jung felt that even symbolic content from
the collective levels of consciousness rose to the
surface in this process. Once seen, all this content
becomes usable for growth. Even if you don’t draw a
mandala yourself, you can work with one to pull up
information from the depths of your feeling. Pick an
image that really speaks to you and use it like a map to
guide you to your own hidden treasures. You may want to
keep a journal for recording what surfaces through such
contemplation.
David and I found, when we began making
Nature-sourced mandalas, that this form of art could
also open an amazing visual portal into the Earth. Not
only revelations from the heavenly domains and the inner
psyche, but also from the material realms can be
accessed via the archetypal structure of mandalas.
Whereas mandalas had originally helped us journey
into cosmic realms, we discovered that they could take
us deep into the realms of matter. We tell the story of
our heaven-meets-earth experience in our book GaiaStar
Mandalas: Ecstatic Visions of the Living Earth.
Mandalas support consciousness-expansion because
their symbolic geometries and patterning information
resonate within us at so many levels. Their visual
messages work like key-codes—they give us access to
levels of awareness that are always potentially within
reach, but not readily contacted. A mandala holds open a
gateway into these wider dimensions of self and world.
This helps us go beyond the limiting pressures of daily
awareness into a space where we can dive deep and soar
high.
One way to optimize your meditation with mandalas is
to bring your other senses into play. The different
sensory elements synergize with each other to enhance
your experience. You can add the dimension of scent by
burning incense or diffusing essential oils; you can
create a sound-scape with your favorite mediation music.
Lighting candles or even wearing a special garment may
also help set the tone for your journey. Allow your
breathing to calm and deepen as you regard the image and
let the mandala take you where you want to go. You will
be enacting a ritual that has been valued throughout the
ages.
Healing and harmonizing—More and more people
use mandalas to enhance their health, both physical and
emotional. Some mandalas are specifically created for
healing, but it seems that almost all mandalas
communicate a restorative message. The structure of
mandalas (usually symmetrical and centered) works
together with their inherent blessing intention to
provide comforting support to those in need.
Mandalas convey that harmony is possible, even in
times of chaos and challenge. When you sit down to
regard a mandala, the two sides of your brain and body
can come into balance. Your nervous system can drop out
of fight-or-flight mode into a restful condition. As
your eyes follow the patterns toward the center of the
image, you are drawn into the core—of yourself, of
your feelings. At the same time, you open out into a
naturally expanded awareness. You come into a state of
relaxation. This not only helps your bodily systems to
operate optimally, it also supports your emotional
healing. The steady blessing force of the mandala holds
you in its field, so that even difficult feelings can be
surfaced and processed in its gentle embrace.
You may also receive guidance on your healing process
while meditating on a mandala. Your state of
contemplative openness as well as the symbolic content
of the mandala helps you retrieve this kind of
information from within yourself or from spiritual
sources. Additionally, you can use a mandala to set your
own intention to get well. By speaking your desire aloud
or simply meditating on it, you can invest the image
with your prayerful intention. The mandala then becomes
a constant visual reminder and touchstone for ongoing
healing. You can also do this for a friend or loved one
who is ill.
An event that reflects the healing power in mandalas
took place when David and I showed our work at an art
festival in Sausalito, California. We had just completed
a series of thirty-five images that we call Healing
Mandalas, several of which were displayed on one wall of
our booth. Just before closing time, a woman came toward
us. She was walking with a cane, and looked very tired.
As she came into our space, she first gave a great sigh
of relief, and then burst into tears. When she could
speak, she told us that she was having radical cancer
treatment. She had the urgent intuition that she should
go to the festival because there was something there
that she really needed to help her recover. Even though
it wasn’t easy for her, she walked all around the art
fair looking for her medicine piece. When she saw the
mandala on our wall (one made from a star-gazer lily,
see below), it gave her a tremendous message of hope and
blessing. As she walked away with the mandala in her
backpack, we were very grateful to have been there.
