The family of things

We have found that a very handy tool to use in meditation or any quiet practice is drawings. It helps to free us from the tyranny of the rational mind and leads to unexpected insight and discoveries, literally something not being thought of.

You can make your own drawings or experiment with doodles. The use of existing drawings or intricate designed patterns is another option. There are lovely mandalas (literally meaning “circle”) available on the internet that can be downloaded or printed.

At our recent introductory retreat into mindfulness, we had copies of mandalas available for retreatants to choose from should they wish to use it in their meditation sessions. For the uninformed it might have looked like pages from a child’s colouring book lying scattered on the table. After you’ve chosen your mandala or mandalas (we suggested that they take two each at this specific retreat) it is totally up to you to use it or discard it. And should you decide to use it the ways in which you do so are legion. You can just look at the patterns, or you can colour it in by applying paint, pastels, crayons or pencils. In whatever manner you choose.

The process actually starts with choosing the specific mandala that speaks to you. For reasons often unknown to you at that stage you are drawn to certain patterns or images. In then deciding what to do with that specific manadala the process is taken further.

The one that I’ve chosen on the retreat and decided to work on had an almost “loose” design. None of the elements within the big outer circle touch each other.

I then decided to colour it in with colouring pencils but using only three colours – blue, green and red. Initially I played with the idea of using a specific colour for a specific shape for instance red for the circles, green for the triangles and blue for the background. But for some reason or the other it finally appeared that all three colours had to be used throughout in all the shapes and for the background as well. In some instances green might have been dominant for example but blue and red were present in that particular shape or on that surface as well. At other times the roles were reversed. Some shapes asked for a different texture, others for a change in intensity or shading, but all the time the three colours were used.

In describing this process I use phrases like “I decided” or “I chose” creating the perception that I was the dominant artist deciding the outcome. In reality it was more a case of being lead, somehow following the tone set by the image itself. Not so much a case of doing, but much more a matter of something done unto me. 

From experience I know that the most meaningful outcomes are to be expected when I let go and go with the flow. I set aside all notions of creating artistic masterpieces, works of art that bear witness to my mastery of colour schemes and shading techniques. I do not venture into assigning beforehand any symbolic value to a colour, a shape or a surface. No effort is made to create or reveal layers of deeper meaning. The motto in the doing is: no judging, no comparing, just doing. I am merely a person enjoying the colouring in of a picture. The more childlike the approach the better. In essence it is a meditative act.

When I was done on Sunday, my mandala looked like this

It has to be said that there is no time limit set for the completion of a mandala. I have worked on one for almost a month. At another time it took a morning.

After the colouring (in some cases it can be the drawing) of the image it can be used as the focus point of your meditation and allowed to grow on and work in you. Once again it is impossible to work with time frames. Sometimes you can carry it along for weeks in your journal without any apparent movement. On Sunday morning it opened up to me in a single meditation session. But in all fairness I must say that it was more like the final stage (and maybe it isn’t the final stage!) of a process that has been running its course for months in my reading, conversations with Matilda, journaling, general living and quiet time.

In an effort to now describe the outcome of last Sunday’s meditation it is almost impossible to keep mandala, quotes, images, phrases, words and thoughts apart. Everything became intertwined and I am unable to say exactly where the mandala stirred a thought or where something that I’ve heard illuminated a shape or image. Colours tinted words and letters gave voice to patterns. But all of a sudden they all came together in this symphony of meaning that brought clarity and awe.

My first impression looking at the mandala is that of looking down into a huge bowl where the strangest collection of objects are floating: planets, fish heads disconnected from the rest of fish skeletons, ball bearings, tennis balls, kites, four children dancing in a circle, tropical fish, stealth bombers, a flower opening up revealing its pollen, delegates around a conference table. Looked at from another angle there is a compass with its four directions. Sometimes the image as a whole reminded me of a Viking shield.

Nothing touching each other, but all held within this outer circle. Within this containing outer circle there are 4 smaller implied or softer circles that I’ve indicated with yellow in this image:

They do not draw attention to themselves but they are present, making an imprint. 

~ o ~ 

The poet Rainer Maria Rilke said that in the deepest and most important things, we are unutterably alone. There are many times and countless situasions where I experience exactly that. When I am absolutely convinced that I do not belong. 

On day two of our retreat Matilda read the poem Wild geese by Mary Oliver to us. 

You do not have to be good. 

You do not have to walk on your knees 

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. 

You only have to let the soft animal of your body 

love what it loves. 

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. 

Meanwhile the world goes on. 

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain 

are moving across the landscapes, 

over the prairies and the deep trees, 

the mountains and the rivers. 

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, 

are heading home again. 

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, 

the world offers itself to your imagination, 

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - 

over and over announcing your place 

in the family of things. 

“...announcing your place in the family of things.” 

That is exactly what the mandala is telling me as well. It may seem as if everything is just a loose jumble of things with no connection. But look closer, everything has the same colour. I belong. I am part of. Along with constellations and death and machine parts and ancient tribes and technology and history and future and fellow human beings and animals and plants and work and play and politics in all four directions and as far as the eye can see. 

We all float in the same container, are held by it. But the circle is not only on the outside. It is also delicately present throughout the mandala, announcing itself by mere hints left on objects. Not visible but absolutely there. 

In this case the mandala guided me back to the words. Those of Timaeus of Locris who said that God is a circle whose centre is everywhere and circumference nowhere. That is what holds everything. Together. 

Colours and phrases, words and shapes happening in the silence of a retreat. And where I was initially just absolutely aware of the message of it all, I now have a tangible image to return to every time the feeling of absolute loneliness arrives. I will take it by the hand, lead it to my mandala and say: “There, right in the middle of this picture are four children dancing. I am the one at the top amid my family of things. But have you noticed? God is dancing right in the centre of us all.” 

I am not alone. 

George