Mandalas of Life

"Our life is an appenticeship to the truth that around every circle another can be drawn; that there is no end in nature, but every end is a beginning, and under every deep a lower deep opens" - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Funny how we never see certain beautiful things in our life. The occurence of the circular shape within nature is everywhere. St. Augustine described the nature of God as a circle whose centre was everywhere and its circumference nowhere. It is said that Archimedes' last dying words were "Noli turbare circulos meos" translated means "Do not disturb my circles". We use the phrase "circle of life" to describe the cyclical process of birth and death, and rebirth. The circle embodies both evolution and devolution,

So an exercise for the mind today: pay attention to the things around you, within you, and beyond yourself. How many circles both physical and metaphysical do you see?

To begin, meditate on the image above; a stone cast into a quiet pool creates a seemingly never-ending ripple of circle upon circle. My musings this morning brought to mind the following: the earth, tears, a drop of rain, the arc of a rainbow, the womb and the curl of a growing fetus, the circular orbits of the planets in our solar system, the planets themselves, tornadoes, the curl of an ocean wave, a bighorn ram's horn, blood cells, eggs, musical notes printed on paper, a carousel, a sand dollar, a nautilus, soap bubbles, a circle of friends, a wedding band.

The ancient American Anazazi used the spiral in much of their art. You can see it in the little figure of Kokopelli (the flutist) with his (her?) spiral headdress, or in the simple lone spiral on a cliff face. Across the ocean, England's Stonehenge is a mysterious circle of stones. Mankind seems endlessly fascinated by the circle, recently evidenced by the phenomenom of crop circles. The circle is a part of us, a part of the universe. Open your round eyes and see...