In addition to helping restore body and emotions,
mandalas can support healing of the soul and spirit.
Some people use mandalas for shamanic journeying and
soul-retrieval ceremonies. These images work like visual
bridges to help re-connect the earthly and heavenly
aspects of self. In their very structure, mandalas
integrate up and down, left and right, within and
beyond. They are images of wholeness, and this message
works at every level of being to help you become whole.
Empowering you and your environment—To be
empowered by a mandala is to draw enrichment and
strength from viewing it. Much like a window lets in the
light of the sun, these images are openings to radiant
sources. In addition to being gateways out into
spacious realms, they are also gateways in.
Through these artful portals, light-blessings pour into
our world.
When using a mandala for empowerment, you are
focusing less on where it can take you and more on what
you can absorb from it. You may ask for empowerment for
a specific purpose (for instance, the launch of a
business or the blessing of a partnership), or simply to
be energized. Part of the empowerment may come in the
form of intuitive information that shifts your
perspective.
This empowering function of mandalas is very valuable
in times like these. So much information comes your way
that tends to dis-empower you and leave you feeling
helpless. It is important to locate sources of profound
help that keep your spirits up and give you enabling
energy and guidance. When you sit down to contemplate a
mandala, don’t be hesitant to drink in the good
"juice" that flows to you from the image.
Mandalas are created to shine this blessing-force, and
it fulfills their purpose when you use them as a vibrant
resource.
A mandala can also empower a place in your home or
office. Such sacred pieces work a kind of natural feng
shui in rooms where they are hung. Their radiant
presence can really shift the vibration of the
environment. Mandalas offer a way to create sacred space
in a simple and elegant fashion.
Share the Blessings
I see modern mandalas as expressions of an unbroken
stream of medicine art that stretches back to the roots
of human culture. We have always looked to art to
inspire and transform us. Many of us are being
re-introduced to the healing power of art through
mandalas. With their archetypal content, these images
reach across the boundaries of time and traditions. In
their universal language of shape and color, they
broadcast their healing messages to all. Enjoy mandalas
and share them. They are generators of brightness in a
world that needs light.
Copyright © 2002 Bonnie Bell & David
Todd. All rights
reserved.
For Bonnie Bell and her partner, David Todd,
creating sacred art was an answer to a deep calling to
serve a world in transition. Though neither was
originally an artist, they immersed themselves in the
creation of collages and mandalas. They discovered a
visual alchemy: they took close-up photographs of
natural objects (such as flowers, feathers, and stones),
and re-mixed them digitally into symmetrical mandalas.
The spontaneous natural shapes and intentional
geometries in these images work together to convey a
great deal of uplifting information. Bonnie and David’s
work has evolved into a new form of medicine art that
conveys the blessing energies of Star/spirit and Gaia/matter.
Thus, they call their creations GaiaStar Arts.
Bonnie and David’s
publications include their book, GaiaStar Mandalas:
Ecstatic Visions of the Living Earth, containing 90
full-color mandalas and the story of how their art came
into being. Their Healing Mandalas calendar, Healing
Mandalas screen-savers, and Flower Mandalas
notecards are all ways to share mandala blessings. They
have also created a divination deck The GaiaStar
Codex: Seeds of a Turned On World. This set of 64
cards takes its users on a visionary journey of global
emergence. Bonnie and David also offer fine art prints
of many of their works as well as custom creations.
Prior to becoming an artist,
Bonnie was an educator, midwife, and alchemical healer.
She founded the non-profit Center for Sacred Arts. David
was a writer and editor of a spiritual press and
co-founder of a software company. The two artists work
side by side in making their images. It is art created
in sacred partnership—between two people, with the
Earth, and with allies in many dimensions. Bonnie and
David’s goal is to put their art technologies into the
hands of people who want to help re-vision the world. To
learn more about their art and transformational
offerings, please visit http://www.bellandtodd.com.
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