The Mandala

By now you should have decided on your values and feelings from the six choices mentioned earlier. These choices come from: l) how you seek comfort, 2) how you seek pleasure, 3) your greatest fear, 4) how you do things, 5) your way of being and 6) your relationships with others.

The mandala illustrates your self. The self is that individual whom you call yourself. The self is who you think you are. In other words, it is all of those values and feelings that you have accumulated over the years of living on this planet.

When you refer to yourself it is almost always the small self you are talking about. On the other hand, the Self (big "S") usually refers to that which is always present, formless, pure and unchanging. The big Self is also known at the witness. The father of yoga, Patanjali, probably said it best, some 5,000 years ago: "Thoughts are always changing but may be witnessed by the True Self, which is never changing."

Along the right side and the bottom of this blog is a diagram of the mandala. Place your chosen values and feelings on the appropriate petals with your name in the middle. You might want to recreate the mandala by either printing it out or drawing it.

Tomorrow we will see how we can use the mandala to go further into exploring the small self and how it relates to the ego. From there we will venture into the True Self.