AUSTRALIA ~ The Antipodes

AUSTRALIA ~ The Antipodes
I love a sunburnt country / A land of sweeping plains / Of ragged mountain ranges / Of droughts and flooding rains / I love her far horizons / I love her jewel-sea / Her beauty and her terror / The wide brown land for me / ~ Dorothea Mackellar (1885-1968)

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Sunday, April 27, 2008

Sacred Circles

Pic by Linnie Stepping Stone ~ Southern Thailand

Pic by David J. Bookbinder ~ Flower Mandalas

A circle orbits our cosmic space
Weaving a still, sacred cocoon
~
The essence of this holy place
Fuses evolving times and landscapes
~
Like Spring becomes Spring again
Like a child becomes the joy of wonder
~
Like refreshed happiness in a sun shower
Like a reflowering of the whispering soul
~
Just a little sand, a lowly twig
And a yearning to circle the stars
~
FOOTNOTE: MANDALAS have been used the world over as symbolic representations of the Cosmos as it relates to the Self.The word "mandala" comes from a sanskrit root meaning "enclosing the essence" - and therefore "sacred circle". Indeed mandalas are round in shape and they provide us with a magic circle, a circular and holy ground, a cocoon where we can safely and efficiently perform self-transformation and cosmic fusion.C. G. Jung observed that, towards the end of a successful therapy, mandala-like images would appear in dreams & in artwork as if to express an experience of completion: the patient had become "rounded up", whole and the psyche was unified, balanced. Is it a coincidence if "circle" and "cycle" are close linguistic parents ? Being circles, mandalas are displaying the reoccurring cycles of evolution and they always tend to appear at the end / beginning of a cycle, be it individual or collective. As symbols of the psyche, mandalas continuously speak a language of Self-Centeredness within the personal wheel of life and of Self-Integration within the grand scheme of transpersonal realities.
"The power of the world always work in circles and everything tends to be round"...
Starwheels by Aya
Tibetan monks create beautiful sand mandalas and then, part of the celebration, is to erase them when they are complete, so they may be done again. And a simple mandala may be created in the sand with just a twig.
Mandalas are the essence of turning full circle.

11 comments:

SandyCarlson said...

This is wonderful. Cocoons are "just" small miracles that make transformation possible.
Writing in Faith: Poems

Anonymous said...

That was so good. Mandalas are an intrinsic part of Hinduism.

insanely inconclusive

spacedlaw said...

I love the idea of a sun shower.

Raven said...

Lovely across the board... I love the art work and the idea of a a sacred cocoon being woven around me. This was a lovely peaceful stop on the haiku highway. Thank you.

MHN said...

Beautifully done. Thank you for sharing.

Anonymous said...

Thank you for all of this. That is the best description of mandala I have read; I understand it. You have completed the prompt that I could only write in disjointed words. Yet so many poems are bittersweet and sad today. Is that the outcome of self-knowledge or a passage that we must endure for better understanding?

Tumblewords: said...

Exquisite work! I haven't looked at mandalas for a long time but this post surely stirs my interest.

Barrie said...

What an interesting post!

little wing writer said...

beautiful words and photos... thank you for the info on mandalas....

storyteller said...

cosmic images
sacredly expressive of
our experience.

Interestingly, your quote from Starwheels by Aya ‘echos’ the quote I used from Black Elk when I did my OSI for Circles, so we must have been on 'similar' wavelengths that week.
Hugs and blessings,

Geraldine said...

Absolutely beautiful!

PS: I am adding you to my blogroll today.

www.mypoeticpath.wordpress.com

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