Imagine that each of us has a psychological shelter, a mandala. Instead of looking like a house, it is round, in a 360-degree shape. During our lives, we craft, shape, and repair our shelter. Inside our shelter lies our dualistic self, divided by that reflective 180 degrees, both the same yet not, above the horizon and below the horizon. Other keystone elements exist in our shelter as well, our inner child, our shadow, our collective (that includes AI) mind, our closest family and society, both clearly above the horizon, and darkly below the horizon as well. This is the framework of a healthy mandala machine. But what fuels the machine you might wonder? It is the time and context of our lives. What is the output of our mandala machine? The navigation of our lives.
A Broken Shelter (Mandala)
There could be times where our shelter breaks, and all the harsh weather of the world comes pouring in. When the mandala is broken, we can no longer navigate time and the context of our lives, but to navigate our repairs. Using our dualistic selves in conflict, we must find the inner communication to make the repairs and complete the circle of shelter.
When our shelter is broken, our elements speak to us if we listen, in a desire to be whole again. For example, I had a waking dream when I was young, and the elements were a reflection of myself with red eyes and that reflection was called Ahab, and pooh bear was there who could not speak. I think a lot about that waking dream throughout my life and what it means to me. And while time to time I feel my reflection divided in conflict, with my mandala intact, there is less noise in the center.
While active imagination is one way of interacting with our mandala, there is also art and writing. We can’t help but express our inner communication, if not proactively and constructively...it will come out in destructive ways we did not intend, thru our relationships and our lives. We need to live life from the inside out, not outside of ourselves, locked outside both from our mandala and the world.
Time and Context
I’ve thought a lot about the words time and context to describe how it relates to perspective and our inner mandala. Synchronicity is part of what I am referring to, spontaneous correlation of events and patterns, but is not the entirety. The relationship between space and time, I am referring to as well, our actual physical path we take in life, and how we decide to go left or right. But again, it doesn’t describe the relationship I want to describe between time and space. So, if you look at time as not a constant, but could change based on where you are, say on a different planet with different gravity; you could say that time is dependent on context to where you are. This is the point I want to make, that time is dependent on our context to who, what, and where we are. Maybe that is a leap, but I think it most near the truth, as I sketch this picture of understanding subjectively.
You are probably asking why does this matter to me? What it means, is that we as individuals, have the potential to navigate our lives using time, a well-crafted mandala, and the context of our lives. Our shelter, our mandala, could be our ship if we are aware enough.
Time Based on my Experience
To remember both forwards and backwards. I think about that a bit. Like our inner Benjamin button. I wonder about the reality of two-way memories. It’s just we never learned to recognize the other. There is this philosophical concept of a block of time, and I truly wonder at it, that we can see, in some form or fashion, any part of our lives in context to our perspective.
How do we recognize these ‘memories’ and more importantly, what is the purpose of these phantom memories. It creates these shadows that if aware we process, we put current names to the shadows, so we can process them… but we find as much as we connect with these shadow memories, an aspect of them is removed from us. Yet we identify with them, at least internally. I just wonder if the awareness is shut down in most people… because of the havoc and confusion it can cause… when that awareness is misunderstood. Which I think happens a lot. Like instead of treating the recognition indifferently, we identify with it as the right decision…destiny…and/or tragedy…instead of navigating. Or write it off as imaginary or wishful thinking.
The reason I bring all this up, is because to navigate our lives thru time, we must think bigger. We must be aware that our 360 mandala can actually be a sphere, where we can navigate our past, future and present. I had this dream a long time ago and I keep thinking about it now. Where I worked at a sandwich shop and I was putting all these sandwiches together, and the pace was too fast, and people wanted to much, and I got overwhelmed and yelled out that I needed help. What if I knew I was going to be writing a lot of articles and instead of coming up with all my thoughts when I wrote them, I had all my thoughts throughout my life. A lifetime of building concepts to write about. Even sometimes now I write an article, and I feel I recognize it somehow. Taking elements from my past future and present and putting them all together into a ‘sandwich.’
Now could this all be my imagination? Could I dismiss all this as just wishful thinking? Well, I could, but the danger of dismissing imagination or the subjective self in the entirety of my life gives me no control over my navigation. Subtracting imagination and the subjective, subtracts if from the mandala and my life. If I did that, I would just be subjected to the waves of existence with no way of sailing my ship.
With that said, I think there is a danger to believing too much in imagination and phantom memories, so much so that the disappointment and despair of putting all our eggs in the basket of the subjective can be too much for some when the eggs break. It is important, crucial, that we learn to be balanced and not dominate or be dominated by our subjective selves but be guided by them. By no means does recognition automatically mean success, but it does mean when we commit to something it can impact every part of our lives.
Conclusion
We have all this raw material of ourselves, lets learn how to use it. Let's build our Mandala Shelter and navigate our lives. Don’t worry about how clever you are, don’t worry about how smart, just know yourself. In a fast world, and an even faster digital world, know the dualistic side of yourself and cultivate each aspect that has a different concept and understanding of time. We cannot hide in our shelter paralyzed by our lack of subjective imagination, nor have a shelter so big as to be so far from our center that we force others and conspiracies to be our shelter and navigation. We as individuals, must fight to empower ourselves and others, to balance ourselves with the collective mind and be the counterbalance it needs. We are the future.