Manda-la means “circle” or “center” in Sanskrit.
The circle delimits a space, within which we can express our emotions and moods. The Mandala is like a magnifying glass, it captures what is in the unconscious and manifests it, through shapes and colors.
In our personal Mandala creativity melts with meditation.
Creating a Mandala is a process accessible to everyone, both to those who know how to paint and want to break away from known patterns, and to those who don’t know how to paint and want to experiment with a new form of expression.
The creation and painting of the Mandala is a pictorial-creative meditation technique that allows us to practice Presence, in a space of relaxation and centering.
It helps us open up to creativity which is often blocked by prejudices and conditioning.
It is the mirror in which we reflect, where we encounter difficulties, judgments, resistance, conflicts, but we also connect with beauty and internal and external harmony, with feeling one in the moment, with being aligned . with what happens in the “here and now”.
It helps us explore ourselves with the use of different techniques: compass, ruler, pencils, watercolors, tempera…
In this course we use the basic technique of the Tibetan Mandala which is the rotation of the movement around the center.
We start by using the compass, creating circles that start from the center in a systematic, repetitive, orderly and precise way. By rotating the sheet, each circle must be repeated in each quadrant overlapping with each other, so as to create a base full of interconnected lines. When the sheet is almost full you stop and observe.
And there, in observation, the miracle happens: we glimpse forms that want to emerge, that want to be brought to light.
We begin by cleaning the lines that are not needed until we give body to the shapes that have revealed themselves to our gaze. It is repeated by always proceeding in a circular manner, that is, by turning the paper. Little by little our mandala emerges and the various forms come to life.
Now we can begin to color it with the colors that come into our consciousness at that moment.
Everything becomes magical: the flow of the brush, the colors that transform and change in infinite shades in contact with water and paper, the colored pencils, which with a light hand, fill the spaces of the new shapes.
Effort, time and space vanish. Everything happens in the Presence, leaving space for silence and meditation.
“In the center you are a nonbeing, nothingness, just a vast space, eternally cool, silent, blissful. So when I say enjoy I mean watch, and you will enjoy. When I say enjoy, I mean don’t escape.” OSHO, A Bird on the Wing
