One Step At A Time

Cross section of a kiwi.

Mandalas exist in nature and in every culture of the world. Based on the circle, they symbolize wholeness. Painted mandalas often tell a story. If you have heard about mandalas, most likely it would be the sand mandalas created by a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks who, after completing their mandala, destroy it to emphasize the impermanence of all things. The symbology of these Tibetan mandalas is based on traditional Buddhist teachings.

Tibetan monks creating traditional Buddhist sand mandala.

My work with mandalas began thirty years ago when I first read Carl Jung's work with mandalas in Memories, Dreams, Reflections. Jung's research led him to the discovery that the mandala is a symbol of the self or soul. After making spontaneous unstructured mandalas for ten years, I was introduced to the structure of Tibetan Buddhist mandalas and a Chinese tradition of painting with gouache, an opaque watercolor paint.

For over twenty years I have been painting mandalas based on the Tibetan Buddhist structure but using contemporary personal symbology. I found that following the Tibetan Buddhist structure - concentric rings from the outside to the center - leads to a journey inward that can be transformative. One moves from the fire ring to a transition ring, narrative ring, sea of life, four portals, one's inner garden/the self, and ends the journey by painting a final outside rim to contain the entire inner process.

After experiencing the power of the mandala in my own life, fifteen years ago I began teaching Mandala Journey classes. I now teach two: one that is based on visionary dreaming and one that is based on exploring a person's ancestral heritage. This year I am teaching a Dream Mandala Journey and I hope to share snip-its from this class in a series of blog posts.

LiDoña Wagner Heritage Mandala tracing ancestral journey from
Ethiopia to the Mediterranean and Northern Europe.

Looking at the sand painting and heritage mandala above, one cannot imagine how it is possible to create such a complicated piece of art. Without going into all of the details of our process, I want to share an example of the one step at a time element of this form of mandala creation.

Often it is persons with little or no painting experience that want to take a Mandala Journey. They may be at a point in their lives where they 

• want to explore new life directions,
• are seeking greater meaning, or 
• know intuitively that their deepest wisdom lies within rather than in the external world. 

For this reason, I begin each journey with introductory sessions to acquaint them with using a brush, the role of water in interaction with paper and paint, the basics of color mixing, a simple form of meditation, and trusting intuition. The result of this introduction is the completion of their first mandala, a color wheel that they can use for making color choices as they create a dream mandala in gouache. 

My most recent color wheel. 

Although I make recommendations, I allow each student to choose her/his own set of red, yellow, and blue gouache paints. By the time they have completed their color wheel, they have acquired basic painting skills and are ready to create a dream mandala in gouache. One of my basic teaching principles is to go on the journey with my students. Thus, I also create a color wheel with the basic red, yellow, and blue gouache paints that I will use in my own mandala.  

After drawing a basic Tibetan Buddhist mandala structure in pencil, we begin with the ring of fire. Since time immemorial, humans have used fire as a form of protection. In painting a ring of fire, we surround ourselves with protection as we begin our inward journey to the center of the self. Below are student examples of beginning and completing a fire ring.

This student has done a marvelous job of laying in her base color, finding her flame form,
creating a scaffold of flame forms in white, meditating to find the color of the form,
 and painting over the white scaffold with her chosen color.

Another student has completed her fire and transition rings.
Her progression is described below.

Unlike Tibetan Buddhist monks, when we begin our mandala none of us knows, or needs to know, what our finished mandala will look like. Too often in our lives we try to jump ahead to conclusions or hesitate to begin a process unless we know where it will end. But life is lived one moment at a time and our mandala journey process requires staying in the moment rather than goal setting and accomplishment.

We always work in a clockwise direction, going completely around the circle before taking the next step. To give you a sense of this one step at a time evolution, below is a progression of my own fire ring. 

One step at a time, I did my white scaffold, painted my flame form with a shade of red,
added orange (barely discernible), and added purple that looks like black.

One step at a time,  I added the blue triangle, refreshed and added to
the orange, and put in dots with a lighter shade of my base color.

The whole form cried out for cool colors. I surrounded the blue triangle with white.
I doodled to find an addition to my flame form. I meditated and found a shade of green
for the added stroke (my base color plus a touch of black).

After changing the teardrop to green to go with the new green stroke, to see the
negative space around the entire form, I placed white paper on either side of one form.

I added a green reverse comma and changed the orange blob above it to green as well.

Now go back and look again at the completed fire ring of the second student above. Working one step at a time, going all the way around the circle with each step, she originally painted an orange stroke around her blue flame form. After meditating, she removed the orange around the blue form and replaced it with a shade of green. She darkened her original base color - an absolutely awesome accomplishment for a beginning student. Her examination of the negative space led to connecting lines above and below, an addition of red, a shade of brown, and a sun shape in the brown, each one step at a time going clockwise around her mandala.

One step at a time each of us will paint our way to the center, incubating and working with our dreams, maintaining contact with nature (fire, water, obstacles, gardens), and arriving at a symbol of the self at this moment in time. It is like watching a seed become a stem, become a bud, become a flower, become a seed, etc.

This way of working is not for everyone. For some people the quickly done spontaneous mandala is enough. For myself, I have learned that taking one step at a time is an effective way to move through life transitions and allow the future to unfold. Whenever I am faced with an overwhelming task the mandala reminds me that I don't have to know all that must be done before I can begin. All that is needed is to meditate and find one step that will move me along the journey. And even that is mutable. In meditation I may discern that the step I took needs to be removed and another step taken. Welcome to the journey of life!