centering HOME:  mandalas everywhere

  Sometimes we find ourselves singing a song or humming a tune, and when we pay attention and focus in on it, we realize it's a kind of subconscious message--the lyrics express a not-fully-realized emotion, for example, or an unarticulated hope. It can be a powerful tool of self understanding.  I call this becoming aware of the "hummer." One of the songs that repeatedly comes up in my hummer is "Centering Home," written many years ago by Molly Scott.  The "centering home" phrase that repeats over and over refers to the idea of always coming back to the path, and following it home to the center. The idea of the center is of course a long-familiar spiritual principle. There are myriad treatises written about the center itself, and about moving to and from it. There are myriad ways of representing it. The mandala is one manifestation. In Hindu and Buddhist symbolism, the circular mandala, emanating in a geometrically regular pattern from a central point, represents the universe. We see this ad infinitum in nature, in the geometric formulae that repeat on every scale, and in what we are now easily able to see in infinitely fascinating fractals. In Eastern traditions, mandalas were (are) used as meditation tools that help bring the practitioner into balance and harmony. In Western psychology and dream analysis, mandalas are similarly said to represent an individual's search for completeness, wholeness, and integration.

What I offer here are photos I've taken in widely diverse places and contexts that capture this sense of mandala, moving (often spiraling) in (or out) to (and from) a center. Many of the images are unsurprising--there are umpteen plants and animals (or parts of animals) that grow from a central point. In our image-heavy media, we're familiar with these, and we've even become used to astonishing photos of space and galaxies that remarkably reflect photos of small forms like seashells--images of macro/micro resonance (a concept I was playing with 50 years ago, I joyfully add!).

On one level this collection of mine might thus feel a bit trite, but I still find the images newly-compelling, and we can always stand to be brought back again to center. When we witness this primal form and centering journey in so many different manifestations, it reinforces our understanding of the underlying unity of this planet. I intermix photos of natural forms with photos of human-made objects that reflect the same idea, further reminding us that we are inexorably a part of nature and the natural world, and we manifest its inherent impulses. And finally, since these are my own photographs (I shot almost all of them, and a few are even taken from my own art; the few images taken by others are ones that I have previously used in my professional work and have become very intimate with), they are my personal offering; they are my shout-out to the universe and to remembering and returning to the center. If you click on an individual image you will often find a caption explaining what it is. I included explanations where I thought the photo might not be self-evident, or where the element of surprise might add to the delight.