A walk for a walk’s sake
Paul Klee’s At the Core, 1935
One of the mantras of Monthly Mandala is taking a dot on a circular walk from a place of creative stillness.
This is inspired by the artist Paul Klee who says art “is an active line on a walk, moving freely, without a goal.” This equates to the Buddhist idea of ‘going nowhere’, the art of sitting still and letting go.
This can be easier said than done. It’s like meditation: it requires repeated practice, hence Monthly Mandala. Each month we press the pause button on life and sit down together to talk a line for a walk. This is the activity within stillness. Opposites at play.
Oftentimes we are out of balance. This notion is embedded within Ayurveda, an ancient vedic healthcare system with contemporary applications that seeks to redress dynamic imbalance.
While we might generally turn up at our GP when we feel unwell, the Ayurvedic system aims to treat imbalance at the subtlest level. This is even before we know we are unwell. How does this work? Ayurveda’s approach is rooted within nature and the elements of air, earth, fire, water and ether (space). Given that the weather and the seasons are forever changing, so are we too. Simplicity and complexity at play.
We often describe ourselves in terms of a weather system, just as we might describe the weather outside. Sometimes how we feel matches the weather and at other times not. This is like the circles we draw each month in Monthly Mandala. Sometimes they are in tune with the seasons and sometimes not. We can even think of ourselves as having interior and exterior weather. We might be coping with something on the outside yet experience it differently on the inside.
This is in line with the psychoanalyst Carl Jung’s thinking about mandala making in that they both self-reveal and self-heal. By paying attention to what we notice is out of balance in our lives, we create the space for something to be different. We may not know what it is, yet this is a starting point. Sailing is an apt metaphor. We need to balance the boat to sail efficiently. We need to understand where we are on the chart. We need the ability to course correct. It is the art of learning to be attuned to the weather, sea state and tides. Going nowhere is everywhere.
In 1984 Dr Candice Pert, a neuroscientist and proponent of alternative medicine, discovered neuropeptides. These are chemical messengers in the brain that can signal or communicate to other cells. She coined the phrase Body-Mind to illustrate that every single cell in our body can think and feel. As we have over 70 trillion cells in our bodies, that is a lot of communication and potential for transformation.
Central to Monthly Mandala is the idea of cellular health and planetary health. This is systemic thinking, recognising that we are both whole and part of the whole cosmos. This maps on to both contemporary and ancient principles reflecting the laws of nature. Indeed, mandala history records that the principle of the mandala is the cosmos.
When we create mandalas each month, we are literally working at multiple levels, many of which are so complex and intricate that it would take more than a lifetime to comprehend. We are working at the tip of the iceberg, yet with an appreciation for hidden depths. So much is unseen, yet drawing mandalas supports making more of the invisible visible.