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
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posted September 2, 2008 at 12:49 pm
Hi David,
I guess if one did not realize the essence of this “magnification of what is expressed as energy,” then one might not ever understand how working with psychological insides could have lead to expression?
On this point it is worth to look up “Liminocentric structures” for comparative views and how this process is at the heart of science for me. Seeking wholeness.
Current comment deals with this point of “emergence” as I am contending.
Best,
posted September 3, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Compassion means attempting to look with love the actions of others. What makes a person act as they do? I can look at this flower all day long and see many different things, but yet never understand the mystery of the flower. I cannot know anything of the inner workings of the flower unless the flower so chooses to reveal itself or unless I also exhibit some of the same qualities of the flower, and yet, I am only attempting to guess. Compassion means looking at other’s actions without being judgmental, but with understanding eyes. That is very difficult to do with those whose actions toward you are very hurtful. In this flower there is a touch of red, which could be a touch of pain, a touch of beauty, or a touch of being wounded. Each one of us has that touch of being wounded. I just want to scream from the bottom of my being: WHAT LORD, WHAT HAS BEEN DONE TO THIS POOR SOUL TO CAUSE HER TO TREAT ME THIS WAY? WHAT DO I REMIND HER OF? HOW CAN I STOP DYING? I AM HURTING! I AM BLEEDING? I AM BEING DRAINED! No one sees it because what good does it do to share it? I have tried to go to the proper authorities. I have attempted to talk to the person. Somewhere there is blindness; her blindness, my blindness, the blindness of those whom I communicate with. The drops of blood fall under the depths of shadows of blackness. Shadows serve a purpose, many purposes. Will the shadows fill up with blood or will they fall into the abyss that is under the shadow? The flower is so beautiful. Compassion is beautiful. Lord, is the emptying necessary? Is there a purpose for her treatment towards me? Is the dying necessary? Trust! Compassion! This is what I hear that is asked of me.
posted September 5, 2008 at 8:04 am
Sometimes what is required of us is a compassionate distance, a compassionate letting go.
posted December 14, 2009 at 8:27 am
Dear David,
I’m wondering if the beautiful image Daffodil II (daffodil%20II) is subject to copyright?
Look foward to hearing form you.
Kind regards,
Tony Humphpreys