Category Archives: Issues

Sex

  By The Mandala Lady | June 13, 2011 - 1:10 pm |
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For this mandala reading, They guided me to draw/color the mandala first without knowing its intent. About halfway through, the latest sex scandals came to mind, our society’s issues with sex, and then ultimately the joy of sex and how most of us have forgotten or missed the point of it.

Mandala Reading: Sex

Mandala Reading: Sex (inverted view)

Personal Background

My parents raised me in the strict/formal ways of Catholicism. Being the only girl in my family put me in a situation where I had to rely on my mother for information about the birds and the bees…which was the LAST thing she ever wanted to discuss with me. Heck, I learned about menstruation by going with a girlfriend to a girl scout movie presentation on the subject.  And of course the Catholic school I went to lacked any form of sex eduction in their curriculum. surprise, surprise :-)

Around 10 or 11, I learned about sex from a girlfriend of mine who heard about it from an older boy down the street. Unfortunately another girlfriend overheard the conversation, which included using the ‘F’ word, who then told her mother, who in turn told our mothers. My mother freaked out on me and then asked if I had any questions. Yikes! Thus was my glorious introduction to sex.

Giant disclaimer:  I don’t blame my mom at all for the way she handled it…she truly did the best that she could and only did what was probably done to her (and those before her) when she was growing up.

The bottom line from all of the powers that be in my life growing up: sex bad, dirty, disgusting…until you get married. So by the time I married my first husband, I assumed that during the wedding ceremony, some magical thing would happen that would turn my psychological switch from “sex…bad” to “sex…good”. It failed to happen…until much later in my life and with lots of therapy…and then only partially.

The Mandala Reading

Which now brings us to the mandala for this reading. The whole time I painted it, I kept hearing joyful, exciting, fun, delightful, energizing, beautiful, flowing…all these positive words about sex. Most of our culture, however, missed the boat and distorted what truly can be a wonderful experience. We let a few misguided, sad, hurtful, sanctimonious and deceitful people/organizations control and distort sex to the point where we tend to go to extremes about it (from frigidity to extremism)…thus forgetting all about the basic joy of it.

The hippies of the 60′s had the message right with “make love not war”; unfortunately they also tainted that message with a destructive lifestyle.

We continue to hear reports to this day of people in positions of power abusing that power by using sex as an expression of that very same power…have you read a newspaper/blog lately? :-)

Because our society makes sex to be such a taboo issue, more and more people, especially young people, are drawn to it BECAUSE of its taboo status. Unfortunately they go at it with limited knowledge and thought because we lack any healthy discussions about sex. I suspect that most of the people promoting abstinence rarely practiced what they preach. I’m just saying… And God forbid we let a nipple be viewed over the airwaves for just a nanosecond…but violence/killing/destruction is okay. what?!?!

Anyway, this mandala reminds us of what sex can be…a joyful, exciting, energizing, and loving expression of our souls…one consenting human being to/with another.

I’m grateful for this mandala reading; for the reminder of the wonderful possibilities. I look forward to an exciting, fun-filled future. :-)

joyfully, Maureen
The Mandala Lady

hatred

  By The Mandala Lady | May 14, 2011 - 12:51 pm |
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Yesterday I received a nudge to do another mandala reading with the subject being ‘hatred.’ When I asked what kind of hatred. The answer? They are all the same.

This mandala reading turned into quite a surprise for me. Prior to doing it, I half expected it to be this dark, ominous drawing with lots of dark, yukky colors. Instead it became this rather delightful piece (peace).

'hatred' Mandala Reading (click to see larger view)

You know that phrase “between a rock and a hard place?” Hatred resides there…deep in an abyss, a crevice. It becomes all crammed into this little space with little room to breathe or expand. Its focus is very limited; so much so that the only thing that can be experienced in that space is hatred; everything goes through this veil of hatred.

We can easily point to hatred when we see it in others. Throughout our world horrible acts of hatred happen every day and we think they should change, they should stop, someone should stop them. Ironically, people from both sides of the same issue often feel this way about the ‘other side.’

And then what about the hatred within ourselves? Just yesterday, after I knew I’d be doing this reading, I caught my self saying “I hate ….” about something rather trivial. It made me stop. How many times throughout the day do I say to myself “I hate …” without even realizing it?

I really appreciate how this mandala shows us the smallness of hatred and the expansiveness of joy. The whole upper part just exudes joy and light from within the mandala and far beyond its border. Looking at the inverted mandala, we can see that the more we move into the hatred space, the smaller and tighter we become, without anywhere else to go.

"hatred" Mandala - inverted

The mandala shows how we can climb up out of the abyss to either plateau; both bring us to joy. I also believe that we can reach joy without having to work so hard. All it really takes to convert hatred into joy is a change of mind, which immediately elevates us to the realm of joy.

The choice is ours. We can stay in the crevice of hatred, cramped and limited in focus. Or we can transform that hatred into light, where we can expand and grow with boundless joy.

joyfully,

Maureen, The Mandala Lady

ps: One way to experience joy is to color mandalas :-)