The Flower Mandalas blog has a dual purpose:
- To explore the use of art as a means to healing and transformation.
- To ask for your help in completing The Flower Mandalas Project.
Purpose #1: My intent is to use my own Flower Mandalas and related ideas and thoughts as a springboard for a broader exploration of the topic of art, healing, and transformation. I invite you to contribute your own experiences with art, healing, and transformation to the Art, Healing, and Transformation group on Beliefnet.com. I hope that a lively discussion will ensue there. I will moderate this group and, with your permission, post a selection of your contributions on the Flower Mandalas blog. You may also contact me directly at phototransformations@davidbookbinder.com.
Purpose #2: I’d like to ask for your responses to the Flower Mandala images posted here, either briefly as comments to the blog posts or in detail on the Behance Network Fifty-Two Flower Mandalas page. My plan is to create a book of 52 Flower Mandala images, each one paired with an inspirational quotation and original essay which in some way complement the image. My hope is for each image-and-quote-and-essay triad to resonate with a fundamental aspect of human experience.
Thanks for listening and sharing.
- David
David J. Bookbinder, LMHC
Subscribe to the Flower Mandalas mailing list
posted January 17, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Funny you should ask. I have been pondering this issue recently, too.
I have recognized for a long time that the space artistic inspiration comes from, and the place I “go to” in meditation seem to be the same. Now I see that one is expressed outward as the creative principle, the other inward as transformation, and returning to Spirit. It’s all dancing in the bliss of my true nature. Sometimes Shiva’s dance creates the universe, and sometimes it pulls it back in. Some things are always being created and some dissolved.
When I express myself in the world coming from the Self, I embody the creative principle. It makes no difference if I create something material, an idea, space for yoga students to evolve. Even the most mundane activity can become art when it is performed with consciousness. It is Spirit expressing itself in a material way. It’s true that the specific make-up of our present identity gives its special flavor to what and how we create. That’s how we can bring our gift to the world. Sometimes/ often artists have unconscious access to the deeper levels, perhaps from channels created in previous lives. In this light, the preverbal big ego of some artists is a cosmic joke. It just reflects what the yogis call avidya, the case of mistaken identity we operate under in this life, in a big way.
posted January 22, 2008 at 10:20 am
david,
i too am an artist and my most true work is based on my spiritual nature.
one does not exist without the other in my world…..all is spirit, all is art.
i am sane when i take time to make beauty and order.
thank you for doing your lovely mandalas
jan