You are an embodied soul. That means what your soul experiences, your body experiences. So treat your whole self with tender loving care. Here are a few gifts you can give yourself:
Time. We stay so busy that the truth of our lives can't catch up with us. Set aside thirty minutes or more for the Lotus and the Lily experiences. This gift of time will return to you a thousandfold.
Silence. There is no substitute for silence, because it is in silence that the soul speaks. Turn off the radio; put down your iPod. Make friends with silence.
A media diet. Cut down or eliminate your consumption of fear-filled media. If nothing else, do not watch TV, especially the news, at night. Don't take fear to bed with you.
Prayer and meditation. Spiritual practice is a muscle that strengthens with use. Use those muscles.
Movement. The physical body holds toxins. Throughout this program, you will release many deeply embedded toxic thoughts and beliefs. Help your body release them with yoga, walking, tai chi, massage—something to get your muscles moving.
Water. Drinking pure water helps your body release toxins. Drink a lot of it.
Sleep. Most people report they need more sleep while doing this process. Give yourself the gift of sweet rest. Sleeping more will also give you the benefit of more dreams.
Nurturing. Perhaps that means taking a long walk in nature, staying away from toxic people, walking a labyrinth, or renewing an old friendship with a sacred text. Whatever it is, do it, and notice how you feel.
Personal amnesty. When doing deep soul writing, a woman in Minneapolis was berating herself on the page for yet another failure. The Voice stopped her cold and wrote, “Grant yourself an amnesty. Apply a peace treaty to your heart. You are no longer your own enemy.” Take these words to heart. They are a gift for you, too.
You've already given yourself one important gift: you're here. You've heard the call that your soul wants to create life, and you've shown up, ready to begin. Read on—there's magic waiting for you in the mandala.
What Are Mandalas and Why Do We Make Them?
The moon is most happy
When it is full.
And the sun always looks
Like a perfectly minted gold coin
That was just polished
And placed in flight
By God's playful Kiss.
And so many varieties of fruit
Hang plump and round
From branches that seem like a Sculptor's hands.
I see the beautiful curve of a pregnant belly
Shaped by a soul within,
And the Earth itself,
And the planets and the Spheres—
I have gotten the hint:
There is something about circles
The Beloved likes.
—Hafiz, from “Circles,” I Heard God Laughing, Translation by Daniel Ladinsky
At the time I made “My Breakthrough Year,” on January 1, 2010, with my conditions on a lily at the center of a circle, I didn't label what I'd drawn a “mandala.” But thirty days later, when the bankruptcy attorney told me I'd made so much money I was no longer bankrupt, I stood in front of my round drawing, stared at it, and wondered, “What is this?” I sensed there had to be something about the shape because I had made several traditional rectangular vision boards in other years, but none of them had been as miraculous as the circular vision board I made in 2006 or this new one in 2010. I searched online and quickly discovered I'd made much more than a round vision board; I'd made a “mandala.”
I became hungry to know more about mandalas. I turned to my Voice. “Why,” I asked, “does a mandala make such a difference? Show me.” Two weeks later, I was awakened in the middle of the night with a picture of my mandala floating in my head. The invisible hands holding it vertically in front of me began to slowly rotate the paper until it was completely horizontal, and I could see only the edge.
When it reached full horizontal position, I saw that it wasn't a piece of paper at all. It was the central slice of a three-dimensional sphere floating in clear black space. The edge of my mandala was the middle line of the sphere, like the equator on earth. Below my mandala were three slender gold threads, like latitude lines. The three gold threads divided the lower half of the sphere into four sections, which I knew were the four weeks of deep work I'd done prior to creating my mandala.
Above my mandala was a cone of golden light pouring onto the lily from a small hole at the top of the sphere. I felt I was seeing confirmation that our conditions are our connection with the Divine. I could see my desires on the periphery of my mandala, but the bulk of the light was falling on the lily that held my conditions.
I stared hard at the sphere, trying to capture every detail in my memory. When I relaxed my attention, I noticed that the golden threads of my sphere were connected to other spheres, which were connected to still others, reaching into infinity. Everything and everyone was connected in clear black space.
I glanced back at my personal sphere because something was moving. The lily petals were coming to life. A stem began to grow down from the petals. Then a couple of leaves sprouted and finally roots spread out from the stem. I could see—literally—how everything in my life had led to, fed, and become my present.
When the vision was complete, I whispered thank you and slipped into a sweet sleep. The next morning, I thanked the Voice for this extraordinary image. On my own, I said, I would never have realized a two-dimensional mandala is really a three-dimensional globe. But I had one question the vision hadn't answered. “How,” I wrote, “can I move my mandala—my life and myself—up closer and closer to the Light?” My hand wrote two words in big capital letters: SAY YES! I smiled. Of course! I had put my intentions out there; now all I had to do was say yes to everything heaven arranges—yes to guidance; yes to invitations, whether I understand them or not; yes to ideas; yes to intuition; yes to urges; yes to life. I grabbed a piece of paper, wrote yes! in huge letters, and taped it to my bedroom wall. Now, when I open my eyes, I see the call to yes!
My first call to yes was to learn about mandalas. I began with Mandala: Journey to the Center by Bailey Cunningham, founder of the Mandala Project. This book, filled with beautiful pictures that demonstrate the presence of mandalas in every form and aspect of life, was the perfect introduction. Look up: the sky is full of giant mandalas—our earth, the planets, stars, galaxies. Look in: our world is constructed of tiny mandalas—atoms and subatomic particles. Look around: everything is a mandala—your eye, a volcano, snowflakes, sunflowers, spider webs. Our world is a mandala, and everything in it is arranged according to the golden ratio, an ancient Indian formula introduced to the West in the thirteenth century by the brilliant Italian mathematician Fibonacci. Have you heard of Fibonacci numbers? They are an infinite sequence in which each number is the sum of the two before. Begin with zero and I and then 0+1=1, 1+1 = 2, 2+1=3, 3+2 = 5, 5+3 = 8, 8+5 = 13, 13+8 = 21, etc. This sequence is the structure of the Golden Spiral on which all life is based.
Every living thing follows this sequence. The arrangements of artichoke leaves, pine-cone bracts, sunflower seeds, fern fronds, and tree branches are all living expressions of Fibonacci numbers and the Golden Spiral. A slice of a nautilus shell displays this geometric form perfectly. Look: life itself is a living, breathing mandala.
