Opening to the Concept of Mandala Tantra

Noticing what you want in love and knowing where you are in your personal mandala of life are very important.

The word mandala means a pattern that represents the cosmos metaphysically or symbolically from the human perspective. These symbols are often used as an aid to create sacred spaces for meditation and trance induction. It is through its symbolic nature that one can access progressively deeper levels of the unconscious, thus allowing the meditator to experience a mystical sense of oneness with the ultimate unity from which all forms arise. Our personal mandalas can help us identify emotional patterns that cause us suffering and can allow us to work towards wholeness within.

The word tantra causes such a stir in Western culture because our only perspective of this word is from the Hindu practices of sexual positioning to enhance pleasure.

But this is not what the word actually means.

The word Tantra comes from two words, tanoti, which means expansion, and trayati, which means liberation. It also means to stretch or to weave. It is the union of energy and consciousness. It means that in life you are required to stretch and open in order to learn to weave the threads of your consciousness into the physical reality. In our lives all of us create ways in which we stretch and grow. That stretching can cause us fear and pain, as it requires us to let go of our previous perspectives and positions and open to a possibility in which love can expand beyond what we have experienced at the moment.

Tantra is the conscious weaving of the patterns of life that challenge us into a place in which we are no longer in reaction to our circumstances and environment. Instead of resisting and needing to be right, we choose to seek out places to stretch our awareness into more and more love and consciousness. Tantra recognizes that by learning that everything is love you can become wiling to surrender up what you believe is a problem and find bliss in every moment no matter how you mind might have previously perceived it.

The first step is to notice in which areas you feel stuck and resistant to move or open. That should not be difficult. Each of us is distinctly aware of where we are constantly creating patterns that we dislike. By being aware of what you are creating and attracting into your life you will begin to notice the patterns in which you are choosing to grow through.

I love the concept of mandalas in Tibetan Buddhism. To a westerners eye this concept of meditating on a deity or mandala seems somewhat flat and foreign. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.

I like to think of my life as a series of personal mandalas. I have established certain patterns in many areas of my life. Each one of them is a mandala. Some of these mandalas I can navigate well and others I find myself triggered by the chaotic energies that cause me to react and not open fully in love.

In my personal way of seeing my life, I begin with the construct of the Tibetan images for mandalas. Usually there is a central figure, which appears serene and balanced. They hold the sacred symbols and tools that this archetype uses to cut through the illusion of their particular human condition. That deity is usually standing on the backs of dead corpses or humans in some form of conflict or suffering. The outer edges of the image, represents the positive or negative qualities of the lessons needing to be navigated through by this archetype.

It appears much like a hurricane to me. The eye of the storm is calm while the further you move towards the outer edge, it becomes more and more chaotic and conflicted. Thus representing the true nature of all life. Life is chaotic life force. Learning to navigate it with clarity and conscious love is a real challenge. The trick is to stay in the center. Notice the chaotic patterns and recognize that you are not this chaos. You are much more than your small human experience of this moment. When you choose to believe in your smallness, you then allow the possibility that you are a victim of your circumstances and are not powerful enough to control the chaos you find yourself in. And from this position you would be right.

First of all, life is so powerful that even the thought that you could control nature is a joke. Since control will not work, you must find a different place in which to stand. Begin by realizing that by being on this planet you are choosing to learn to expand love and consciousness. It is a huge job and there are many much more powerful beings than you and I that have tried. They have all failed in certain ways and that always resulted in some form of death, whether physical, metaphorical, spiritual, emotional, or mental. Others who became afraid of the freedom and love that they carried often killed them.

Yet to die without attempting to give your greatest gift will leave you feeling unfulfilled.

In Tibetan Buddhism you must be willing to admit that in life there is suffering and death. That is inevitable. So what are you going to do with the time that you have on this planet? No one really knows when they will be taken off this planet. Anything could happen to any of us tomorrow. So right now, how can you give fully of your heart to others in ways that serve and open everyone around you?

This is why looking at your personal mandalas and finding ways to weave love, energy, and consciousness together is critical spiritual progression. By becoming aware of the situations that consistently recreate themselves in your life, you learn to navigate yourself into the center of your mandala. From the center it is all perfect and simply another way to expand love and consciousness into your life and into the lives of those you love.

We learn to look at all the people and situations as a weaving of chaotic energies in which we must learn to find our way to the center of the storm.

Then we must learn to love with total consciousness. In this way we learn to look at each person we bring into our lives as a gift and opportunity to open love to ever greater and expanding circles of light. Through this process we learn to look at all pain and confusion from an awakened perspective.

Then life becomes a play of wisdom. Suffering is transformed into joy and awakened consciousness.

When we constantly try to manipulate and control our environment it becomes difficult to experience the bliss and joys of this precious moment.

Each situation in which you find yourself is a vehicle to establish new boundaries and to learn the new mental and physical limits of this pattern. In this way, you learn to develop a relationship with your circumstances. From this perspective you can see that there is natural workability and goodness in every situation. You understand that you must drop habitual patterns in how you relate to your life and experience and learn to engage situations directly from your center rather than from the place of reaction and fear of loss.

Only when you are unwilling to escape from the reality of your life can true opening happen.

Each situation or person you encounter can create its own lessons and patterns as a mandala. But it becomes even more complex than that. Your mandalas are also needing to relate and connect to the other person’s mandala.

This is where the chaos really becomes a problem.

Now you are not just dealing with your energies but the patterns that have been established in others. If you cannot see the mandala that the other person is working from you can bump against the edges of each other’s mandala. This can cause more suffering and trigger each of you into the established patterns of unfulfillment and upset. Then you will feel hit by the full fury of the stormy edges of both. If you try to connect from the chaotic edges of your mandala then fulfillment is difficult but if you connect from the calm center of that personal mandala then each person can feel fulfilled.