mandalaofsoul

horse. As I thought about it, such a shape appeared everywhere in nature. It was a perfectbalance, and more importantly, a balance that was held by something or someone. As we spokeabout these things in class, however, I found my mind wandering into various places. I wonderedabout the new person I was dating, what work would be like that evening, how many bills werestill outstanding. I then judged myself for not being involved in the discussion and went back intothe merry-go-round I had judged myself for hopping onto in the first place. I must have shownthis in my facial expression, because I was immediately noticed and asked to report on where Iwas. In all honesty, and with much guilt and regret, I replied that I was not present.Something amazing happened then. I was asked to hold out my palms and contain bothrealities: the one that was present in class listening, and the other that was off fretting andworrying. This was a slightly new concept for me, for I had existed until that point in a world ofdichotomies. To my astonishment, I had energetically created a bridle, that sacred balancingtriangle. Worried previously that I was not present, I discovered that by doing this I was morepresent than I ever could have imagined being. My inner and outer world could peacefully coexist.This student was responding to Lowler’s discussion of the meaning of archetypes. The ancientstudy of sacred geometry and the modern study of quantum physics merge as we pursue a deeper graspand mastery of the Mandala Process. The ancients studied sacred geometry (the realm of archetypes) asa means of accessing and acting as co-creators. It was to this ancient wisdom that the student referred.In this regard, Lowler states:The implicit goal of this education was to enable the mind to become a channel through whichthe ‘earth’ (the level of manifested form) could receive the abstract, cosmic life of the heavens.The practice of geometry was an approach to the way in which the universe is ordered andsustained. Geometric diagrams can be contemplated as still moments revealing a continuous,timeless, universal action, generally hidden from our sensory perception. Thus, a seeminglycommon mathematical activity can become a discipline for intellectual and spiritual insight. (6)In this context, consider art-making as mathematical activity. We continue:To see how these operate, let us take an example of a tangible thing, such as the bridle of ahorse. This bridle can have a number of forms, materials, sizes, colors, uses, all of which arebridles. The bridle considered in this way, is typal: it is existing, diverse and variable. But onanother level there is the idea or form of the bridle, the guiding model of all bridles. This is an unmanifest,pure, formal idea, and its level is ectypal. But yet, above this there is the archetypallevel, which is that of the principle, or power-activity, that is a process which the ectypal formand typal example of the bridle only represent. The archetypal is concerned with universalprocesses or dynamic patterns which can be considered independently of any structure ormaterial form. Modern thought has difficult access to the concept of the archetypal becauseEuropean languages require that verbs of action words be associated with nouns. We therefore20