Meditative Mandalas on Antibiotics

I went into this exercise on my first day of antibiotics, second bout of strep throat. To me, the three drawings really show the healing process in a mere 10 hours.

In the drawing before bed, I see the beginning of chaos in my line, really showing how uncertain I was with the world. Get strep again really shook me up. There is a cyclic movement between the tree, the moon and the mountains. I also put in salmon (or some sort of fish) jumping in the water. I feel the optimistic blue skies and a pretty silver bow to wrap it all up show my faith. The bow really feels like I'm trying to contain everything . Getting strep again was very stressful to me....I couldn't figure out how I was going to get everything done. The bow looks like I'm trying to keep it all very contained, with just the elements of nature popping out. A metaphor for me trying to keep everything together and the mother nature taking its due course anyway.

For the middle of the night drawing, the chaotic line is very apparent and starts to take over the page breaking it up into quadrants . I remember waking up and anxiously feeling my sore throat; disappointed that I was still affected by the bacterial infection. I see a spiral (spiraling down or spiraling out of sickness?), and lots of chaotic energy going around. As if on a cross, I wrote the words: here, love, now, rest. Feels like a prayer of acceptance and healing for the fight against bacteria. Like the first drawing, the blue dots (night sky) is repeated, this time at the middle of the spiral; almost like a black hole.

I am surprised my the calmness of my third drawing. It's important to note that I did wake up feeling much better, which seems to be illustrated. The buoyant doodles seem to contain a fresh energy coming over the hills, and they are topped off by opaque circles, which seem to represent the four directions (not initially intended). The four directions are connected to four feathers that give a lightness to the drawing, and certainly that is how I was feeling. Again, I've taken blue dots (night sky) and put them around the piece.

Doing the third piece was by far my favorite; it felt much very meditative and gave me a sense of calm centerness. I felt release have all drawings, but centered only after the third. I also find it interesting that the third piece takes elements from the first two images and combines them into one piece that feels much more stable than the other two. There is a cross-like foundation to both the second and third piece, which gives it a meditative feel. Mountains are also represented in the first and second piece.

This process feels like it summoned the magician in me. Though I felt like I forced myself in the for drawing number one, the rest of it seemed to flow easily. As The Magician put it, "magicians discover that, at a deeper level, force does not work". I love this philosophy for life, and enjoyed using it in my art.

According to The Secret Language of Symbols:

mountain = masculinity, eternity, ascent from animal to spiritual nature

sun = male; higher self

moon = female; resurrection, immortality, cyclical nature

feather = Great Spirit and the sun; ability to visit other worlds

salmon = prophecy and inspiration

circle = perfection, eternity

spiral = energy flow

stars = less important gods/goddesses

Need to mull over the symbolic meanings; right now nothing is jumping out at me.