Target is the fifth stage of the Great Round of Mandala, and in Mandala Magic we study it during May. It’s nearly July and here I am finally posting my entries. It seems that this year I just can’t catch up with myself when it comes to recording my work. Oh my!
In real time I’ve just put the finishing touches to my Stage Seven lesson materials to be released next week. This means that I’m ostensibly working on three or four stages at once, preparing the lessons, creating my own response and recording that response, all in parallel.
One of the beautiful things about the Great Round is how each of the stages emerges seamlessly from the stage gone before and flows into that which follows next.
How accurately it mirrors our own development…
The first mandala for this stage of Target – which sees us begin to take a stand for who we are and what we believe in – relates to a question that I’ve been working closely with in my own medicine journey.
Understanding all those acts of self-realisation in this life so far, I am faced with how vital it is for me to become crystal clear on that for which I have the most longing – and to surrender fully to it.
For many years, I thought I had that question down. Since this last round of self exploration, I’ve been sitting with only one answer, no matter which question I ask. From every angle, it comes down to only one thing and to be honest, there’s a part of me that still keeps hoping for a change of direction.
When we dissolve all of the cultural and familial conditioning to which we’ve been subjected and enter into an honest appraisal of That which we actually are, then we must be prepared to endure all that means, though we may feel at our most vulnerable.
This is part of the lesson of Stage Five – Target – where we learn how to employ the courage which resides in all of us to see us through.
The well developed and highly structured psyche can be a real obstacle here – at least in my own experience. The imagined self, with all the different aspects that entails, is a real fighter.
Surrendering so much carefully constructed architecture doesn’t come easy. In my experience, it requires dedicated personal practice to make an impact.
For me that has best been achieved in partnership with plant medicines and the month of May saw the conclusion of a period of close companionship with these millenia-old teachers, clearing the way for this next evolution of my human Being to take shape.
Stage Five’s Found Inspirations
If you’ve been following along with this series, then you’ll know that i create some found poetry (I call these #foundinspirations) for each of the stages.
During this stage, I created nineteen poems, but just over half survived, as it took me so long to get around to photographing them!
Can you find any that resonate with your lived experience? (Click on the image to increase the size and read the text more easily.)
All images on this post shot on the iPhone 6s and edited using the ColorStory app for iOS.
